Rock Band Song Export for Rock Band 2 to Cost $5

On the official Rock Band forums, developer Harmonix has revealed a few new details about the previously discussed exportation of songs from the original Rock Band into Rock Band 2. An Xbox 360 title update will be made available on Xbox Live today to enable the export feature, but using the feature won't be free. Because Harmonix only licensed these songs for the first game, they had to renew licenses for use in Rock Band 2. Consequently, users will be charged five bucks in order to transfer over their songs from the original game. Furthermore, a few songs will not be transferrable because the licenses could not be extended.

Here's the official language:

"Nominal fee of $4.99 (400 Microsoft points) required for export of Rock Band 1 soundtrack to compensate music licensors for expanded use.The following Rock Band disc tracks will not be available for export into Rock Band 2: * 'Paranoid' as made famous by Black Sabbath, * 'Run to the Hills' as made famous by Iron Maiden, and 'Enter Sandman' by Metallica. In addition, the title update will also be released simultaneously in Europe. Tokio Hotel's 'Through the Monsoon' from the European disc release of Rock Band will not be available for export into the future European release of Rock Band 2. (* Indicates a cover song, all other songs are original master recordings.) Expanded usage rights for these particular tracks were unable to be secured from the music licensors for this feature."

Harmonix also said that the title update patches RB1 so gamers can still download new songs even with RB2 about to hit the market, lowers the threshold on gold stars making it easier/possible to gold star songs (won't affect leaderboards), and fixes a problem where a few songs had unhittable notes. This title update will be made available for the PS3 version at a later date.