Well now, this is unexpected: According to Billboard and MusicWeek, at least, the Rock Band Network finally goes live today, for real. And there’s definitely a new update for Rock Band on the 360 — only it doesn’t seem to actually enable RBN in the game.

Still, Billboard and MusicWeek both seem fairly unequivocal in their assertion that RBN is “open for business.” And a variety of Harmonix employees have been posting to Twitter with references to today being a “big day.”

I’ll update when I learn more, deal? Deal.

UPDATE: It’s now live, like really and truly live. [Edit: Well, in the U.S., at least. It's supposed to be live in Canada, but there seem to be some issues with that. And Harmonix says they'll update on availability in Europe shortly.] Fire up Rock Band 2, accept the updates, and head to the Music Store — you’ll find a new option for Rock Band Network under there. Away from your 360? Don’t worry, I’ll have a video for you in just a few.

UPDATE 2: I’ve put a video tour after the break. As of 1:20 Eastern time it just finished uploading, and apparently YouTube takes awhile to fully process the video, so it may look like crap for awhile. Done!

UPDATE 3: That was fast! @RockBandNetwork says RBN is now live in Canada, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Singapore and Sweden, “where RB2 DLC and XNA are both supported.”