Teaching the World to Sing

I don't think it was always necessarily going to be music, but when I came into the games industry ten years ago it was always from a pop-cultural view. I was never a super gamer. I played games, I picked them up, but very very casually. I was never, at that point, deeply into games.

I was always into pop culture, looking at the wider picture of what engages people and what is meaningful to them. I knew I wanted to do entertainment. For me the idea of entertainment and technology was really interesting, much more so than normal entertainment like TV. I think it's really interesting because of the way it's constantly reinventing itself because of technology.

As passionate as I am now about music, I was a teenager like that. You know when you're a teenager growing up you create your identity by the bands you like and the music you like. I'd have the bedroom that was plastered in posters and tapes. It's kind of a natural thing.

I can relate to it in a natural way. I've always been really into pop culture and the arts and music, but also books and things like that. I guess I just really like creative and cultural products, and probably music more than anything else.

Well I think for Singstar there were practical issues. So, we want you to sing along to these songs, it would help if you've heard the songs before. [laughs] We learned that. I think SingStar operated on multiple levels. Because it looked like an MTV music program, it was instantly relevant to people - they were familiar with music videos, perhaps more than they were with videogames at that point, that audience.

Having songs that they recognised and loved, that was kind of appealing for anybody. I guess also we had two audiences. We had a young audience who found it very aspirational to sing along with Beyonce or Rhianna, and the for the older generation it was fun and nostalgic to sing along with Take That.

But we also learned when we released in foreign countries, like Spain or Latin America or Poland, that it's important to have local relevance - both from the point of knowing the lyrics and the bands that you grew up with or hear on the radio. Of course there was an American influence and a UK influence, but we couldn't over-estimate the importance of local music and what people like.

I think music is a sort of shared experience - beyond just being attracted to the marketing of it, I think there's a physical enjoyment to music and a social aspect that people enjoy. We're continuing along that stream of thinking with our new project. It's not performance-based, it's not singing along, but I think there's so many layers going on with music, there is that social aspect, that aspirational aspect, there is an identity when you're young, a desire to be connected. We're kind of in that stream.

Yeah, I think those are super interesting. I think the whole world is moving to a social model. I find out about things - about great new restaurants and new music through my friends more and more - because they show up in my stream or I'm using an app where I can see that five of my friends like a restaurant or whatever.

So I think that with Spotify and Last.fm that's what they're all about - community and suggestions and finding out about music that way. I also think that streaming is... If you could commercially make it work, it could get people back into paying for music in some way. My appetite for music is too large to actually download and pay for everything I want. I listen to lots of different music - I just want to try it.

I've had a Napster subscription account for about seven years and I don't like owning physical music. It's annoying. I can't even be bothered to download it. [laughs] If I can just stream it, that's great. I think that convenience wins out. iTunes is a brilliant interpretation because it's convenient and frictionless so it's done brilliantly well. It's more convenient than pirating music. I think that streaming is even more convenient.

I've seen some statistics that say that teenagers are tapping into the streaming services, because it's good, you know? Always on, you put a song in and there it is, I can see what my friends are listening to. It's convenient enough that you might actually pay for it. They're definitely part of the future business model. They are, not the only, but a big type of future music consumption.