"Now that gaming is bigger than ever, it feels like it’s only a matter of time until a video game can turn a decades-old hit into a viral cultural moment" - Dan Runcie points out introducing his latest podcast about the future of music and gaming. His guest Vickie Nauman, specialist in music and technology, believes that there's a big opportunity, and that it's going to be different: "What I love about gaming is that you hear music differently when you’re gaming. There’s so much potential we haven’t tapped into. Sync license is the best way to do things in gaming. You want something specific".

"Music is one of the most valuable forms of self-expression out there" - Trapital's Dan Runcie insists in his latest memo. He also shares his thoughts on what the music industry can learn from gaming and monetize its popularity:

• Do-it-yourself music sampling - make it easier for fans to remix their own versions of songs, separate the stems, upload their versions to the streaming or short-form video platform of their choice, and ensure that the original artists get paid for the underlying work

• A.I. as a service - I can see software like ChatGPT packaged up as a $10.99 monthly subscription service for songwriters and musicians. Users pay a monthly fee to access their royalty-free music for commercial use

• In-app purchases in digital environments - 23% of Gen Z gamers (and 16% of all gamers) wish they could purchase music they hear in a game or be able to add it to a playlist

Fortnite has launched a new soundtrack option called Radio Underground, featuring indie music from all over the world, The Verge reports. The in-game radio station, curated by Bandcamp editors, is available now through March 8, when the game’s Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 1 comes to an end. Fortnite’s creator, Epic Games, purchased Bandcamp in March 2022, and this new initiative marks the first integration between Epic’s flagship game and the indie music marketplace and service.

Warner Music Group has announced Rhythm City - “a first-of-its-kind music-themed social roleplay experience” on kids gaming platform Roblox. The experience lets users choose from a variety of roles including music producer, DJ, dancer, and many more “to explore, dance, and bond with friends while enjoying the world’s hidden gems and competing in mini-music challenges”. It will be available on the Roblox platform on February 4, 2023, across Android, iOS, Mac, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

Game-streaming platform Twitch has been the victim of a leak, with leaked documents appearing to show Twitch's top streamers each made millions of dollars from the Amazon-owned company in the past two years, Eurogamer reports. However, as music and technology analyst Cherie Hu points out, the top gamer on Twitch earns ~10x more per year from direct tips and subs than the top music artist on the platform. xQcOW made $752,467 in September 2021, whereas the top paid musician Kenny Beats has made $677,00 in the two-year period from Aug 2019 to Oct 2021.

The music and technology specialist Cherie Hu discusses the very essence of gaming as a music medium: "Travis Scott’s Fortnite show and Lil Nas X’s recent Roblox show paint a picture of a world where music shifts from a static, finished product to a dynamic, immersive audiovisual system. But these in-game shows were 100% premeditated, with fans not being able to interact with the artist, or influence the content or outcome of the performance itself, aside from walking or flying around the ‘set’. This is more equivalent to an immersive movie than to an interactive game. What if you made use of gaming technology to make the experience around a given piece of music more dynamic and responsive to the ways individual players were behaving?". The essential idea.