Music Ally

Every morning, Music Ally subscribers are sent our daily email bulletin, offering a snapshot of news, analysts and rumours from the last 24 hours. We’re sharing today’s for free on this blog, to give an idea of what subscribers get in their inboxes by 9.30am GMT. If you’re interested in subscribing, you can sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Read on for today’s Bulletin, and do pass this link on to any colleagues or contacts who  you think would be interested too.

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The Beatles: Rock Band has now sold more than one million copies, according to the game’s publisher MTV Games.

However, that rosy figure is somewhat undermined by the fact that the company laid off 39 staff at the game’s developer Harmonix yesterday – 13% of its workforce. “This was a process and business decision unrelated to the performance of any MTV Games / Harmonix product,” says a spokesperson.

“The reason for the restructuring is due to better aligning our staffing to best suit our product development plans and schedules moving forward.” They also stress that no future games have been canned as a result of the layoffs. Which is good news for all the rock bands lobbying to get their own Rock Bands. If that makes sense.

Yesterday saw the release of The Beatles back catalogue as remastered CDs, not to mention the launch of console game The Beatles: Rock Band. Having grabbed a copy of the latter, we have to say we’re hugely impressed with the care and attention to detail that have gone into it. One question though: do The Kids really care?

Much of the talk leading up to the game’s release has claimed that yes, they’ll care a lot. In fact, the game has been pitched as the vehicle to bring The Beatles’ music to a whole new generation – i.e. youngsters. And while we wouldn’t be surprised to find out that’s how MTV and Harmonix sold the idea to the surviving Beatles (not to mention Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison), it’s actually a hard theory to swallow.

It would be more accurate, surely, to suggest that The Beatles: Rock Band will appeal mainly to a.) existing Rock Band owners of a certain age, and b.) big Beatles fans who don’t have Rock Band but will buy this version. That points to a thirty and fourtysomething demographic – the same people, in fact, who’ll have been lining up to buy the remastered CDs yesterday.

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We’ve covered Rock Band Network before: due to launch in November, it will let any artist or label create downloadable tracks for MTV’s Rock Band games – as long as they can find a developer trained to use the system.

More details have emerged now: tracks will cost between $1 and $3 with artists setting the price, but free one-minute demos will also be made available, inviting players to try before they buy. Interesting, given that you can’t get demos of existing tracks in the Rock Band store.

Meanwhile, the game’s developer Harmonix will increase the number of genres available on the store, allowing artists to categorise their tunes as speed metal or rockabilly, among other new additions. It’s a fairly big deal, this network – right now Rock Band is a closed store, with Harmonix only able to create a handful of new downloads every week.

Opening it up will vastly increase the number of tracks available, and help artists to make use of this new distribution channel for their music.

Harmonix has confirmed that its Beatles-themed music game will be released on 9 September this year, and will be called The Beatles: Rock Band. An official site has gone live today inviting gamers to sign up for alerts when pre-ordering begins.

It’s a big deal – the game will launch simultaneously in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and other countries, and will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii.

The game will include support for guitar, bass, mic and drums, but will also offer “a limited number of new hardware offerings modeled after instruments used by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr throughout their career”.

Sitar! It has to be a sitar…

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