Beggars Group and Reactional Music partner to deliver music from some of the world’s leading independent artists to the next generation of games
Beggars Group, independent music pioneers, signs with Reactional Music
Changing consumer habits and new technology driving opportunity for music to take its place in in-game purchase economies worth $125.7 billion
Reactional Music, the rule-based music personalisation engine and music delivery platform that connects the worlds of music and games, has signed a licensing agreement with Beggars Group, one of the world’s largest and most respected independent music groups.
Reactional enables music to be personalised within a game in real time, becoming the soundtrack of the game, in key and in time with gameplay. This does not affect the master.
By licensing tracks for use via Reactional’s music personalisation engine and delivery platform, Beggars Group is the latest in a growing network of music rightsholder partners who will gain enhanced access to the global games market.
Beggars Group comprises many of the world’s most respected independent labels and is home to 4AD, Matador Records, Rough Trade, XL Recordings and Young. Over the years they have released music from innovative and award winning artists such as Adele, Amyl & The Sniffers, Anohni, Big Thief, black midi, FKA twigs, Fontaines D.C., Grimes, Interpol, King Krule, The National, Overmono, Queens Of The Stone Age, Radiohead, Pixies, Sampha, Spoon, The Prodigy and The xx, among many others.
Beggars Group has been a pioneer in the digital world. Its catalogue was available digitally before the end of the last century. It self-distributes digitally worldwide and has been active in promoting the collective interests of the global independent music sector.
Reactional is driving next-generation musical experiences in games and interactive worlds. Reactional’s interactive music and personalisation engine allows music, artists, games developers and gamers to be connected in new ways.
Reactional is also pioneering commercial music to be enabled as an in-game purchase at scale for the first time. In a global games market worth $223.1 billion* in 2023, in-game purchases totalled $125.7 billion, of which $72.5 billion was spent on cosmetic content and in-game personalisation. However, music has so far accounted for less than 0.01 percent of this spend. Changing consumer consumption habits and an increase in personalisation in all digital worlds means that spending on in-game personalisation is predicted to grow to $100 billion by 2029.
Beggars Group Director of Global Commercial Strategy, Simon Wheeler, said: “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.
“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 three 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.”
Reactional Music President, David Knox, commented: “Beggars’’ decision to be a part of Reactional is one of the big landmark moments in our development. Right from the first conversation Simon Wheeler and the team at Beggars understood what we are building at Reactional Music.
“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. 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.”
Reactional Music has partnered with over 50 music rights holders worldwide over the past three years as it grows its music delivery platform catalogue, including Defected Records, Cherry Red Records, Hopeless Records, Hipgnosis Song Management and leading production music groups such as APM Music, Soundstripe and Alibi.
*MIDiA Research Global Games Forecast 10/23