Rock Band disc export goes live, costs $5 for 55 tracks

by Alexander Sliwinski on Sep 4th 2008 2:00PM

Harmonix just officially announced that the update allowing Rock Band songs to be transferred to Rock Band 2 has gone live. Once Rock Band 2 is released, drummers, vocalists, and plastic guitar players will be able to transfer 55 songs from the original game to the sequel for $5 (400 MS points).

55 songs? That sounds like it's missing a few tracks. The press release details -- in tiny print at the bottom -- that the missing songs are: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath (cover), "Run to the Hills" by Iron Maiden (cover) and "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel (a DLC song from the European disc). Sorry folks, but we can probably take a guess as to why Harmonix couldn't re-license some of those tracks.

Tags: BreakingNews, export, Harmonix, MTV-Games, PS3, rock-band, rock-band-2, transfer, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (87)

That's going to be really cool. I'm very excited for rock band 2.

Me too! To update this article, the patch allows you to export your songs right now, and they occupy 1.52 GB of space, but you can delete individual songs from your hard drive (at least on 360). I'm going to delete most of the bonus songs I never play.

Thanks JJ Rooster, the two questions I wanted answered, right up front. Say goodbye to crappy Tom Sawyer cover. YAAAAA!

Damn, I mean I can already see the fanboys pissing themselves at the thought of having to pay the $5 for the tracks again, but really I think that it's a pretty smoking deal.

But that's probably because I never bought the first game, and this way I can pick up pretty much both games for an extra five bucks...sweet!

You rental rapist!

Not true. I love Rock Band, and I'm very very happy that I'll be able to copy the RB1 songs to RB2. That's an unprecedented feature. Too bad it's missing a few songs, but those 3 songs mentioned in the article won't be missed by me anyways.

i think you have to have the original disc on order to do this

Manuel, he is hinting that he could rent/borrow the game and then import the tracks.

Enter Sandman is one of my favorites, but I am completely happy with 55 RB1 songs for $5. I'll just have to fire up RB1 to get my evil on, but the other two I'm OK missing.

Considering you can probably sell RB1 back for $20 or so when you're done....you're really not paying anything.

That's actually not that bad of news if the speculation is true. If the reason for Run To The Hills not being transferrable is that Iron Maiden was licensed by GH4, then that means they have plans to do at least 1 or 2 new Maiden songs.

Yeah, Iron Maiden better be on GH:WT. I would love to play:
Fear Of The Dark
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Paschendale
Aces High
Wasted Years
Flash Of The Blade
Be Quick Or Be Dead
Wicker Man
Brave New World
Running Free
Holy Smoke...

Hell, every Iron Maiden song... except for Virtual XI and The X Factor.

I will kill myself if Iron Maiden is exclusive to GHIV, seriously I don't think I could take that.

It's five buck. People spend more then that on lunch. I hope no one bitches.

the thing is, people would bitch most likely on the basis that they already paid for a game and it's sitting there in their shelves. it's nothing new, simply only a transfer of songs (whereas games like wow charge per monthly basis but include more content via updates and keep the game up and running network wise).

So what about all the stuff I bought? Is that just gonna work or do i get to gift them 5 more bucks out of the goodness of my heart? I'm sure they are, you know, barely making any money on this stuff, hence the 5 buck screwgie.

all your other DLC will transfer over.

If a million people download the update to do this, they rake in $5,000,000. And I'm betting it didn't cost them that much to set aside one of their programmers for a week to make it work.

That has been announced for a long time that your DLC will work with Rock Band 2

It's probably something they need to pay the artists (oops i meant recording studios) to use their songs in another game. The license they got probably only lasted for the first game, with some small agreement to use the songs in the sequel based on a small price. Blame the greedy record industry.

Haggard: They had to relicense all the songs in order to transfer them over to RB2. That costs money.

Haggard: the additional income is likely going to the artists/writers and publishing holders of the songs. In fact, I can't really see $5 million dollars covering all of the agreements they must have for all the 55 songs. I would venture as far as to say Harmonix/MTV are losing money on this "$5 transfer scheme" in the short run, and this is more a play to get people to notice the value of Rock Band, as they will soon be going head-to-head with Guitar Hero: Rock Band Edition.

Check your math. If threeve million people got the game, they'd rake in $TEXAS. Duh.

*queues rock band on gamefly*

man sucks that we don't get enter sandman on the transfer... that is an awesome song.

It's awesome unless you're the poor sod who has to sing it. Man, that song's got terrible lyrics.

@Dirk: Agreed. I'm one of those people always stuck with singing it for no apparent reason.

Eh, doesn't look like we'll miss much.. a couple of covers and a meh song by metallica (don't know anything about tokio hotel). Besides, if you have Rock Band already you can still play the original game. But 5$ for 55 songs? Not a bad deal.

If you think Enter Sandman, Paranoid and Run to the Hills are "meh" songs you need to stop listening to fall out boy.

Oh and yeah, paying an extra 5$ is a good deal if you rent the first game, but if you own it then your a sucker for thinking it is.
Woo! Only an extra 5$ to play songs i've already paid for.

Enter Sandman is a meh song??

So I assume when Dragonforce comes on, you invite your grandparents in and have a sing along? Maybe your definition of a hardcore rock song is Fallout Boy? Or Yani?

Further proving my point, two others posted Fallout boy at the same time that I did. Also I wanted to comment on the right post.

And compared to Load and Reload and ReSuck, The Black Album was awesome.

I wasn't aware that it was humanly possible to hate Enter Sandman.

I'll just let you know that flame shields are 300 space bucks ($2.40) on the Marketplace and leave it at that.

All I wanted from the original was Long Time

I think you replied to the wrong comment..

I think covers aren't really worth it, I'd prefer the original songs. If they were the original songs, yeah, I'd be a bit upset but its not like I couldn't pop in the original game and play it. Enter Sandman is a meh song compared to Metallica's older stuff to me. I don't listen to fall out boy, lol, I have more self respect than that :)

"Oh and yeah, paying an extra 5$ is a good deal if you rent the first game, but if you own it then your a sucker for thinking it is.
Woo! Only an extra 5$ to play songs i've already paid for." The_Pop

I agree with the assessment of the songs, those are good, even the covers, but you're missing the point about the $5 - You're paying for the convenience of being able to play all the RB songs in RB2, with all the new niceties of RB2 (like online World Tour, no fail-out, etc) without going over to your shelf and putting in RB to play them.

These games are based upon licensing music from bands and owners of the rights, and I think this is a remarkably good deal and some clever negotiating from Harmonix/MTV to successfully carry over the licenses to RB2, given that everyone involved knows the risk of a percentage of people just borrowing/renting the RB disk and ripping all 55 songs. In addition, it's optional, so you do have the choice to spend the $5 or not.

What ill trooper said: its not free for Harmonix.

Pudge: Enter Sandman IS a meh song. Just because I think one song is meh doesn't mean I don't listen to them. I just prefer the older albums. Ride the Lightning is probably my favourite one, For Whom the Bell Tolls!

I don't listen to dragonforce or fall out boy.. I don't proclaim that my music is hardcore either. I listen to quite a wide variety of stuff, and most of the artists I listen to, I prefer their older stuff 99% of the time.

A few artists I like: Tool, NIN, Aphex Twin, I Mother Earth, Metallica, The Tea Party, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, ... about 11k songs (a lot of them are doubles, different formats).

Wait, so the Aerosmith song is going to transfer?

It's not an Aerosmith song, they covered it.

That's the biggest surprise. I figured that was the textbook example of why they can't have everything, since Aerosmith is Guitar Hero exclusive. It's weird that they still have the rights to this song.

Maybe GH only has exclusivity of the masters, so the cover is cool? I don't know. All this crap is too confusing.

That doesn't make sense to me either. Metalica and Black Sabbath have deals with Guitar Hero, but Aerosmith already has a whole game dedicated to them and no one minds that "Train Kept A Rollin" is still on RB?

I thought it was a master track?

Yeah JSN is right, Aerosmith covered the song themselves, it's an old blues standard from the 1940's - this is where the legality of the phrase 'As made famous by...' comes into play, and the fact that Aerosmith isn't technically involved in writing or recording the version we hear in Rock Band. But it sure sounds like the version that Aerosmith did, doesn't it? I wonder if it'll still be able to say 'Aerosmith' at all if you select that song... Likely not.

C'mon people, READ. Train Kept a rollin is NOT an Aerosmith song. They simply covered it and have the most popular version of it. They have no control over licensing of the song.

I thought that one of the songs would be "Train kept a rollin" by Aerosmith, since Guitar Hero bought out Aerosmith exclusively. How did they relicense TKAR?

aww, I was too late on it.

metallica's war on good music takes another hit

Why Maiden!?!?! WWWHHYYYYYY!!!!!?????!!!111!!

I don't care if you guys think you're having fun. Stop buying Rock Band and Guitar Hero games.

http://xkcd.com/359/

I saw this great comic once that I can only discribe since I can no longer find it...

3 people playing rock band and one man behind them yelling

"You know your not really musicians right, Your not really in a rock band. Hello? Can't you guys hear me? Stop having fun!!!"

Tools! STOP BUYING THE SAME GAME OVER AND OVER!

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Rock Band disc export goes live, costs $5 for 55 tracks

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