That's pretty damn lame. I still don't get how rock band can only charge 160 for a lady gaga song if their prices are fixed as well...

If those clowns over at umg would only realize that they are hurting consumers with their decisions. Why can't they see that some money is better than no money?

Originally Posted by caedeskhan Honestly, would there really be a big protest if they made US market pricing variable? It would be no more than the discontent currently out there...

They try to stick to fixed/low pricing.

Originally Posted by wesdw369 hell if they got some nirvana slipknot pearl jam nine inch nails and other non pop non country music on there i would not care about pricing id buy more than the 10 songs i have

Nirvana is part of UMG.

Originally Posted by mtxbass1 That's pretty damn lame. I still don't get how rock band can only charge 160 for a lady gaga song if their prices are fixed as well... If those clowns over at umg would only realize that they are hurting consumers with their decisions. Why can't they see that some money is better than no money?

Rock Band is a bit different when it comes to licensing music. If games are just licensing just the music itself, there's less obstacles to go through to get it licensed, and its technically cheaper. When you add the music video (which adds to negotiating with the people involved with a song over digital distribution rights), that complicates things quite a bit (and makes it more expensive).

I'll put it this way, EMI (which is mostly European) has a lot of songs on the SingStore because they are the type of company which is just happy to have their music being distributed in many places. UMG KNOWS they are the biggest and has the most popular music (especially in the North America). Because of that, they want control over the digital distribution of their music. If they don't like how the standards are set, they'll threaten to not allow ANY of their popular music to be released digitally.

The only way around it for now is to have a disc release mostly flooded with UMG music (most every SingStar game is that way now). For SingStar Queen, Europe got the music digitally because EMI owned the rights in Europe, but UMG had the rights (well, a sector of them) in NA.

If UMG was willing to stop supporting iTunes (supporting Amazon and other smaller MP3 download places instead), then they would have no issues doing it with SingStar. They just like to bully people around, that's all.

I made post before about the whole UMG situation (them and iTunes):
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/...&postcount=587

This is an article about how WMG and YouTube had issues over music:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10284399-93.html

At one point RB had no WMG music, but I dunno what the situation is now since I stopped following it. WMG group isn't all that huge though (third largest).

I also made this long post a while ago:
http://www.cheapassgamer.com/forums/...&postcount=709

Damn good post TMK. Very interesting indeed.

It's been a while since I have been in here. It seems nothing has changed.

The Singstar+Dance mic box looks like they still aren't giving us wireless mics, which a month or so ago I thought the Singstar US rep hinted they were finally coming. I guess not.

I don't plan to support them anymore. They just crap on the US. No reason to waste money on it, especially given that Rock Band with the keyboard is going more towards the direction where they will get a good amount of normal singstar tracks. So I should get my fix there. Harmonix loves and supports their users/fans unlike Singstar, as they don't care enough to put the new updates in posts on the US Playstation blog, let alone keep a Singstar rep for more than a month or so.

man so many uncut youtube videos crashes my PS3 browser.

am I the only one who is annoyed they changed the song timer from a stopwatch to a clock? With my TV it's annnoying enough that I can barely read the numbers but in the middle of a song now I can't glance and see how close I am to the end. It's an oddly unfriendly design choice. There's literally no reason I can think of that the clock is better than the watch.

Originally Posted by Wolfkin man so many uncut youtube videos crashes my PS3 browser. am I the only one who is annoyed they changed the song timer from a stopwatch to a clock? With my TV it's annnoying enough that I can barely read the numbers but in the middle of a song now I can't glance and see how close I am to the end. It's an oddly unfriendly design choice. There's literally no reason I can think of that the clock is better than the watch.

You know, I have played Singstar probably 200 times and I've never noticed this stopwatch timer you speak of. Is this a setting in the options menu? I played just the other night and didn't see it. Maybe I'm blind. heh.

ugh. lost my post. hate this browser.

anyway go the ps3 browser. when you're loading a page you see a spinning clock face in the upper right. SingStar had this. It could meaure how far into the song you are.

The 5.00 firmware update removed this. instead when you're singing a song you only have 88:88 counter to show how many min:sec you are into the song which isn't useful for seeing how long you have left.

I've been waiting for the Party Pack to hit Amazon and it finally did, but it looks like they also pulled the stand alone software. Kinda weird, but I guess it makes more sense than charging $40 for software only and $40 for the software and mics.

http://www.amazon.com/SingStar-Dance...dp/B003O6C5O6/

Looks like a new patch just came out awhile ago...

Here, per verbatim, TheGamersHub reports that there's a new “My Singstore” page on the Singstore where you can access purchase history and upgrade your songs.
Also, the ‘Play Singstar’ menu has been reorganised and gameplay modes renamed, and finally there's a player setup screen and score screens have been updated.

http://thegamershub.net/2010/10/sing...h-version-5-0/

I thought that was part of some other update. It was like that for me when I played it over the weekend. They changed the scoring system a little bit. Renamed some of them such as tone deaf is now sing starter.

Originally Posted by Thongsy I thought that was part of some other update. It was like that for me when I played it over the weekend. They changed the scoring system a little bit. Renamed some of them such as tone deaf is now sing starter.

Is the hip hop sections any better on registering?

yeah that was all part of the 5.00 update a while back. based on my Tone Loc attempts rap songs still blow chunks. After playing DefJam Rapstar it's really hard to go back to even look at rap songs on SingStar.

Maybe I'll try again and put it up for my Thursday trophy hunting upload.

Advertisement

Register for free to remove this ad

Don't know how long it's been in, but you can hit circle at any time to toggle the video feed and the camera feed.

Still no Move support, not even for navigating menus.
Calibration options now allowed for video calibration and manually turning on or off the gray guide that is just ahead of where your pitch appears.

Originally Posted by M3wThr33 Don't know how long it's been in, but you can hit circle at any time to toggle the video feed and the camera feed. .

Thats awesome, now we can have the best of either world at the touch of a button!!!

Originally Posted by addone Thats awesome, now we can have the best of either world at the touch of a button!!!

Yeah! Either the blurry original video, or the blurry camera video. I can't wait!

Originally Posted by addone Thats awesome, now we can have the best of either world at the touch of a button!!!

I know it wasn't in before E3, because they told me that feature was going in later.

Of course, there was no wireless mic date. But I just manned up and imported them.

Originally Posted by M3wThr33 Don't know how long it's been in, but you can hit circle at any time to toggle the video feed and the camera feed.

totally found that by accident as well

hey what happened to voice control? I still see the 'extra' in my list but I can't figure out how to use voice navigation.

and is there a post about doing a UK account. I think I'm going to man up and create a UK account but I need to know how it works and what all. :extreme lazy:

So like, SingStar Dance is imminent and no new blog postings or media lately? No updates? It'd be nice to at least know which songs are geting dance updates etc ...

Originally Posted by StrandedBrit So like, SingStar Dance is imminent and no new blog postings or media lately? No updates? It'd be nice to at least know which songs are geting dance updates etc ...

Well, there are two reviews out.
http://kotaku.com/5680203/review-singstar-dance
http://www.psu.com/SingStar-Dance-Re...a010011-p0.php

so yet again new firmware it says it's prepping for Dance and Guitar? or something like that but far as I'm concerned the big innovation is the return of voice control. thanks very much Studio London?