Hey gang! The new year is a time for fresh starts, and like a phoenix, the Rock Band Companion mobile app has been born anew. Today, we're releasing a complete overhaul of the app as a public beta. Read on to find on what's new, including a refresher for those new to the app!
What is Rock Band Companion?
If you've never used it before, the official RB4 Companion App lets you view and manage lots of Rock Band 4 and Rivals info from your Android or iOS device. Features include:
- Rivals Hub: Keep tabs on how you're doing in the current Challenge! You can see pretty much all of the important Rivals info here, like your current Spotlight scores, XP, and LP, the leaderboards for the current Challenge, your Crew's lifetime stats, other Crews' stats, and more. You can also manage Crews from the app, including sending and processing Crew invites and join requests, sending in-game messages to Crewmates, and managing your Crew roster.
- Activity Feed: Just like the in-game Activity Feed, this lets you see things that have been happening in the RB4 universe.
- My Stats: A rundown of various RB4 stats. Great for taking screenshots to brag about on reddit! You can also check the global stat leaderboards to see how you stack up and compare your stats directly against another player.
- Music Library: This fantastic feature communicates nearly all of the info that the in-game library does, but expanded to the entire 2,500+ song catalog. You can filter to songs you own/don't own, sort and filter the list based on song info like the in-game library, search for specific songs, and see your scores and stats on any given instrument. It's also a great way to find hidden gems in the DLC back catalog!
- Crew Chat: Exclusive to the app, this lets you send messages to your Crew in real time. Perfect for planning who's going to handle what for a given Challenge.
What's new in this version?
- UI overhaul: The look and feel of the entire app has been rebuilt from the ground up to more closely match the game and maximize usability.
- Updated engine: We've moved to the newest version of the platform used to code the app, which should improve speed, stability, and device compatibility.
- LP and Seasons support: Finally! LP metrics, Seasonal Rivals Points, seeing all of your previous Season results in one place, and similar features.
- Other Rivals updates: A lot has changed in Rivals since the last release of the app, including public/private Crews, Crew tags, and streamlining the process of finding a joining a Crew. This release supports all of that.
- Activity Feed switching: Easily toggle between the "Player" feed, which you see on the main menu in-game, and the "Crew" feed from the in-game Rivals Hub.
- Online Quickplay invites: Now you can see in the app when someone invites you to play online, or – much more helpfully – get a push notification about it. Handy if someone invites you while you're not at your console.
- More stats: We've surfaced all of the info we have, including your total/RB4 Brutal scores for each instrument.
- More Music Library options: Including Sort by Crew LP while a challenge is active, a new feature exclusive to the companion app!
- Lots of other small fixes and improvements: Seriously, we rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up.
- Added Android P support
- Added PlayStation™ Network two-factor authentication
- Improved login logic when re-opening the app
- Improved Awesomeness Detection
- Minor text fixes
Why is this a "public beta"?
We wanted to get this update out to you ASAP, especially since the old app no longer works on Android P, so we decided to launch as a public beta. Everything in this release has been tested on many iOS and Android devices, but you may run into some issues on less common devices or in unusual "edge case" situations. (Huge shout-outs to the team of closed beta testers that made this release possible!)
In particular, the following features weren't quite ready for this release:
- Browse Crews: Looking through the entire list of Crews to find the perfect one to join. You can still create your own Crew, accept Crew invites, join one of the recommended open Crews on the "Join a Crew" screen, or join a random open Crew.
- Find Players: The same thing, but for inviting specific players to your Crew.
- Localization: The app itself is only available in English for the time being. We'll be expanding to French, German, Italian, and Spanish in a future release.
There are a few known issues with this release:
- The "Log Out" option in Settings does not correctly log you out of Xbox Live or PlayStation™ Network, preventing account switching within that platform; can be fixed by clearing the app data (Android) or uninstalling and reinstalling (iOS)
- The Music Library can crash in rare circumstances for iOS users with extremely large song libraries
We'll be updating the app in the coming months to add new features, fix bugs, and move toward the official release. If you encounter any bugs, please use the "Report Bug" option in Settings to let us know. You can also report bugs via the web right here. Thanks for being patient as we make the app the best it can be.
What devices are supported?
Any Android device with Android 4.3+, and any modern iOS device with iOS 9+. Older devices or OS versions might work, but may have bugs. Android P (9.0) and the iPhone X family are supported. The app is optimized for phones, but will work just fine on tablets.
When can I get this update?
Right now! If you already have Rock Band Companion installed, you should get an update shortly. (If you don't see it yet, don't worry; it can take a few hours for app updates to go live across all regions and devices.) If you're new to the app, just search for "Rock Band Companion" in the App Store or Play Store.
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Please let us know what you think of the new app, including requests for new features you'd like to see. We can't promise anything, but your feedback helps us decide where to focus our efforts. And, as always, you can request your favorite songs and artists here.
Thanks for being such dedicated fans of Rock Band!
