From Licensing to Release: The Life of a DLC Pack

[Lowlander2]

I wouldn't say Hall and Oates, because saying one of their other three #1 hits was more preferred than the three we got is silly and nothing but wishful thinking.

nope

So licensing plays no part in which song receives a Pro upgrade. That's...a minor surprise.

Looks like I found me some more ammo if the need arises.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

Looks like I found me some more ammo if the need arises.

???

[bandaddy]

When you expect a certain song and artist for DLC, and it doesn't come to be, you get angry.

When you get angry, you go to the Rock Band forums and rant.

When you go to the Rock Band forums and rant, you get in a posting war with GNF.

When you get in a post war with GNF, you go too far and get banned by Der Lex.

Don't get banned by Der Lex.

[Lowlander2]

When you expect a certain song and artist for DLC, and it doesn't come

Um, what? That is not my modus operandi.

[skyp1e]

When you expect a certain song and artist for DLC, and it doesn't come to be, you get angry.

When you get angry, you go to the Rock Band forums and rant.

When you go to the Rock Band forums and rant, you get in a posting war with GNF.

When you get in a post war with GNF, you go too far and get banned by Der Lex.

Don't get banned by Der Lex.

Dish Network's ripoff of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".

[bandaddy]

Dish Network's ripoff of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".

Actually Directv's ripoff, but at least you "got it".

Not aimed at anyone in particular, lowlander, just a ripoff of the ripoff as pointed out by skyp1e

[Lowlander2]

Ah okay. My bad.

It's just that the latter part did in fact happen to me.

[cwilbur]

There's one question I don't think the blog post answered: Where is the bottleneck?

What I mean is, what step of the process limits/determines the total quantity of DLC that comes out? Is licensing getting masters in the door faster than the authoring staff can chart them, or does the authoring staff spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs while songs are held up in licensing? How have the fuzzy numbers of "several points during the year" and "request list of about 100 songs" been arrived at by the Music Ops team, and would simply raising one or both of them up result in more DLC output (probably presuming also staffing up on both the licensing and authoring teams)?

I started thinking about this when Doc said this over in the 5/15 DLC Discussion Thread:

To each his own is certainly something these forums could do with considerably more of.

I suspect that the reason so many around here respond so vehemently negatively to DLC announcements for music they don't like is that they feel as if some music they like was possibly pushed aside to make way for "teh crap". If authoring is the bottleneck (which I'll say that I doubt) and HMX is sitting on a bunch of licensed artists that they just haven't gotten to yet, then they might have a point. However, if licensing is pulling in songs as fast as they can and authoring is slamming them out as fast as they appear, and no amount of staffing up or increases in requests will change that, then the story is much more "the release is what it is" and there's no real reason to get bent out of shape over a "bad week".

[The-XaiaX]

Given that the authoring could scale to as many people as they have to do it, I would say the bottleneck is "money". In that to maintain a max output of X, you need to have enough people to chart X songs. If at any time you fall below that threshold on the licensing front, those people are twiddling their thumbs, or you're firing them. (And then possibly re-hiring people at a later date when things pick up)

Then there's the audience. With several years of data, they probably have a pretty good idea of the kind of purchasing people do, and how much they can expect to sell in a given cycle. If they were to release infinite songs tomorrow, they wouldn't sell them all.

I might be completely off base here, but it seems to me there would be no specific "bottleneck" so much as there is the somewhat typical just-in-time inventory approach where they try to keep supply roughly equivalent to demand, so as not to over or under produce.

[GNFfhqwhgads]

Interesting



So licensing plays no part in which song receives a Pro upgrade. That's...a minor surprise.

Not necessarily. He also didn't claim stem quality as a reason, but we know it is one.

When you expect a certain song and artist for DLC, and it doesn't come to be, you get angry.

When you get angry, you go to the Rock Band forums and rant.

When you go to the Rock Band forums and rant, you get in a posting war with GNF.

When you get in a post war with GNF, you go too far and get banned by Der Lex.

Don't get banned by Der Lex.

HA. I like this.