The other day I asked for a response from Activision regarding all the "Rock Band Network" news that has been coming out lately. The response I got back from Brian Bright, Project Director for "Guitar Hero 5," seemed more like a laundry list of features for "GH Studio" than an actual response to Harmonix's product.
Apparently the Activision rep that sent it over was actually missing a paragraph from Brian's statement, in which he discusses "Rock Band Network" directly:
"As far as we can tell the 'RBN' is not included in a 'RB' product and is not a creative tool set. It appears to be a pathway for independent artists to potentially get their music uploaded to the online store, where it can be sold for a fee. It seems to require expensive software and complicated tools to track music that has already been created through traditional means. Also it appears that the 'RBN' requires the multitrack masters, that is it requires at least 7 or 8 tracks of audio for instrument separation. This raises the barrier to entry considerably."
I reached out to the team at Harmonix for comment, and a rep provided this statement:
"'Rock Band Network' is a professional tool set for musicians, record labels and artists / bands to create and sell playable 'Rock Band' music game content from their own master recordings (including vocals) by utilizing the same tools used by the developers at Harmonix. For more info on 'Rock Band Network,' please go to http://creators.rockband.com/."
Worth noting that Harmonix has discussed "GH Studio" in the past, saying that it's "fundamentally different" from "Rock Band Network."