We’re on the lookout for a Music Content Specialist / Music Supervisor to drive the musical direction of our recently launched hit music game Beatstar.
About Beatstar
Beatstar is a unique mobile music rhythm game that lets you touch your music. It features hundreds of fully licensed original recordings from Doja Cat, Avicii and Lil Nas X, to classics like Lynyrd Skynrd's “Sweet Home Alabama” or Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky”. Imagine the best Coachella lineup ever: that's Beatstar.
The game launched globally in September and is on track to be one of the biggest mobile game releases of the year, and the largest reach of any music game ever.
The team behind Beatstar has a deep pedigree with credits including many hit mobile games and classic music games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band and DJ Hero. Space Ape's advanced 'HeartBeat' engine creates a hugely satisfying player experience by shifting the audio and visual core of the game in real time to match the current song. HeartBeat handles any genre, empowering our “Beatmappers” to add dozens of songs each month to keep players engaged and unlock opportunities to collaborate with massive artists on marketing campaigns, and break new acts in partnership with our music and platform partners.
Beatstar is a collaboration between Space Ape Games in London, and Supercell in San Francisco. The Space Ape team is responsible for development and operations of the game, whilst Supercell is responsible for marketing.
If you haven’t experienced Beatstar for yourself, stop reading now. Go download it (for free) on Google Play or the App Store. If you’ve already mastered the game then read on to find out how you might help cement it’s position as the defining music game.
The Role
You will be responsible for the musical direction of the game.
This is a broad remit that will require you to use your knowledge and help the team of talented designers and musicians make important decisions. Which audiences represent the best opportunities; in terms of market potential and licensing feasibility? Which countries should we focus on building local playlists for? Which up and coming artists resonate best with the players who already love Beastar? Which genres represent opportunities for us to expand into? Which artists should we focus our co-marketing budgets on?
In game development, every opportunity has a cost and you’ll need to work closely with the game team to understand the tradeoffs and build consensus around the right music strategy for the game.
The role also includes execution of that strategy. This means maintaining great relationships with the rights holders, platforms and artist management teams who we are already working with to vet and identify opportunities. It might also mean identifying new partners with specific regional or genre focus and negotiating licensing and co-marketing deals. And inevitably it will involve a lot of chasing down approvals from all the stakeholders, and a high level of organization and communication.
Requirements
- You are passionate about music and keep up to date with the latest global music trends
- You are tech savvy and are comfortable interpreting data to make decisions
- You have excellent organisational skills and have experience using Microsoft Excel/Google Sheets
- You are proactive and thrive in a collaborative, fast paced, creative environment
- You have an understanding of music licensing and managing relationships with music partners
- You need not have worked in games/apps before but instinctively understand what makes games and freemium apps successful in today’s competitive mobile market
- You are confident engaging with senior management, marketing and business development teams in a variety of organizations, including music labels and management
Skills & Responsibilities
- Curate playlists of songs for beatstar for various player cohorts. You should understand how to cater music for players from different countries, demographics, and with different music tastes.
- Own the end-to-end song approval process from researching rights holders to requesting and tracking approvals from labels and publishers as well as organising payments to rights holders. We’re talking about hundreds of songs here, perhaps thousands over the next few years.
- Review new music pitches and evaluate technical suitability of new tracks for Beatstar
- Support the marketing team with artist and music selection for adverts and promotional activity
- Maintain great working relationships with our Music Partners
Salary is negotiable based on experience. Open to flexible / remote working arrangements for the right candidate.
