When it comes to game music STYNGR is the only major record partner with a full license to put pre-known music into the game.
The Santa Monica, California-based company started this mission in 2020 and now has over 100 million pre-known songs available for PC, mobile and console games. It has a Software Development Kit (SDK) that makes it simple to integrate music into the game. I spoke with Stephen Cooper, Chairman of Styngr and former CEO of Warner Music Group in an interview about STYNGR.
Cooper said STYNGR has obtained a full music catalog of major labels including Universal Pictures, Sony, Warner and BMG. Styngr’s technology allows gamers to access and use music in the game, enhancing user experience and extending session length. It allows gamers to play the music they want, and STYNGR enables game developers and tags to make money on music access at the same time.
Styngr also recently launched Soundboard, a scalable music product that allows players to personalize their gaming experiences, including millions of predicted musical clips from artists from Warner Music, including music from Coldplay’s latest album Moon Music.
In addition to enhancing the possibility of licensing music in video games, the launch of Soundboard has added another layer of profitability for video game developers. As a micro-trading product for players, developers who integrate soundboards into the game will earn a share of revenue from each purchase.
STYNGR also launched a product called Boombox, a microtransaction-based game player that allows developers to launch and monetize playlists in their experience. In the first 36 hours of its release last fall, Boombox attracted more than 3 million sole users, gaining 4.5 million music streams among artists and genres.
Styngr also has the same Musworth – Developers Moon Clientthis is the first free all-in-one Minecraft Mod Pack – bringing fully licensed music from the main tags to Minecraft, the first time on PC and consoles to bring it to Minecraft. By Q2 2025, Lunar Client will also offer an ad-funded version of its in-game broadcast – allowing all users to listen for free. Artists will benefit from the revenue share in each subscription purchased within Lunar customers. All of this helped Styngr up to 30 employees.
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Chief Operating Officers Steve Tarrand and Oleg Butenko, CEO founded STYNGR in 2020. Cooper, former CEO of Warner Music Group, has known Putenko for more than a decade because Putenko has played a major role in creating a streaming subscription service in Russia. They are constantly working and staying in touch. When Cooper was still in Warner, Putenko came up with the idea of STYNGR. Warner owns venture capital funds and invests in STYNGR.
Cooper left Warner Music Group in 2023. They have been working together for 18 months. Cooper solves various business problems and has learned Styngr’s business well.
“It’s really unique in terms of trying to follow music and games,” Cooper said. “It’s unique because it has this technological bridge between music and games, but his team has successfully made the music industry lead by major record labels and BMG and licensed their music for Styngr to use for games.
In the past, licensing music for video games was a complicated process. But STYNGR works with Music Tags to unlock recorded music to gain collective benefits from players, game developers, artists and rights holders. Styngr said music has always played an important role in self-expression and identity formation, and so far its products have brought music into the game in natural and fun ways.
STYNGR has in-house protocols and proprietary technologies and SDKs to simplify the process. STYNGR is responsible for user analysis, labeling rights, publishing and royalties. Maybe it will be easier to make music-based games in the future, as there aren’t as many guitar heroes and rock bands as before.
The latest music game I’ve encountered is Realize musica health app that allows people to stand out from the privacy of virtual reality. Mike Wilson, co-founder of Realizing Music, noted that it took about 15 months to negotiate with two music labels on a million songs.
“To my surprise, that’s always been the time it took,” Cooper said. “The current in-game music model, putting aside the production music sometimes used as game scores, gets licenses for very limited tracks for a limited period of time to get a limited period of time to negotiate the sum of money.”
He added: “When I say a limited number of tracks, this may be a few dozen, but overall, in addition to playing music in the background of Spotify, Spotify, Apple or Amazon, the utilization of music inside the game is limited to the relatively small music universe in the game, which has been made in the game with these ongoing one-time transactions.”
But Styngr managed to negotiate something different.
STYNGR Solution
“The role of Stinger is to provide gamers, so the entire catalog of Sony Warner, BMG, etc. That.”
Cooper said STYNGR acts as a bridge between the world of music and the game. It allows developers to draw music from the tag’s catalog and use it in the game when developers want to use it. Players can do the same. Music is refreshed every week with all new versions. Music can take the form of a whole song or track.
“Music is for any model the platform or developer chooses for their game,” Cooper said. “We can handle ad-based models, subscription-based models and micro-transactions, so we cover the range, from full tracks to summary, and we celebrate this if I’m particularly happy with the game.”
With ads, listening to music in exchange for listening to audio ads is a fair exchange, Cooper said. That’s Spotify and other things.
“Our data suggests that accessing music in games can extend meetings,” Cooper said. “It’s a mechanism that for developers or platforms it may reduce agitation and attract new participants to their games, and the length of the meetings increases, which provides opportunities for the game itself and the developers of those games.”
Cooper hopes it will take off and prove that the gaming world underestimates the power of music. He hopes music record labels will realize that they have underestimated games and overestimated music in the past.
“They will eventually get it and it will be in a balance between the game world and the music world because both sides will benefit,” he said. “I like the people of Styngr, I think it’s a huge opportunity for music and games, and I think that can bring good news to both sides of this coin.”
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