Game Music Digest | Is Charli XCX's Roblox Campaign the Best Music Activation Yet?
Also: Are creator's making the most of Fortnite UEFN's music-making tools?
Game Music Digest is a weekly wrap-up of the most interesting stories at the intersection of video games and music, brought to you by music and gaming newsletter, MusicEXP. Subscribe to keep on top of the latest trends in video games and music delivered straight to your inbox every week.
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Roblox Game ‘Dress to Impress’ Gets 12m Player Boost from Charli XCX Collaboration
Charli XCX’s launched a collaboration in Roblox’s ‘Dress to Impress’ fashion simulator game on Saturday as part of the singer’s marketing push for her latest album, Brat. In Dress to Impress, players are given a fashion theme and a limited amount of time to dress and accessorise their avatars to match that theme. When the time is up, players take a stroll down a virtual catwalk to earn points depending on how well they’re dressed.
This update introduced several in-game clothing pieces and accessories reflecting Charli XCX’s style and the Y2K aesthetic of Brat. These included:
10 new brat clothing & accessories for fem and masc bodies
New brat pose pack
New brat makeup & patterns
9 new hairstyles & 2 new bangs
New brat runway
Newly brat decorated lobby and dressing room
Custom Makeup Gifting
The update also added a special brat store where players can purchase brat-themed items using Robux (Roblox’s in-game currency). Prices ranged from 60–100 Robux (80c–$1.20)
EXP: Dress to Impress is one of the most popular games on Roblox, with more than 2.1 billion (yes, billion) visits since its release in October 2023 and an average concurrent user count (CCU) of 237k. The average session lengths for the game are 15 minutes, although some players reportedly spend hours perfecting that perfect look every day.
The success of Dress to Impress is largely fuelled by viral social media videos and the unwavering popularity of the fashion/decoration simulator genre, which is particularly popular among Gen Z audiences and female players—a perfect match for Roblox’s younger demographic.
I wanted to spotlight this integration because it’s refreshing to see a music activation in Roblox that doesn’t rely on half-baked rhythm game mechanics or dated virtual concert elements to make sense. Charli XCX’s team has absolutely smashed it with this one. If you work in music and gaming partnerships, this is a case study you’ll want to save and look back on. Here’s why it worked:
Natural audience overlap – the hype around Charli XCX’s latest album on social media platforms such as TikTok amongst younger audiences means there’s a natural crossover with Roblox’s demographic. That, and she already had one collaboration with Roblox under her belt thanks to a 2022 virtual concert with Samsung.
Stylistic features and gameplay mechanics that make sense – Charli XCX’s team leaned into the aesthetic of Brat and angled the collaboration around that, rather than pushing tired and tested rhythm game mechanics on an audience who probably wouldn’t care much about them.
Heavy social media push – the collaboration was teased in advance of the Saturday launch on social media channels, letting players know about it in advance and giving content creators plenty of time to hype it up before the launch.
Was this collaboration a hit? The numbers speak for themselves. Daily visits for Dress to Impress jumped from 22.49 million on Friday 16 August to 34.09 million on launch, an increase of 41%. Similarly, average session lengths grew by one minute (and that’s still growing), while concurrent users peaked at 641k on Saturday compared to 290k the day prior, an increase of 75%!
I’ll be following this campaign over the coming weeks to see if there’s been a notable impact on Charli XCX’s social media platforms and music streams. Given her overwhelming popularity, it’s hard to determine how she benefited from this campaign without direct access to conversion rates (if you worked on this campaign and have something to share, HMU, I’d love to share it!)
PUBG Mobile Teams up With Iraqi Superstar Rahma Riad for New Collaboration
Another major music collaboration in Krafton’s PUBG Mobile, this time with Iraqi singer and actress Rahma Riad. The collaboration launched with a new promotional song, while also introducing Rahma into the game via a character skin, voice pack, emotes, and various other items themed on Rahma with an aquatic twist. These items had to be purchased using PUBG Mobile’s in-game currency.
EXP: This collaboration officially launched in-game on August 13 (with the song releasing five days before), but I’m only hearing about it now because the PR around this has been really…weird? Most of the publications that covered it seem to be non-gaming publications in Saudi [shout out carnews2day], which is unusual for an artist this big as I’d wager most music publications would have covered this if it was pitched properly!
Anyway, PUBG Mobile is a great example of a game that's so popular (24.3 million DAU) that it’s carved a bit of a niche for itself by utilising regionalised IP collaborations to boost player numbers and monetisation in specific target markets. This mobile version of PUBG – which is completely separate to the PC and console versions of the game as its published by Tencent – is one of the most popular mobile games in the world.
Saudi Arabia has generated $37m (7.3%) of the game’s total revenue in the last 12 months, making it the third highest-revenue generating market for the game beneath India ($58m/11.4%) and the US ($101.5m/20%).
I’m not sure if this is directly related, but Rahma’s Spotify listeners made a massive jump a few days after the in-game collaboration, growing from 398k monthly listeners on August 16 to just under 450k monthly listeners by August 20.
Are UGC Developers Making the Most of Music Tools in Fortnite UEFN?
Harmonix, the development studio best known for Rock Band that now works on Fortnite Festival under Epic, uploaded a new tutorial guiding UEFN creators through the process of musical world building within Fortnite. The videos introduce a new ‘Song Synchronizer’ device that can be used to design virtual concerts, build rhythm games, or have structural elements of the game world move to the beat as players immerse themselves in music.
You can watch the videos over on the Epic Games website here.
EXP: I love watching stuff like this, and it highlights the currently underutilized potential of Fortnite’s development tools from a music perspective. I’m incredibly bullish on the future of creator-made experiences within Fortnite, and believe some of the most impressive music activations in the Fortnite ecosystem are yet to come.
I think what we’re seeing with Roblox at the moment – where a growing number of labels and management companies seem are dealing directly with individual game developers rather than going through Roblox’s partnership team – will become more popular on Fortnite as the music industry establishes better relationships with independent creators. I wouldn’t be surprised to see music companies making investments in popular independent creators with a proven track record to help fund music activations in the future.
If you’re looking for more tutorials on how to use Unreal Engine for music making, I’d also recommend this video here.
The Revival of Video Game Club Music (and how to make it)
When I grew up as a kid in the ‘90s, video games such as Streets of Rage, Wipeout, Tekken, Bomberman Hero, Extreme G and Ridge Racer introduced me to a world of music that I’d never have listened to otherwise, namely genres such as techno, jungle and house.
A lot of video game soundtracks written or licensed in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s wouldn’t have sounded out of place at a club night. And while their popularity wained in the late ‘00s onwards in favour of orchestrated video game soundtracks, old school video game soundtracks such as those mentioned above are experiencing a resurgence thanks to viral videos on social media platforms and a renewed interest in creating ‘video gamey’ music.
I wrote a piece about how video games are tied to club music for Vice a while back, but a lot has changed since then. That link has only grown stronger as a new generation of music makers, DJs and producers such as DUSQK, Starjunk95 and Pizza Hotline have emerged, combining their love of jungle, d&b and club culture with their passion for gaming, drenched in Dreamcast design references and nostalgic nods to PlayStation classics. I’d recommend reading Kenny Vaughan’s excellent piece on the unseen legacy of Y2K gaming music for more info.
So strong is the link between music production and retro video game soundtracks that hardware and plug-in manufactures are capitalising on the hype. You can pick up reverb plug-ins that emulate the sounds of classic PlayStation games or a Sega Synth that emulates the sound of Sega’s Mega Drive console.
This is a trend that those in the video game industry should stay on top of for the music direction in their games. Machine Girl’s incredible soundtrack for Neon White is a great example of this. Similarly, those in talent management and partnership roles outside of video games who are looking to make their artists more ‘video game facing’ would do well to jump on this trend.
If you wanna make some video game-sounding beats of your own, MusicTech has pulled together a tutorial on how to do just that!
In Brief
Wanna hear more club-sounding video game music? Check out Dedeco, a DJ and content creator who mixes video game music. [Link]
Bomberman Hero has one of the best jungle/breakbeat game soundtracks ever written. [Link]
13 hip-hop artists who are paving the way as streamers [Link]
Check out Pizza Hotline who’s creating new music inspired by video game sounds and aesthetics. [Link]
Sony Music Masterworks acquires majority stake in immersive and live entertainment company, Black Sky Creative. Hope yet for virtual concerts on the PSVR2? [Link]
Riot Games to Release ‘Best of Valorant’ Album Following Champions Tour Finale [Link]
I’ll be sharing my own thoughts on this in the coming weeks, but for now… Roblox strikes deal with DistroKid – but indie artists won’t be paid any money from it [Link]
Are Bring Me The Horizon working on new music for Death Stranding 2? Probably! [Link]