The video game Rock Band has become one of the most influential ways for musicians to get exposure - but only for a select few.

MTV has made about 700 songs available through Rock Band. Those songs have sold a combined 50 million downloads through the game.

Now, MTV has announced plans to launch Rock Band Network - a service that will let any artist, including unsigned indies, submit songs for inclusion in the game. The songs will be initially available to Xbox 360 users, and eventually on the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii game systems.

"We've figured out how to make it so anybody who owns and controls masters and publishing can put music into Rock Band at their own pace," says MTV Games' Paul DeGooyer. "We're talking about a set of serious professional tools to allow people on the front line of writing and recording songs to completely control their destiny with respect to interactive products and then giving them direct access to the download store."

Songs will be reviewed to check for things like playability, lyrical content and copyright infringement. If approved, you will be able to set your own price ($.50 - $3 per song) and receive 30% of any resulting sales.

"Once we flip on the infrastructure, we can go from a few dozen people capable of doing this work to hundreds of people or more," Harmonix founder/CEO Alex Rigopulos says. "We can ramp up by a factor of 10 or more the rate of production of content."

Rock Band Network is currently in beta. Details at the site.

More Information:

• Billboard
• Rock Band Network

James Lewin
Twitter @podcasting_news

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