Another week has started.  With it comes another week of shitty Rock Band DLC.  Seriously guys!  Presidents of the United States?  Srsly!  Look, I admit I listened to "Dune Buggy" a few times when I was in the 8th grade, but come on!  What else do we get?  More Fall Out Boy.  This time it's their new single off of their future album.  Still no "Dance, Dance" or "Sugar We're Goin' Down," which are their two most popular songs, granted they are also their first.  Why does all of this feel backwards?

At one point I thought maybe it was just me.  Maybe being 25 and growing up listening to more alternative rock than metal makes alot of the Rock Band DLC seem like garbage. But that's not true.  Sites like http://www.rbdlc.com/ show that only thirteen of the songs Harmonix has released since their DLC service has started have recieved the "5 Gold Album" rating.  Other Rock Band fan sites also knock Harmonix's poor choice of DLC.  I just think they are going about it the wrong way.  Who really expected Rush and The Pixies to get full album releases before bands like Incubus and STP?  Harmonix should be making a killing week after week.  Every song should be a hit.

People seem to be making the best of it, yes, but that doesnt mean they wouldn't be any more or less excited about something from the 90's and 00's.  Harmonix's core consumers for their video game market range from 15 - 35 year olds.  The majority of the music they are releasing seems to target the higher end of that range, mostly the 30+ crowd.  What songs they do release for the younger audiences seem to be bottom of the barrel hits from big-named bands, which pisses me off even more.  I can't tell you how many times I would go through the my Rock Band 1, 2, and DLC tracks and see songs from artists I love and say "Man they should have picked insert song name here over this one."

So what's my suggestion?  Communicate!

Rockband.com recently went through a major overhaul and has emerged as a very pleasent and useful website.  The community that exists on their forums numbers in the tens of thousands.  How hard would it be to allow the community to vote and suggest songs?  Their forum even has an entire section dedicated to just that. That same section is also riddled with tons of complaints on why it even exists due to the fact that Harmonix never listens to them or takes their suggestions.

Use that massive community to your advantage!  Just ask them!  Let's do an example.

Make a list of five bands to vote on

See who wins

See what song they wantWhichever song wins, release it as DLC the following week!  Rinse and repeat with infinity number of artists and songs.  There you go Harmonix, I just made your DLC business model ten times better.