24th September 2024. 8am BST: 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
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About Beggars Group
The Beggars Group is the home of 4AD, Matador, Rough Trade Records, XL Recordings and Young.
The Beggars Group in the last decade has gone from strength to strength, not only confirming their position as one of the largest independent groups of labels in the world, but also, by allowing their artists the time to develop, affording them freedom and support, releasing the best the decade had to offer.
About Reactional Music
Reactional’s composable generative music technology enables interactive music in game in moments, music personalisation, and music as an in-game purchase.
Reactional Music is changing the way we can experience, interact with, create, share and enjoy music in games and creator worlds. As the world’s first rule-based music engine, Reactional allows any music to be brought into a game and for the entire game’s visuals and sound to react live to that music.
Reactional’s rule-based music engine allows composed music and audio to be generated live note by note in real time based on in-game events, macro controls and developer managed parameters.
Reactional’s music delivery platform also enables music personalisation and music as an in-game purchase for the gamer. Reactional’s engine allows any music to be brought into a game and in real time dynamically sync with the game as the soundtrack, in pitch and time.
Pioneering music as an in-game purchase Reactional has so far partnered with approaching 50 global music companies, offering millions of rights cleared commercial and production music tracks as in-game personalized choices for gamers.
Reactional’s engine, platform and composition tools enable faster and more efficient music creation, significant cost savings, music personalisation and new revenue streams, new gamer data and more immersive game experiences.
With no hard-coding, Reactional allows developers to prototype and trial music faster and more efficiently, choosing from a library of millions of commercial and production music tracks and scores.