RBN - Suggested Etiquette for Contacting Bands

[sonicnerd23]

Here's my email to Yes's Oliver Wakeman.

Dear Oliver,

Last night, I went to the Yes concert at the Tower Theater. This was actually my first live concert (I'm thirteen years old and love Yes music!), and let me tell you, I was amazed at what I saw/heard. Benoit sounded great, Steve and Chris played very well, Alan was a beast on the drums, and your fingers flew fast and were very precise and every note that came out sounded fantastic, much like your father.

But anyways, have you heard of the video game Rock Band? Well, recently, Harmonix, its creator, has announced Rock Band Network, an add on to their ever-growing online music store. You can learn more about this in these links:

1. http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/conte...8bf1f3ea673d95
2. http://www.rockband.com/forums/showt...54#post2730754

And if you are unsure of how charting Rock Band songs works, you can always give your master recordings to these guys. They're taught by the charting team of Harmonix.

I, along with many other people, would love to see Yes in Rock Band. If you want to tell your Yes bandmates about it, go ahead. If you want to submit songs of your own, that would be fine too.

Thank you for reading this.

Sincerely,
[my name].

[hawkofva]

Here's my email to Yes's Oliver Wakeman.

I caught their show at Richmond's Innsbrook After-Hours last week, and the new singer is really quite good. Hope your email gets their attention! I wouldn't mind a few Asia tracks too, though.

On topic: Has anyone tried to reach Pete Townshend about this yet?

[Plugs44]

Hey... I remember reading in an article online saying that Zeppelin didn't want to be in RB/GH because they didn't want to hand over their master tracks. Well now, they don't have to, right? So maybe...just maybe... they'll use RBN? Everybody, get emailing.

[KoopaTim]

Amazing! I just used this to contact Suburban Legends, it feels like I'm actually doing something for both the band and the Rock Band Community now..
I feel like a hero

[sonicnerd23]

I caught their show at Richmond's Innsbrook After-Hours last week, and the new singer is really quite good. Hope your email gets their attention! I wouldn't mind a few Asia tracks too, though.

Guess what? Oliver said he'd tell Yes's management about this! I'm so happy.

[BrianIsLive]

Honestly, I'd Like to See Any Band that Has a Large Amount of Songs In RB, Because All The Artists That Have a lot of Songs on RB, Are Real Good. So I Won't Really Mind. (Nirvana, The Who, Iron Maiden Ect.)

[Cliphead]

Hey... I remember reading in an article online saying that Zeppelin didn't want to be in RB/GH because they didn't want to hand over their master tracks. Well now, they don't have to, right? So maybe...just maybe... they'll use RBN? Everybody, get emailing.

Jimmy Page has said he doesn't like these games, so I don't think he's going to take the time to write all the charts himself.

[The-Dude1212]

Unfortunately, don't know any bands, indie or major

If anyone has the opportunity to, can someone ask Bruce Springsteen and/or Jimmy Bufffett? I originally found a site called contactVIP.com...but then they force you to pay $4 monthly via Credit Card, even if it's only for one celebrity...

[k-mac]

Unfortunately, don't know any bands, indie or major

If anyone has the opportunity to, can someone ask Bruce Springsteen and/or Jimmy Bufffett? I originally found a site called contactVIP.com...but then they force you to pay $4 monthly via Credit Card, even if it's only for one celebrity...

all you have to do is go to their official site and most band sites have a "contact info" section with an email address for the band/manager/lable.

[ADBjester]

Hi Folks,

Long story short, I contacted prog group Spock's Beard about trying to release their upcoming tenth album on RBN as a whole, simultaneous with the CD release.

I got back a positive response expressing interest from their management, followed by a second Email in which the band lamented the money breakdown:

Anyway, [she] ran the idea of the Rock Band release for SB with the guys, and they all love the idea, but here's the issue:

Despite the band's excitement at the idea, [one band member] correctly ran worst and best case scenarios, and the 50/50 split with the Harmonix team is pretty onerous. It wouldn't matter assuming they're doing it for publicity only, but if, by chance, they actually sold any significant numbers, the band would get screwed royally. Indeed, this is why the band doesn't really tour to any significant degree. It's so hard these days to actually make numbers work above the dreaded red line.

So, the question is:

* How can we effect a more beneficial relationship?
* Would they do a scaled contract so the band gets a greater share if any significant volume of sales is reached?
* Or, would they lower the Harmonix split from dollar one?

We are trying to create new and unique, non-traditional ways to get notoriety for the greatest prog band in the world, and, unless someone has a few million bucks for payola to Clear Channel and other media groups, airplay isn't going to happen.

We really need to be able to utilize creative ideas such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. You articulated your ideas perfectly, and we're very interested in your input.

Thoughts?

Hopefully, the following is an example of how you can approach your favorite indie band and answer questions.... here's what I sent back:

I'm not sure which split you're questioning, so I'll lay it out from the start.

Say you price your song at the typical $2, or an album at $18 (very common). Of that, the Network gets 70% and the band gets 30%. While 70% may seem high, please remember that there are many people in the chain there, just as there are with traditional label distribution. That 70% gets divvied up between Harmonix (the game developer), MTV Games/Activision (the game publisher), Microsoft (XBox network for bandwidth, etc).

So, from an $18 album sale, SB looks at $5.40 in revenue ($0.60 on a single)... about on par with traditional studios, as I understand it. That 70/30 split is absolutely non-negotiable from what they say.

From there, there's the charting. You can chart the songs yourself or find someone that would do it for less than the 50% cut that RhythmAuthors.com will charge, and you can keep most or all of the $5.40/album. From what I'm told it takes about 40-60 hours of work per song to do it properly. The charting houses will negotiate -- that 50% isn't carved in stone. They'll do "up front fees only" or might negotiate a better split with a "name" band with a following that will sell better than "Joe's Garage Band" that nobody has ever heard of.

There's more than just RhythmAuthors.com out there, so you can shop around for a deal.

There's musicgameauthors.com (who does a 2/3 v. 1/3 split instead of 50/50) and interactivemusicproductions.com, whom I'm not familiar with.

http://www.musicgameauthors.com/faqs.html

To get an idea of how much the Beard could sell via this method, here's a site that lists the "unofficial" popularity of all the songs that Harmonix has directly published:

http://keldon.net/rockband/popularity.cgi

Note that these aren't exact, and may be low -- they are based on scoring leaderboards -- the number of users reporting a "solo" score on any instrument for that song. Some may buy a song but only play it "as a band", or might play without being connected to XBox Live or Playstation Network.

If I had to guess, I'd say SB would be looking at sales in the lower thousands, per song, not tens of thousands. Rock Band players tend to be younger, and download buyers often are "difficulty-driven" -- songs that are really difficult to play will sell better (hence the songs that sell 100K+ are your Iron Maiden, Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, etc).

If you managed a 2/3 split with musicgameauthors.com, you'd net $0.40 per song, or $3.60 per album. Sell 5,000 albums this way, and SB gets $18,000 extra revenue, with virtually no effort and ZERO up front costs. That's "found money".

And, wonderfully, there's NO cannibalization here. A sale made on RBN is not a traditional CD sale lost to the SB Store. Nobody that would have bought direct is going to say "nah, I'll just buy it in RockBand and skip the CD". The music is *locked* onto the Xbox and *cannot* be ripped to CD. What they buy can only be played in Rock Band. (And the game has to be PLAYED -- it can't just be listened to). If someone buys the music here and then wants to have it on their iPod, they have to buy the CD for traditional listening.

What is sold in the RBN store is 100% marginal revenue, and won't negatively impact traditional CD sales at all -- in fact, that $18K in revenue should lead to additional sales, both of the new CD and of back catalog.

Is $3.60 per album low compared to the net of a self-published traditional CD? Absolutely.

But with no upfront costs at all, and offering a *new* channel that does not at all cannibalize traditional sales, $3.60 beats zero all day long.

The response to *that* was:

Thanks! I forwarded your response and [the lead singer] thinks it makes sense. Waiting to hear from the other guys. We'll see where this goes.

Just some ideas on how, once you engage a band that has doubts, those doubts can be overcome.

Jester