Rock Band Network

What is Rock Band?

Rock Band is an incredibly popular music/rhythm video game series made by Harmonix Music Systems. Players use guitar, keyboard, and drum game controllers, as well as USB microphones, to play and sing hundreds of popular songs.

The game creates a game experience which feels not unlike playing in a real rock band, and has also proven to greatly increase interest amongst video game players in picking up real instruments.

The game series has also been a way for players to discover new music. New songs (from every genre and era) are released weekly to be purchased and downloaded to the player's library.

What is Rock Band Network?

Over a thousand songs from hundreds of artists are available on the Rock Band platform, but that only represents a tiny fraction of all the music out there. Harmonix recognized that the bottleneck to further growth was in manually producing the complex game data required to bring a track to Rock Band, as the company produces a limited number of tracks in-house each week. In response, Harmonix decided to open up their development tools to the community in the form of Rock Band Network.

These tools allow anyone, with the skills and resources, to produce their own Rock Band tracks (using many of the same tools and techniques as Harmonix's in-house efforts), and upload them for sale on the Rock Band Network Store. Since its official launch in early 2010, RBN dramatically increased the number of songs available on the Rock Band platform, and also gave independent and unsigned artists access to the millions of Rock Band players around the world.

Who creates the tracks for Rock Band Network?

The Rock Band Network consists of a vibrant and active community of independent "authors" who maintain the high standard of production established by Harmonix. Some authors are musicians who submit their own music to RBN, and many authors offer their specialized services to other musicians who would not otherwise be able to participate. Publishing a track to the Rock Band Network Store requires an author to submit to a rigorous peer review process which is overseen by Harmonix and Microsoft but entirely governed by the community itself.

It is the hope of the community that the Rock Band Network Megamix Project will expose new and existing Rock Band players to this new and exciting expansion of the Rock Band platform, and in the process, a new frontier of independent music.