Music license expiration means loss of song required for Rock Band 3 Achievement

Harmonix's next quarterly instance of Rock Band music license expiration will make it impossible for players to obtain one Rock Band 3 Achievement as of June 30, the studio announced recently.

In April, Harmonix said that as music licensing agreements begin to expire, the studio won't be able to renew all of them, which will force the company to remove some songs from the Rock Band Music Store. At the time, only one three-pack of Metallica songs was affected. Harmonix's next update is scheduled for June 30, at which time the Rock Band music library will lose the following seven tracks:

• Crooked X - "Rock 'n' Roll Dream"
• Die Toten Hosen - "Hier Kommt Alex"
• Les Wampas - "Manu Chao"
• The Material - "Moving to Seattle"
• Them Terribles - "Bullets & Guns"
• Tokio Hotel - "Monsoon"
• Vesuvius - "Promised Land"

"Promised Land" by Vesuvius is a free song that Harmonix released June 1, 2008. One of Rock Band 3's Xbox Live Achievements, "Live Free or Die," offers 25 Gamerscore for playing the four free songs Harmonix released for Rock Band and Rock Band 2 — a list that includes "Promised Land." (The Achievement is exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band 3.)

That means that Rock Band 3 players who want to unlock the "Live Free or Die" Achievement must "buy" the free song to attach it to their Xbox Live accounts by June 30, because it will be unavailable in the Rock Band Music Store after that date.

The removal of songs due to licensing expiration does not affect users who have already purchased or downloaded the tracks in question; those songs can always be re-downloaded in the future on the same Xbox Live or PlayStation Network account. The other three tracks required for the Achievement — "Still Alive" by GLaDOS and Jonathan Coulton, "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen and the Colberts and "Headphones On" by Miranda Cosgrove — are still available free in the Rock Band Music Store.

The other six tracks being dropped June 30 are currently on sale for $1, half their usual price.