Technical

There must be a technical reason you can’t play a song online in Rock Band unless everyone in the band owns the song. I know the netplay stuff in Rock Band is pretty much smoke and mirrors as-is, and the load time for a song not already on a player’s hard drive would be pretty atrocious, but these don’t strike me as problems that can’t be gotten around. There’s got to be something deeper than that.

There just doesn’t seem to be any other downside to the feature. Sure, it would allow players access to songs they haven’t paid for — but only when playing online with someone who has paid. It’d expose players to DLC they otherwise wouldn’t think of purchasing, and not having most of your playlist blacked out when you get a band together would encourage more online play. As it is, getting a four-person band connected essentially limits you to disc songs, which everyone has already played to death. Getting a taste of music outside your comfort zone should be one of the perks to playling online.

And, of course, people who play something off their buddy’s list and like it are more likely to go and purchase the song for themselves. To put this in a bit of perspective, there are about twenty songs I’ve played off of Friend A’s hard drive I decided I had to have, but the inability to play anything off Friend B’s hard drive (because he lives a thousand miles away) means I have to take his recommendations blindly. That’s burned me a few times. (Funk 49? Really?)

I know in my heart it was probably the decision of some cold capitalist board member somewhere who just couldn’t cope with the idea of friends temporarily sharing music. I hope, though, that it was done the way it was because of the technical infeasability of it.