How to get anyone to listen to Kasabian
Video games are becoming excellent music scouts by discovering and promoting new music to wider audiences that wouldn't have listened to them ordinarily.
I get reminded too often about how people discovered music through video games. Once again, another video of a discussion came across my TikTok feed and I couldn’t help but share it.
This article uses FIFA to prove a theory I have about all games. Keep that in mind on this one!
Fifa - summarised
Can I see the video please?
Gaming is a vessel
Where’s the indie music gone?
1. FIFA - summarised
I’d like to think we’re all aware of FIFA…so I’m going to hyper-summarise FIFA with a few facts:
FIFA is an annually-released game where you play football.
Electronic Arts makes $1.6 billion from the FIFA series annually.
Twitch users have spent 373.78 million hours watching the last three FIFA games on Twitch.
FIFA is known for having licensed soundtracks that have proven to be influencial over the years. This article goes further into the impact on popular culture, drawing attention to tracks like Blur’s “Song 2” (FIFA ‘98) and MGMT’s “Kids” (FIFA ‘09) receiving disproportionate acclaim after inclusion. This has been proven time and time again, to the point where lists of ‘best FIFA songs’ exist. Even Vice told us that Fifa changed our music taste - with ‘changed’ being the key word.
Moving away from publications and towards forums, I’ve found so many reddit posts talking about the impact of FIFA driving their musical taste and exposure. Here’s one of many, and a snippet of what they said. Yes, I know this is purely anecdotal, but each individual experience is proof of its effect.
So when I saw that video on my TikTok I was like “Yeah that proves the same points I’ve been making but in a new way”
2. Can I see the video please?
Yeah for sure here it is:
This is from the AOTpodcast. With 160k subscribers, they mainly talk about football, British culture and entertainment. In this snippet, they say a few statements about how they miss the soundtrack selections for older FIFA games, such as “I wanna hear some random indie band from Scunthorpe”, or “Some of my favourite songs ever have come from FIFA”.
But most importantly this statement: “What am *I* doing listening to Kasabian…and Blur?!”
3. Gaming is a vessel.
What he pointed out was that he wouldn’t have ordinarily listened to Kasabian if it wasn’t for FIFA. Well that’s exactly the point really - gaming is a vessel.
I’ve only recently written about this concept, but in a slightly different way. In my previous post titled ‘The Unseen Legacy Of Y2K Music’, I pointed out that as games get revisited in later years, their musical influence gets revisited too. I also pointed out that some music only gets delivered through these products as they wouldn’t have ordinarily gone to people through traditional media.
This video proves transcendence of genre rather than time. The guy said that traditional media doesn’t service this genre of music to him. He also proves that without the context of FIFA, he wouldn’t listen to that genre of music.
Do gaming contexts break genre/demographic limitation? It seems they could.
These guys pointed out that earlier FIFA games (likey mid-00’s to 10’s) had largely been indie music focused, and their taste had been learned at this point. There is a paper on ‘music taste paralysis’, detailing how music we listen to between the ages of 13-16 is formative for our music tastes. Given that FIFA’s target demographic is also 12-15, I’d say that FIFA is a long-term tastemaker. Why is there a resentment towards the latest selections of music genres, even if its broader?
Where’s the indie music gone?
This video also suggested that indie music isn’t so present in later games, and a broader range of music is making a larger part of the soundtracks in the latest FIFA games. However, in this article talking to Steve Schnur, President of Music at EA sports, the mantra is:
“If it’s on the radio, it’s too late. Our job is to find, secure, and deliver the best new songs, hottest new artists, and most exciting new music trends that will move the needle for the year to come “
So…where has the indie music gone? I suppose there’s many reasons, but here’s a few, such as the broadening of ‘Indie Rock’ as a genre, The recent global pandemic pushing back traditional indie band developments by putting pressure on venues, and the changing views of masculinity, reflected in FIFA.
But regardless, this still draws me back to my point - gaming is a vessel. Not just across time, but across genre. This means that FIFA, and any game of any audience are providing an axis that breaks all traditional metrics, making licensing music in gaming one of the most powerful reaching platforms as it is restricted only by its player base.
So what does this mean?:
Music and gaming conversations can less restricted.
It’s a trusted artist development strategy.
There are many games this applies to. Why limit to the biggest games like FIFA, GTA, Roblox and Fortnite when there are so many communities and games out there? Providing your music adds value to the gaming experience, you can find new audiences that will love music for the moment it creates, rather than its chart position.
TLDR
FIFA is a popular football game. It’s soundtracks are influencial, even to audiences traditional media/marketing campaigns wouldn’t reach. This proves that this game, and therefore any game, is an exceptional awareness tool for artists.
Further thoughts
I’d be interested to know if the podcast hosts had ever actively listened to the music or engaged with the artists outside of their affiliation with FIFA.
I’d also be interested to know more about the game - side curation of tracks and how the final selection has been made, and how this differed from the selections a few years ago. With the surge of Fortnite bringing gaming into popular culture (Drake & Travis Scott on Fortnite) has this suddenly heightened gaming as an avenue for pitching? And if so, should the chart ever reflect track selections at the time if the ‘biggest tracks’ (not an indie band from Scunthorpe) on what should actually be a discovery platform?