Rock Band Network, as you may recall, is Harmonix’ attempt to make their Rock Band 2 song authoring tools public to get more bands and songs in the game marketplace. This is clearly a good, nay, a great thing.

The RBN is now in active beta, and you can still sign up for that beta. If you don’t have a band, or that kind of time, there’s a nice overview of the process at wired: How to Create a Song in Rock Band Network.

Following peer review, your song, in theory, is ready for sale. The patch to Rock Band 2 will include a separate store for Rock Band Network, which will allow anyone to search for tracks by various categories, such as genres, sub-genres, difficulty, authors and ratings (1-5 lighters). There are new ways to discover music, Nordhaus said, like a list of the most recent songs uploaded, the top picks by Harmonix staffers and “random” to take you to a randomly selected track.

Songs can be at one of three prices — 80, 160 or 240 Microsoft points ($1, $2, $3). Thirty percent of the profits go to the song creator, while the rest is divided between Microsoft and MTV Games/Harmonix. XNA delivers checks to users on a quarterly basis.

There are also free demo versions of every song, in which you can try any instrument in the song, and play local multiplayer. Songs can last from 30 seconds up to 20 minutes, and the demos will feature one minute or 35 percent of the song length, whichever is less. Any songs you download will be featured in a new Rock Band Network song list, with demo versions clearly indicated. And after you’ve played a demo, you’re prompted to either buy it or delete it.

“That way we can help keep people’s hard drives as free as possible; we’ve already been taking enough space,” Epps added.

If you’d like a video guided tour of the tools, the always-excellent RockBandAide gathered a set of three Harmonix videos that show the whole process in detail.

It’s also illuminating to see some of the real world indie bands that have started this process of getting their songs in Rock Band, and are also documenting it, like the Bon Savants.

Fair warning: this involves reading documentation!

Do keep following the Bon Savants as they get further into their Rock Band song mapping process. It’s exciting to see real bands have the ability to get their songs in the game, even if they aren’t, say, The Beatles.

The Rock Band Network is tentatively scheduled for go-live in November. I can’t wait!