The company: Ozone Entertainment
Their website: http://www.theozoneradio.com/
Examples of their work: "Fight Back" by Ron Wasserman; "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by Eiffel 65
Speaking for Ozone Entertainment: Owen Douglass

How did you get into RBN authoring?
Ozone Entertainment has been involved in music since I started it in 2004, running an Internet radio station. When Harmonix announced the Rock Band Network, I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to share music with the world on a more interactive platform.

Who are the people on your team, and what are their roles?
The authoring team at Ozone Entertainment consists of just me. My role includes everything from contacting the artists, negotiating the contracts, the actual authoring, ensuring the songs go through testing and review, and promoting the tracks. Somehow I can pull it all off!

Do you have an authoring specialty or specific kinds of artists that you hope to attract?
Kotaku wrote that Ozone Entertainment is "carving out a niche in offering musical curiosities", and I think that is a great description. When I look for music to release, I look to find music that's unique, fun to play, and that I personally enjoy listening to. If you look at our current catalog of songs, you'll see that we offer songs unlike anything else on the Network or even the normal music store.

What's your favorite part of authoring?
My favorite part of authoring is the venues. With the instrument charts, there's not too much creative freedom allowed as I have to just translate the actual notes into game gems. But with the venue, I get to direct a digital concert from all the camera cuts and lighting cues. I've created some fairly complex venues and I hope that people take notice of the extra detail when they play the songs.

What's the most challenging part of authoring?
Definitely the vocals. When sitting down with a vocal stem, it can sometimes be hard to make out the different syllables in the wave form. Then after that I have to attach all the lyrics, which can be time-consuming. And then, of course, I have to make sure the lyrics are accurate. "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" is a great example of that. (Trust me, those are the right lyrics as the band sent them to me.)

Do you have a cool or funny story to share with the community?
During E3 2010, Harmonix had a wall with all of the current Rock Band songs on it in their booth. However, it had two unannounced Rolling Stones songs listed - one called "Ron Wasserman" and another called "Revengers". I'm still waiting for the Stones to finish those songs.

Any last words you'd like to share with our audience?
Thank you everyone who's supported Ozone Entertainment so far. It's been an absolutely pleasure bringing to you the best RBN tracks we can and we'll continue producing music unlike anything you've played before . Oh, and please stop asking about the Power Rangers theme. It's getting old.

The company: OffBeat Entertainment
Their website: http://offbeat-entertainment.com
Examples of their work: "Going Under" by Evanescence; "The Window" by Raven Quinn; "Queen Bee" by Tina Guo
Speaking for Offbeat Entertainment: Justin Miette
 

How did you get into RBN authoring?
We started working with the RBN tools in late 2009 under the guise of our game studio, 21-6 Productions. At GDC in 2010 we met Jeff Marshall from Harmonix and things really took off. He opened the doors for us as an RBN developer, connecting us with artists and labels to help get started. In April of 2010 we incorporated Offbeat Entertainment.

Who are the people on your team, and what are their roles?
Ben Ferriman is our lead author. He has been with the company since the start and is now responsible for quality control and shipping every song. Zach DeKraai and Rian Kumlien are new to the company this year and are charting fiends! Neal Manson, Matt Sayre, Greg Slagel, Greg Capolino, and I (Justin Mette) round out the team providing business development, mixing, charting, QA roles. Finally, we’ve partnered with Macy Sound Studios here in Denver to provide us with top quality game mixes.

Do you have an authoring specialty or specific kinds of artists that you hope to attract?
We love all kinds of music and want to bring a variety to RBN in the coming years. Even our early discography shows that diversity with everything from Indie Punk (Common Anomaly), to Blues (Steve Fister), to Alternative (White Table), to Death Metal (Dimmu Borgir), to Novelty (Alien Downlink). We also have some upcoming Country tunes as well as an electric cellist named Tina Guo doing an insane twist on Flight of the Bumblebee ("Queen Bee"). Tina Guo is an amazing electric cellist who will be featured on the first episode of America's Got Talent next week.

What's your favorite part of authoring?
Transcribing music is the best part of the gig. It’s a blast learning how to play each song and then transposing it to the 5-lane instruments. The addition of pro-keys and vocal harmonies recently with RBN 2.0 has been fantastic, allowing us to incorporate even more of the song into the game experience! We also have a great time working with so many talented artists that we may have otherwise never heard.

What's the most challenging part of authoring?
The song authoring process is very “manual” and hence, quite error prone. It’s easy to let something slip through the cracks when you’ve been staring at a MIDI grid or an in-game runway for hours on end. That’s why we’ve been developing internal tools like MIDI compilers and Reaper plug-ins that help enforce the Rock Band charting rules and guidelines for authors. This also helps with training new team members by reducing their learning curve.

Do you have a cool or funny story to share with the community?
Last fall, we went to Boston to visit Harmonix for some training on keyboard and vocal harmony authoring. It was a week before RB3 came out. Many RBN authors and a lot of folks from the HMX team, like Nord and Jeremy, rocked out all Saturday night on the new game. As game developers, we’ve always looked up to Harmonix for their accomplishments in the industry. It was a great experience to play RB3 with them so close to launch and to meet the other RBN authors face-to-face!

Any last words you'd like to share with our audience?
We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some great artists in our first year of RBN authoring. Now we are addicted to Rock Band song development and helping bands get their music into this next-generation distribution channel. There’s no stopping us now!

Seriously we would like to thank Harmonix and all of the fans of Rock Band for supporting RBN authors like Offbeat Entertainment. We will continue to bring a variety of interesting and fun-to-play music to the RBN store for many years to come. Thank you!