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Are Third-Party Rock Band Network Companies Taking Advantage of Artists?
Harmonix’s Rock Band Network is still in beta, but Gameindustry.biz reports that the company is warning artists to be careful when hiring a third-party Rock Band authoring service – or better yet, do the work required to author a song to Rock Band Network themselves.
This response from Harmonix and MTV comes following reports that some third party (non-Harmonix or MTV affiliated) companies have been charging up to $1000 per song for authoring tracks.
RBN progam manager John Drake says he hopes that artists will make careful decisions about which companies they work with, and stresses that all artists have access to the free programs that Harmonix is distributing for authoring Rock Band tracks.
"The tools are entirely accessible to anyone who has used recording software previously," he said. "Our audio team has developed some amazing plugins - some of which we're now using at Harmonix - that make the interface really straightforward,” commented Drake. "They really aren't 'game dev' tools as much as they're very tailored music production tools. Doing the authoring is challenging work that takes time, but anyone fascinated enough by music to learn how to record themselves won’t have any trouble learning the tools of RBN."
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