Gamers could soon be enjoying the sounds of Adele, The Prodigy, or The XX in their gameplay, thanks to a new partnership between Beggars Group and Reactional Music, a gaming music personalization platform.
Beggars Group owns or partly owns a number of indie labels, including 4AD, Matador Records, Rough Trade, XL Recordings, and Young. Over the years, these labels have released music from the likes of Adele, Big Thief, FKA Twigs, Grimes, Interpol, King Krule, The National, Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, The Pixies, Spoon, The Prodigy and The XX, among others.
By licensing its music to Reactional, Beggars Group is “the latest in a growing network of music rightsholder partners who will gain enhanced access to the global games market,” the two companies said in a statement on Tuesday (September 24).
Sweden-headquartered Reactional Music has developed a patented “engine” that can personalize music for video game play in real time, allowing gamers to enjoy their preferred music while giving music rights holders access to a new source of revenue.
In Reactional’s view, the revenue potential in gaming is enormous, and remains untapped.
The company cites data from MIDiA Research showing that the global games market was worth $223.1 billion in 2023, of which in-game purchases accounted for $125.7 billion. However, music accounted for less than 0.01% of that spending.
“Games are changing from something to beat or finish to somewhere to hang out and spend time. Gamers are big music fans, they want the music and the artists they love to be a part of their entertainment experiences,” Reactional Music President David Knox said.
“Our platform and technology allows music artists to become part of those immersive entertainment experiences, whilst ensuring a new flow of creative partnership, a commercial model that works and an entirely new source of rich data about gamers and music fans.”
“Gamers are big music fans, they want the music and the artists they love to be a part of their entertainment experiences.”
David Knox, Reactional Music
He added that Beggars’ “decision to be a part of Reactional is one of the big landmark moments in our development.”
“Beggars has been proactive in licensing new services and technologies for many years; we have always tried to embrace new technology and new ideas to create new opportunities for our labels, their artists and the incredible music that they make,” said Simon Wheeler, Beggars Group’s Director of Global Commercial Strategy.
“Reactional Music is doing something really interesting in the gaming space. It compliments our existing licensing team’s work and extends our reach with games developers and over 3 billion gamers across the world. We know that gamers are music consumers that over-index in their consumption of music and we’re excited to see what this new partnership will bring.”
However, to make personalized music in gaming a reality, Reactional needs a library of licensed music – the bigger, the better. To that end, the startup has struck deals with rights holders such as Defected Records, Cherry Red Records, Hopeless Records, Hipgnosis Song Management, as well as Sony– and Universal-owned APM, which claims to be North America’s largest aggregator of production music.
Reactional also signed a deal with Tuned Global, which will see the music streaming tech specialist act as the music backend provider for Reactional’s music delivery platform.
“We have always tried to embrace new technology and new ideas to create new opportunities for our labels, their artists and the incredible music that they make.”
Simon Wheeler, Beggars Group
On the gaming side, Reactional has signed deals with gaming services company Keywords Studios and mobile game publisher Amanotes.
In April 2023, Reactional reported it had raised $2.05 million in a pre-Series A funding round, led by Amanotes and early-stage VC firm Butterfly Ventures.
Beggars Group reached a milestone in 2023, with its annual revenue exceeding GBP £100 million (USD $128.33 million) for the first time.
A fair bit of that came from XL Recordings, of which Beggars owns 50%. XL reported £64.12 million ($79.8 million) in revenue for 2023, despite having released just eight new albums during the year.Music Business Worldwide
