Reporting from the Casual Connect conference in Hamburg, Germany, VentureBeat brings word of a new music game in the works from MMO publisher Acclaim. You're probably thinking, "Great, another music game." What could make Rockfree special, however, is its business model, which could potentially upset the balance between music studios and games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

While companies like MTV and Activision Blizzard pay the music industry a flat fee per song (Activision reportedly pays $20,000), the music industry feels it could be profiting more from these music games. Acclaim's Rockfree, a browser-based massively multiplayer title, could allow that to happen.

Acclaim CEO Howard Marks said the game will launch in a few weeks and will be free to play. Players will be given three slots to put songs in, and if they desire more songs, they can add slots by paying $0.99 per month. Marks believes the average revenue per user for people that choose to pay will be $14 a month. The real interesting part is that Acclaim is not paying music licensing fees. What Acclaim is paying is 20 percent of the revenues from a micro-transaction to the song's master holder and the publisher (split evenly).

It's an interesting business model, to be sure, and music studios like Warner Music are already tagged in a database for the game. You may recall that it was Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman who complained about the royalties structure of music games like Guitar Hero. Activision boss Bobby Kotick then fired back. We're very curious to see how the music industry reacts to Rockfree's model once it launches.