‘Rock Band’ Music Store Update Adds New Music After Nearly Two Years

It’s been almost two years since Rock Band developer Harmonix added Don McLean’s American Pie to the Rock Band music store as the final bit of DLC. Since then plastic guitars, drums and keyboards have been gathering dust in a closet or on a wall mount. That is about to end as a surprise press release from Harmonix today shows that as of Tuesday, January 13 new music from the Arctic Monkeys, Avenged Sevenfold and Foo Fighters will hit the Rock Band Music Store.

The official press release at HarmonixMusic.com shows the developer poking a bit of fun at themselves for the 21 month window between releases which ends tomorrow.

After a brief hiatus (cough21 monthscough) we’re releasing brand new Rock Band DLC tomorrow!

Releasing on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, the tracks offered are:

• Arctic Monkeys – “R U Mine?”
• Avenged Sevenfold – “Shepherd Of Fire”
• Foo Fighters – “Something From Nothing”

The Wii version of Rock Band will not be receiving the new DLC.

While the music store never went away, Harmonix released the supposed final DLC on April 2, 2013 after 275 consecutive weeks of new DLC being released with over 4,000 songs total.

Later, the Rock Band Network was later shut down in September of 2014 due to technical issues the team could not overcome mainly due to resources being used on the then upcoming titles such as Fantasia. The service allowed musicians to create their own Rock Band tracks for upload and sale based on their own master track recordings. By the time the sun set on the service, over 2,121 songs had been released eclipsing the the official 2,100 Harmonix authored tracks.

Most had written off Rock Band after the last bit of DLC came out, but whispers of Rock Band getting back together had surfaced from time to time which TheInquisitr has covered previously. Harmonix had not written it off, and in an interview with Forbes the studio’s Nick Chester said.

“We love Rock Band, it’s in the company’s DNA. We own the IP. And when the time’s right we will absolutely come back to it. There’s a whole bunch of factors to take into consideration before jumping in that pool again, but there’s a desire for it, absolutely.”

This may be a litmus test to see how well new DLC can do on a game that sold over 13 million units almost two years after active support on the Music Store ended. Releasing DLC on a game as old as Rock Band is impressive and it shows that Harmonix is dedicated to their fan base and is hopefully working through the nightmares that are sure to be involved with a next-gen release including licensing for consoles that stream to Twitch.

[Image Source | Harmonix]