SongPop Attempts To Turn Song Guessing Game Into Music Community

SongPop is a name-that-tune game app for Facebook, iOS and Android that currently has millions of users. Featuring a wide range of music, SongPop is introducing music promotion and discovery features while developing multiple revenue streams. SongPop faces a current decline in users yet they also have opportunities to deepen the involvement of players and turn a possibly peaking game into a music community.

SongPop, a game developed by FreshPlanet, has been a big hit with millions of players (over 3 million daily at last count), half in the U.S. SongPop serves almost 300 million music clips a day.

These clips, often a few seconds long depending on players' ability to quickly guess the song title or artist, are licensed and royalties are paid. They've also become "one of the largest iTunes affiliates in the world today" driving hundreds of thousands of daily click-throughs. Plans are in the works to add Spotify and YouTube links to boost fan engagement with artists.

In addition to affiliate sales, SongPop benefits from:

"in-game ads in the free version; sales of the ad-free paid version; and in-app purchases for virtual currency used to unlock new playlists and help on unknown songs."

They are launching a related "VIP subscription model" which will provide "access to exclusive content" to monthly subscribers.

SongPop is also developing promotional playlists:

"The company has just launched an in-game promotion for Carrie Underwood's upcoming tour, which includes a playlist devoted to her music. It's the first of a planned series of artist-branded playlists, which will end with full-screen interstitial ads helping fans follow the artists on Facebook and Twitter, or linking through to iTunes, YouTube, Spotify and ticketing services."

SongPop has great potential to promote artists while building a sustainable business. But one challenge is a recent slide in users. SongPop's plans to emphasize social aspects may help maintain players' interest:

"'The feedback we have from players is they want to make new friends who like the same kinds of music genres they like,' said [CEO Mathieu] Nouzareth. That means the game will start matching people with other players near their location who share their music tastes, alongside the existing Facebook connections."

The goal is to build a "community of music lovers…[that] are going to stay in the game for a very long time."

More:

• Inside Social Games: Song Pop review
• SongPop: Anatomy of an instant app hit
• Song Pop Addiction And Synchronous Simulated Gameplay

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.