Its well documented that music games are on a steady decline, and with Guitar Hero officially put in the ground this genre is close to be dead and gone all together.  I personally love these games, but I will be the first one to come out and say that they could be so much better.  What's floating around in my mind: RPG. Putting this in a music game would dramatically make it different and, I think, a lot better, but how would it work?

Playing Rockband and traveling from town to town with my band and picking up new fans, clothes, equipment, roadies, vehicles, is not really that satisfying, but imagine if you were only one member of the band and you had to interact with a group of guys and gals that don't know and maybe don't like you.  For you to make this band work you have to preform perfectly at the shows and then once backstage or while traveling in your mom's mini-van you have conversation points like Mass Effect an you can choose whether your character is a jerk or a great guy.

This would continue all the way through the game and the choices you make determine what will happen to your band.  Will someone leave because they are fed up with your antics, or will you and the group unite and because world famous?  Other moments that could happen in this game would be meeting groupies, maybe finding love and seeing how that will affect the band, and if you want it to be treated like a real world band maybe you and the group come across drugs once fame has reached everyone.

What would be the final end of the game?  Perhaps at the end of the game if you get the "good ending" you and your band perform at a hall of fame while having a wave of applause rush over you and maybe a really cool cut scene of everything the band has gone through.  What about a bad ending?  Maybe your lead singer best friend dies of an over dose and your character no longer plays music and flips burgers.  The ending scene would be a burger flipping mini-game.

That's my thoughts on music games and what I would do to revive them.  Do I think that I'll ever see this come to reality?  Yes, but I don't think it'll be to the level that I think it could be.