Anyone who has played any of the full band Guitar Hero games will have encountered the lacklustre GHTunes and Music Studio, where you could, in theory, create your own songs from canned instrument sounds on the Drums and Guitar controllers. It was a laudable idea, fantastic from a marketing point of view, but in practise nothing produced in the game could be classed as a “song”, with the lack of vocals ( for copyright reasons) and the sound quality sounding as terrible as the 16-bit era game soundtracks.

And speaking of 16-bit soundtracks, anyone who doubts how terrible the GHTunes really is, should look at the top 5 Ghtunes songs of all time :

1. Super Mario Brothers
2. SMB3 Vadrum pt 2
3. SMB1 Vadrum pt 2
4. Tha MC
5. SMB1 Vadrum pt 1

All songs, I think you’d agree, we could live without.

Last month, Harmonix surprised the entire industry with the announcement of Rock Band Network. It SOUNDS like GHTunes, which would be terrible, but the Network will be using real studio masters of bands playing their music. This opens up the entire music industry to be in rock band. Although originally the Network was designed for unsigned bands and indie labels to get higher publicity, MTV and Harmonix have tapped it’s full potential by opening the entire thing to record labels, by providing the tools to convert songs into Rock Band format. This would allow the record companies to sell their songs directly through the game, which in theory would turn into an interactive iTunes. From the 10 songs a week added now by the few-dozen strong team at Harmonix, to hundreds a week. In theory, this opens the floodgates for every song in a band’s catalog, barring of course bands like Metallica and Van Halen, who are tied to exclusivity contracts by Activision (hence why rock band 2 users can’t import enter sandman).

As you can see by the video, this is an exciting development for both artists and Rock Band end-users. This has the potential to revolutionise the music industry, and it shows what Harmonix know that Activision don’t- Music isn’t about the money, it’s purely about the music. With this fantastic innovation, Harmonix has the ability to put the Guitar Hero franchise out in the gutter.

Find out more at: creators.rockband.com, and sign up for the beta.