Music and/or Gaming
So you play video games and/or like music? I’m going to be talking at people via this substack about where these two worlds meet.
I’m arm-wrestling impostor syndrome here so let me debunk some basic unsolicited queries:
Music Credentials?
Well, I’ve worked in music for my entire working career, over a decade. Specifically for record labels both major and indie. I’ve read far too many agreements, and been part of not-enough stories.
I was fortunate enough to have worked on a Mercury Nominated campaign for an indie label, have the opportunity to understand and re-developed a major label licensing process, and have been part of an Ivor Novello for Innovation winning campaign for another indie. I’m grateful but aware that there is much more to be done.
I’ve focused my time in music rights as I think that’s the foundation of the industry. Particularly around commercial uses of music and having a deeper understanding of the mechanics of rights and how you can measure creative applications of business to make cool stuff happen… And how cool stuff happening creates measurements that businesses can use to be one step ahead/behind.
Gaming Credentials?
…In a working capacity? Absolutely zero. Apart from some licensing parallels and how they work into my day to day, but mainly I’m a huge gaming fan. I’ve been a fan since my old man would let me play Doom on our windows 95 PC (where he did the movement and I could only press the shoot button) and later I would stay up playing Turok and then Halo with my mum (Which we completed on Legendary by the way). I was playing AAA and indie games in the golden era of music licensing where it seemed much cheaper and available, where soundtracks from games like Need for Speed Underground 2, Tony Hawk’s series, SSX on Tour were huge. Still to this day you can see the effect of these on streaming numbers - a format that didn’t even exist at the time.
Since then, so much has happened with both video games and music.
Music has overcome piracy through digital ergonomics and is finding new creative ways to share culture and community, while online gaming has grown from strength to strength with ranking becoming as much of a social commodity as instagram, and community being shared through shared digital spaces. They both have had similarities - It is easier than ever for people to make music and for people to make games. With that ease, it becomes harder than ever to cut through the saturation. Artists and Games have their own communities, markets and strategies but there is a world that bridges these two industries that is often only ever understood from one side - making good conversations ‘lucky’ rather than ‘empowering’, or ‘collaborative’.
And before you say it “oooh it’s sync placements* - it’s just a sync placement honestly”
*(For context, a ‘sync’ is putting music with video. In this case, licensed music in a video game)
It’s not just a sync placement. It’s not just a Fifa playlist. It was true music discovery in the middle of global digital piracy squeezing the whole music industry. It was choosing your go to track for the hard levels and going over the finish line at the perfect moment in the track. It was saving your nitro for the breakdown. We could narrate that in gaming and we never forgot it. THAT is where the value is. It’s not just a sync, it wasn’t a soundtrack, it was our soundtrack - how we wanted it.
So yeah, ‘Music and/or Gaming’ is an apt title to my first ever Substack post. Context will forever be the soundtrack of our digital adventure.
You know what you are getting yourself into now:
Music news and my predictions to what’s to come.
Cool gaming soundtracks.
Great gaming needledrops.
Maybe some foundational economic forecasting if you’re lucky.
A lot of my opinion.
…But I’ll also take your opinion on stuff because for me there is so much to uncover in this space. With both industry titanics are turning at their own pace, there are gems occurring all the time. So if you have any thoughts, interesting articles, interesting games you want me to play, music campaign & rights related queries (within reason obviously as I don’t want to infringe my employment contract but I can *hint*). Just send me anything, I want to make friends and find communities here.
So this is the first step in the journey to figure this all out.
To do my best to help build the bridge between music and gaming; and to one day be able to be a music supervisor for a video game. Just sayin’.
Thanks for reading. I’m doing this for free so do subscribe. Also, get in touch if you want to chat - there’s more than enough to discuss.