Rockband welcoming bands to upload their songs

Rockband is opening up its doors to, well euu, bands! Through the creators.rockband.com website, bands will be able to submit their own tracks after having made them Rockband-compatible. It’s all explained in the video bellow, but in a few words, bands will have the possibility to record their tracks, MIDIfy and package them for the RockBand platform, have them reviewed by the community, and if everything goes well, will be able to sell their Rockbanded songs to the world.

Here’s the trailer:

Seems like an ok idea. All depends on how musically inclined the RockBand community really is. Will the gamers take time to try out songs they never heard before? Will the bands take the time to package those songs? The process of MIDIfying every track must be pretty time consuming, not to mention difficult. Will the work be worth it? Will having your song uploaded to such gaming networks be a sustainable source of promotion and revenue for bands, as the above trailer so proudly says it will? hmm, I’m very skeptical here. I’m really not sure many indies will jump through the hoops, but labels might give it a try for promotion purposes.

Bark?

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Music Arsenal: new online band management system

Ever heard of BaseCamp? It’s a project management system that helps organize, plan and centralize all the ‘to dos’ and the undertakings of a collaborative effort. Similar types of services now exists specifically aimed at bands like Indie Band Manager and Onlinegigs, but I’m here to introduce a newcomer.

Music Arsenal is an online management platform for bands that allows them to effectively concentrate all their band-endeavors in one single place. For the moment the site is in open-beta stage and its founder Jimmy Winter is hard at work perfecting its features.

I began working on Music Arsenal after speaking with several labels about the hard time they were having organizing and sharing all of their data.

After speaking with many of my friends’ bands and the artists I booked in Omaha I saw that they could use the product just as much as labels. I spent several months rebuilding the application and gathering data to launch the new version in August with an additional focus on artists.

Along with growing our contact directory we also plan on rolling out advanced concert management and some direct to fan promotional tools within the next couple of months.”

The service basically allows you to have a clear vision of all your band’s tasks and contacts, and organize them so they can be accessed easily from anywhere, provided you have an internet connection.

Tasks and ‘to-dos’ are added in a project that you create, as well as your expenses and your associated contacts. It’s through this project that you keep track of all that needs to be done, assigning the duties to your different band member. It’s all about delegation and collaboration within the team. Music arsenal also has a database of 2900 contacts (press, radios, venues and record stores) that bands can browse through to get started.

I would suggest trying their free subscription plan to see how it works.

It’s a nice tool that will take a load off planning your tours. Check it out.

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