N’Gai Croal, who first pointed out that Aerosmith was going to be a Guitar Hero exclusive for awhile is at it again, getting a colleague to chase down whether The Cars debut album, the second full-length album released on Rock Band, will be a Rock Band exclusive. Turns out it will be, at least for awhile, according to Rhino Records.
The deal we made for The Cars is a full album game download and Rock Band is the only game title out there putting full albums up as downloadable content. Having said this, we would not licence the full album out for a similar use; however, we can and will (when opportunity presents itself) licence single tracks from this album for other games. Nonetheless, moving forward we will be licensing more full albums from the Warner Music Group Cataloguefor game download to Harmonix for Rock Band.
Croal notes that doesn’t prevent singles from showing up elsewhere, but it does point to a growing battle of the bands that is sure to eventually lead to some major coups as things heat up.
Today, Harmonix has officially announced the first album that will hit the Rock Band store: Judas Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance. Arriving April 22/24 on Xbox 360/PS3, this10-track album will cost $US 14.99 with individual tracks being offered for $US 1.99 apiece. Then in May, The Cars’ self-titled record will become the second full-album release from Rock Band. The Pixies’ Doolittle will follow in June.
While this is precisely the news that all Rock Band fans have been waiting to hear, it raises a ton of new questions. Is $US 14.99 the new standard album price? And how often can we expect new albums? Luckily, we had the chance to discuss the announcement with Harmonix’s CEO Alex Rigopulos, who was more than happy to answer all of our fanboy questions. We posted an abridged, cleaned (sans-Mark’s-question-stuttering-and-boring-parts) Q&A after the jump.
