A few weeks ago, I went over a friend's house to hang out - and one of the things that we did was play Rock Band on his Xbox 360. For those that haven't played that game yet, it's basically like Guitar Hero except instead of just a guitar, you have bass, drums, mic, etc. Your goal is to play through songs as well as possible, scoring points for accuracy. The songs you play are a mish-mash of oldies and recent songs that range from "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers to "I'm So Sick" by Flyleaf and fill in almost every genre gap between. Or is it?
After playing, I realized that there was an amazing potential here that the folks over at Harmonix (the developers of the game) have yet to cash in on. Simply put, the ability to create your own songs.
Take that to the next level and imagine that you're in a band. Or perhaps you are. Imagine the ability to take your song and put it on a game that can be downloaded via Xbox Live and have millions of people wanting to learn how to play your song. Included features could be a link in the game next to the song to be able to purchase your band's entire album for download directly to your Xbox.
I realize that the process of creating the song could be extremely tedious. My thoughts are to have the ability to load an MP3 and then basically go through each instrument and input where on the guitar neck each note goes. It could take a long time to add a song, yes. But would you do it for your band if it meant that your song could be exposed to millions of Xbox Live members? Or even for your friend's band? I think so. If there are people that have enough free time to create custom paint jobs in Forza Motorsport 2, then I'd think that with the incentive of a few bucks and possible stardom then they'd be happy to create some songs no matter how long it took. How many people got record deals out of their songs being on Napster? Not many, perhaps, but it did happen. And it could happen with Rock Band also.
Harmonix would probably have to have some sort of written (electronic) agreement that each person who uploaded a song would have to agree to that would basically say that the song is indeed their own song and isn't violating copyright laws. Then if someone complains that a song is violating copyright, take it down. Look at YouTube for inspiration there.
To take it to the next step, you could introduce multi-song packs for free. For example, a "Seattle Grunge Pack" made up of three or four songs of Seattle-based grunge bands that have uploaded their songs. Since it's free, a lot of people would no doubt get it. And once they have it, they could be given links to buy more Rock Band playable songs from each band, or their album as MP3s just to listen to on your Xbox. And naturally, Harmonix would get percentage of each item sold. For inspiration on how the finances of it would work, simply look at how iTunes does their indie MP3 stuff.
Not to mention how many band members do not currently own the game that would go buy it simply for the chance to be included in this. Bands invest a lot of money in the chance to become the "next big thing"...so a hundred bucks or so to get exposure to millions of people is nothing. Or, if Harmonix is smart, they'd create a downloadable program to create songs free of charge. If they wanted, they could make the free song creation program only be able to create guitar and bass tracks while purchasing the full game would unlock the ability to have all instruments be created for songs. Personally I think it'd be better to just allow full song creation with no restrictions whatsoever for free. The development costs would be paid back in the royalties from each song sold, and there'd be a ton more songs created then making the game more attractive for purchase by end users as well. It's not like a band member that creates a song would be able to play his own song until he bought the game anyway. :)
But because song creation would be free, bands would only have to invest time, something that is very easily invested and is done so readily in MySpace pages, Facebook accounts, etc. all in an attempt to gain popularity.
In fact, the only thing that I cannot figure out about it is how I'm going to get royalties for the idea. :) All kidding aside, I think it'd just be awesome to see this put into effect. Comments welcome.