Rock Band wants to lend a promotional hand to struggling musicians

by: Tina - posted: 4/1/2010 7:51:00 PM

Attention aspiring and emerging music artists! Is the lack of sale profits in your current industry dwindling your hopes for survival in a fame-ridden world where mediocre radio stations dominate? Well, perhaps your late night prayers have been answered with opportunity from the incorporation of music into the game industry.

Harmonix and MTV Games are grouping up with T-Mobile to offer musicians a chance to compete with one another to gain the title of “T-Mobile Artist-of-the-Month.” Ok, so it’s not a Grammy award or anything, but it certainly beats pushing your band with gigs at the local bar, right?

Winning the title gains your song entrance into Rock Band gameplay and the Rock Band Network Store, as well as being featured on the official Rock Band site and store for one month.

This adds promotional material to the already open Store in which musicians can upload their tracks and set pricing information for them. If you are an aspiring artist, read on for the details on how to submit your song for review.

CAMBRIDGE, MA and NEW YORK, NY – April 1, 2010 - Harmonix Music Systems and MTV Games, a part of Viacom’s MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), along with T-Mobile, the official mobile partner of the Rock Band Network, today announced a new contest for emerging artists to submit their music for the chance to become one of the featured bands in Rock Band Network’s “T-Mobile Artist-of-the-Month.”



Artists should go to www.rockband.com/t-mobile beginning today through April 11, 2010 to upload their song (MP3 format), band photo and bio for consideration. Artists will be put in front of MTV Games music executives for the chance to get their song professionally authored into Rock Band gameplay, sold in the Rock Band Network Store, and be named one of Rock Band Network’s “T-Mobile Artists-of-the-Month.” The selected artist will be featured for one month in promotions throughout the store and on the official game website.



The Rock Band Network gives Rock Band fans and music lovers a new avenue to discover music and provides musicians and labels the opportunity to produce and promote tracks for the Rock Band platform. This ground-breaking initiative gives musicians, publishers and record labels the ability to author their original recordings into gameplay files to promote and sell their music as playable Rock Band tracks through the RBN Store.



Artists who submit songs for the Rock Band Network Music Store are able to choose from multiple pricing tiers for individual tracks and receive a royalty of 30 percent of the retail selling price (excluding tax) for every track purchased through the RBN Store. There are currently more than 100 songs available for purchase in the RBN Store from artists including The Shins, The Hold Steady, The Main Drag, Bang Camaro, of Montreal, Jonathan Coulton, Skeleton Witch, 3 Inches of Blood, Lacuna Coil, Stroke 9, and Steve Vai. There are more than 300 artists in the RBN pipeline, with additional tracks already on the way from Flight of the Conchords, The Smashing Pumpkins, Twin Atlantic, All That Remains, Clutch, Prong, The Gaslight Anthem and many more coming soon.



With more than 1,100 tracks available to date in the original Rock Band platform, the Rock Band Network Music Store will immediately boost the number of available songs, further securing MTV Games and Harmonix’s position as the leading provider of downloadable content for music-based video games.



For more information and official “Artist-of-the-Month” contest rules, please visit www.rockband.com/t-mobile



Artists interested in submitting their songs to Rock Band Network, please go to www.creators.rockband.com for more instructions on how to get involved.