Rock Band DLC to be More “Selective” in the Future
Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters
So Rock Band has passed 1,000 DLC tracks available for download late last year. And in 2009, they had over 50 million downloads. But there were some hints from Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman last week that while DLC sales have been good, profitability could be better.
During last week’s conference call, Dauman said that Viacom will have to be more “selective” in the music selection for Rock Band, based on royalties.
The music industry will have to assist this category to make sure it can continue on a profitable basis in the future.
This should come to as good news to everyone. I think there will be more pressure from Viacom to get better quality tracks from the music industry to be put up as DLC, because it sounds like some tracks that Harmonix has spent time and expense charting have not been selling as well as expected.
[via Gamasutra]
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i don’t know how this could possibly be construed as a positive. more selective means less risks. that means less full albums, (since only the singles sell) less unknowns or lesser knowns, (some of the best dlc released have come from artists who have never had a radio hit) and more cheapo promotion tracks from viacom’s other assets. (woo. more naked brothers band.) this is bad news for everyone.
yay more megadeth, rush, etc. but this also could potentially mean no more full albums and like sghost said, possibly more songs from viacom’s sell-out assets
This could be a mixed bag. It definitely means no more genre stretching, deep tracks, or cult bands, which will hurt the musical variety, but they might be able to steer bands and labels to RBN.
I’m scared for this! Last year I learned about Electric Six, Kula Shaker, Dead Weather, Them Crooked Vultures, and Ben Harper from Rock Band! A lot of my joy comes from seeing tracks from bands I’ve never heard of because you never know when a band can become one of your new favorites! But if they must put more mainstream bands, Rock Band Network will help me discover new ones while regular DLC keeps in touch with old favorites.
Makes sense. RBN’s already proven to be an incredible vehicle for lesser-known bands to get their music in the game and it hasn’t even launched yet; it’s just going to get bigger and bigger. I’m sure the number of tracks we see from independent artists (and even some major ones) will increase exponentially after RBN’s launch, leaving HMX plenty of time to negotiate with big-name bands for “official” DLC.
No more Richard Thompson, then?
Damn.
it could just be that that they are going to be more selective simply due to the fact that a potentially large number of artists are going to work directly off the RBN. This may not be a negative at all.
How much do you want to bet that those live Paul McCartney songs didn’t meet the expectations except in the cost category.