Just how large is the music industry? Well, it is huge – which is why you see music starts tend to live it up much more than actors and actresses. Rock Band, once touted to be a “clone” of Guitar Hero has hit the big time as MTV Games, has just announced that that the Rock Band franchise has officially surpassed $1 billion dollars in North American retail sales alone within a period of 15 months as per figures released by the NPD Group. Not only that, more than 40 million paid individual songs have already been sold through downloads via the Rock Band platform, further cementing its position as the top dog where paid song sales are concerned, offering gamers more than 600 downloadable songs to date.

Originally launched on November 20, 2007, Rock Band is the multi-million unit selling, genre-defining music game platform that allowed music fans and gamers to interact with and discover music like never before by choosing guitar, drums, vocals, or bass to start a band and rock the world. Developed by Harmonix, the world’s premier music video game development company, and published by MTV Games, the Rock Band platform has had a positive impact on the overall promotion and sales of music, benefiting artists included in the game both directly through royalties associated with game sales and indirectly by causing the sale of more songs and albums.

It would be interesting to see where Rock Band goes from here – there is no need to push the graphics envelope with this genre, as it is the user experience that counts when belting out your favorite band’s hits with friends. What do you think the future of Rock Band will be like?

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