The Fallout Effect [Game Music Digest Apr 24]
Charting monthly listener growth for music licensed in the Fallout TV series
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How artists like The Ink Spots gained 300k new listeners after featuring in Amazon’s Fallout TV series
Now that I’ve finished watching it, I can confidently say that Amazon’s Fallout TV series is one of the best video game adaptations ever made. The positive reception to the show, alongside HBO’s The Last of Us and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog films, proves film and TV adaptations of games can actually be decent when you give the source material the respect it deserves.
As George Osborne writes in his latest Video Game Industry Memo on the recent success stories of video games turned film/TV.
“Rather than disregarding the game IP, production teams have become much better at leaning into its strengths. This has allowed them to both draw upon a well of great material and exercise better judgement about when to change the formula - resulting in appropriate storytelling for the medium.”
In the case of Fallout, the show retains the quirky sense of humor, surrealism, and cartoon-like graphical violence you’d expect from the games while throwing in plenty of nods to characters and locations (hello Dogmeat, Death Claws, and Shady Sands!). There’s so much attention to detail in the show that former lead artist on the Fallout games, Nathan Purkeypile, spotted random signs from posters he’d designed alongside other Easter Eggs for Fallout die-hards.
This same attention to detail has been paid to the music in the series. For some quick background, Fallout is a post-apocalyptic RPG series that takes place hundreds of years after the ‘Great War’ of 2077 (aka end of the world). The games have a retro-futuristic setting where post-war themes and iconography from the ‘40s and ‘50s are combined with futuristic technology.
The video games have always licensed music from that era. While The Ink Spots and Louis Armstrong feature in the first two games, it was the success of 2008’s Fallout 3 (12.4m lifetime sales) and its in-game Galaxy News Radio station that introduced millions of young players just like me to Bob Crosby, Roy Brown, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and more.
Many of these artists appear in Amazon’s Fallout TV series, with their upbeat melodies juxtaposing the violence unfolding underneath them (which is exactly what makes this music so effective in the Fallout games). One of the most interesting aspects of these syncs is that they happen a lot (episode 1 has 11 licensed tracks!), and it isn’t unusual for some tracks to play for 30 seconds or more.
I was curious if the prevalence of licensed music in the TV series is having the same impact on viewers as it did on gamers over 15 years ago – are Fallout fans suddenly finding themselves singing Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots in the shower every morning?
To find out, I made a near-complete list of artists that featured in the TV series and analyzed the growth of monthly Spotify listeners before and a week after the show’s premiere (April 10 - Apr 18). You can find the full image at the top of this post and a link to the spreadsheet here, but here are some of the most interesting things I found:
All of the artists featured in the TV series soundtrack experienced huge spikes in monthly listener figures, followers, and social media interactions.
The Ink Spots gained 330k new Spotify listeners in a week. That’s a 3000% increase compared to their average weekly growth.
Nat King Cole gained 192k new Spotify listeners in a week and experienced a 710% increase in TikTok likes.
Sheldon Allman doubled his monthly listeners from 88k to 184k.
Jack Shaindlin’s monthly listeners grew by 87% thanks to the inclusion of ‘I’m Tickled Pink’
The Ink Spots - I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire hit #1 on the iTunes United Kingdom Easy Listening Chart and iTunes global Jazz Chart.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the success of the TV series has also led to a newfound interest in the Fallout video games. Fallout 4 is currently the best-selling game in Europe, with sales rising over 7,500% week-on-week across Europe, according to Gamesindustry.biz. Fallout 76, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 aren’t far behind.
Have artists featured in the video games (and not the TV series) experienced the same levels of growth? It turns out they have.
There is no understating how popular this music is with fans. The top-rated comments on The Ink Spots’ ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire’ are all from Fallout fans, while a YouTube playlist of music from Fallout 3 has more than 30m views. Official vinyl pressings of the Galaxy News Radio soundtrack from Fallout 3 are fetching upwards of $400+ on Discogs at the time of writing!
I wanted to highlight the success of this music because I imagine many people in the world of sync wouldn’t associate artists from this era with gamers - but Fallout fans can’t get enough of it. And as I’ve spent this entire post bigging up licensed music, I’d like to highlight the work of the games’ original composers, such as Inon Zur, who have composed tremendous ambient scores that work alongside the licensed tracks in the game and TV series – Zur’s title theme for the series gets a nod from Ramin Djawadi who also does an excellent job at capturing the vibe of the series’ OSTs.
Couple of lessons here:
Film and TV adaptations of video game IP should feature music from the games too. Sonic fans lost their minds after hearing an orchestral rendition of ‘Live and Learn’ from Sonic Adventure 2 in the latest Sonic film trailer. Fallout wouldn't have felt the same without licensed music from the games.
Most genres of music will work in the gaming space as long as they suit the aesthetic of the game.
License holders on the gaming side should ensure their music is available digitally through DSPs and physically through vinyl and CD to capitalize on any IP interest post-adaptation.
License holders on the music side should ensure music playlists are fully set up at launch to capitalize on search demand following the success of a video game adaptation featuring licensed music.
This Slipknot and Dead by Daylight collab is (sic)
The asymmetric survival horror game Dead by Daylight followed up on the success of its Iron Maiden collaboration by welcoming Slipknot into the game as part of a limited-time event that started on 26 March.
While the Iron Maiden collab introduced four skins based on the band, this Slipknot collab introduced eight iconic Slipknot masks (no mask for the TBC 9th Slipknot member who’s replacing drummer Jay) and a full body skin for the Legion character.
These masks can only be worn by the game's 'Killers', who hunt down other players (survivors).
The Wraith- Metallic Grill (Mick Thomson)
The Deathslinger- Dominant Eye (Jim Root)
The Doctor- Zipper Mouthpiece (anonymous keyboard player)
The Clown- Grim Circus (Shawn Crahan)
The Hillbilly- Engraved Flesh (V-Man)
The Blight- Molded Visage (Michael Pfaff)
The Trapper- Ashen Quake (Corey Taylor)
The Legion- Subliminal Menace (Sid Wilson)
The masks cost 400 Auric Cells each, which is Dead by Daylight's in-game currency, although The Legion's outfit is 1080 on top of that, bringing the total cost of the collaboration to 3800 Auric Cells. That means you'd have to spend around $35 to get all of the Slipknot-themed items in this collaboration.
Dead by Daylight is most popular on PC and console, but there’s also a mobile version of the game where daily revenue can be tracked. According to Sensor Tower data, daily revenue tripled from just under $10k to $33k in the days following the collaboration—although it’s unclear how many of these in-game purchases were directly from the Slipknot masks.
I can’t help but feel like they missed a beat here by not adding Slipknot's iconic jumpsuits for the game's survivor characters or, at the very least, Slipknot band merch for the survivors (which is what Iron Maiden fans got). There's no Slipknot-themed lobby, either.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Soundtrack soars to #1 on the iTunes global album chart
The soundtrack for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (Sony Music) spent two days at the top of the Worldwide iTunes Album Chart, beating recent releases from Beyonce, Chris Brown and Madonna.
Interestingly, the digital and physical soundtracks were released on April 3, a month after the release of the game on 29 February. A clever move from Sony to sustain marketing momentum around the game? Or maybe this is just how long it takes to prepare a soundtrack release for a video game that has more than 400 pieces of music.
Of course, all 400+ of those cues didn’t make the cut, but the soundtrack release still clocks in at 175 songs spanning nine hours of music (that’s seven CDs). Perhaps this makes its charting position in the global iTunes chart even more impressive, given the entire digital soundtrack costs $39.99.
I’d recommend listening to the soundtrack when you find the time. You won’t find the full soundtrack on streaming services (again, a clever move to encourage sales?) but you can check out some tracks here. As a big Final Fantasy fan, I can’t believe how Square Enix’s composers are still finding new ways to arrange Nobuo Uematsu’s original melodies from the 1997 RPG.
And in other music and gaming news…
Static Dress developed a new video game for the Game Boy Colour to promote their debut album, highlighting a growing trend of artists promoting music releases through self-developed video games [Link].
I enjoyed watching a TV interview featuring Shane Gann from Hail the Sun talking about how Ubisoft’s Rocksmith+ video game is being used to teach students how to play instruments. [Link]
A virtual concert for the 2020 RPG game Omori is nearing 700k views on YouTube. It’s brilliant. [Link]
The Wall Street Journal published an excellent feature on how artists such as Odetari and Lady Gaga are seeking partnerships in video games such as Valorant and Fortnite to reach new listeners. [Link]
Brain Jar Games raised $6.7 million for a ‘new action musical game’ Dead as Disco set to launch in 2025. [Link]
Licensing music for video games isn’t easy, as this in-depth write-up of the journey to bring Daft Punk into Beat Saber reveals. [Link]
Speaking of sync challenges, Billboard reporter Elias Leight spoke to music and video game industry execs about the challenges of licensing music for video games, and why things probably (definitely) need to change. This is a must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in the business of video game music. [Link]
Have you managed to catch a virtual concert in Meta Horizon’s Music Valley experience or AmazeVR yet? Doja Cat, Blackpink, Victoria Monét, Jack Harlow, and Avenged Sevenfold have all hosted concerts in virtual worlds recently, but Business Insider believes it’ll take more time for them to go mainstream (and I agree!). On that topic, I can’t help but wonder why Sony and PlayStation haven’t partnered the launch a native virtual concert app for Sony Music that can be accessed directly from the PlayStation homepage via PSVR headsets. [Link]
Did you catch this weird comms crisis between Universal Music Group, Republic Records, STYNGR and Luminate (responsible for Billboard sales information). UMG, Republic and STYNGR issued a press release announcing Boombox - a scaled music platform for Roblox - where music plays would “count towards the Billboard charts.” The story was picked up by numerous publications, including NME, but Luminate quickly shot down the news about music counting towards the Billboard charts. “Due to an unfortunate miscommunication, the information regarding the data referred to in this announcement’s eligibility for the Billboard Charts is false,” it shared. “It will not count towards the Charts at this time.” - Notice the ‘at this time’ wording! [Link]
Rick Astley is writing new music for the Simon the Sorcerer Origins video game. [Link]
HYBE and UMG are teaming up for a new global agreement that will give “UMG exclusive distribution rights across HYBE’s roster of artists and labels.” Keeping a close eye on this given HYBE’s experience in the gaming space and UMG’s obsession with tapping into superfans. [Link]
Eminem made an unexpected chart entry with his Fortnite Radio vinyl, featuring 10 songs to mark his December appearance in Fortnite. Sales started at the end of March following an initial pre-order period, with 3,705 copies sold meaning the compilation debuted at No.8 on Billboard’s Top Vinyl Albums chart and No.19 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart. [Link]
You should listen to…
Former video game composer turned Japanese house legend, Soichi Terada’s jungle renditions of music from the Ape Escape games. [Listen]
Producer Madge’s collaboration with Riot Games on new music for Valorant. [Listen]
The GDC Developer’s Concert featuring epic orchestral renditions of the best video game scores [Listen]
The last two songs in the Hatsune Miku x Pokemon collaboration have been released! Listen here and here.
Dedeco’s PS2 Techno and Trance mix. Some absolute bangers here! [Listen]