Mobile game and app developer Gismart has launched a way for musicians to monetize their fame through its new hypercasual games.

Hypercasual games are quick mobile experiences that can be played in a minute or less, and they’ve become extremely popular in the app stores. With the Gismart Games for Artists program, partner musicians can promote their brand and music via the games. The company offers artists a range of opportunities to reach a multi-million audience such as lookalike in-game characters, in-game content and music, and merchandise integrations. In addition to these customized promotional opportunities, partners will receive a profit share of the game.

Hypercasual games generate approximately a billion downloads every month, with most of these being new games, according to market researcher Newzoo. With simple gameplay and design, and little to no plot, hypercasual games are currently one of the most popular gaming niches with the widest audience reach. Newzoo estimates that hypercasual game players are over 31 years old, and 46% are women. The audience demographics vary from game to game. These games are also free-to-play for the users as the most popular monetization model for hyper-casual is in-game advertisements. On average, one player watches from five to 10 video ads per game session, which partially might be used to promote a partner artist’s new music releases, gigs, or merchandise.

Gismart has been working with the music industry for a number of years, as half of its product portfolio are music-based apps and games. The company has partnered with the world’s largest music publishers — Universal Music Publishing Group and Sony / ATV Music Publishing. And it has previously collaborated with the American EDM duo The Chainsmokers, and other emerging artists including Judah & the Lion.

Due to the pandemic, the music industry has also been significantly impacted, as the concert business has been shut down. With artists unable to perform live shows and other activities as usual, Gismart now offers musicians their hyper-casual games as an alternative platform for connecting with a massive audience to promote their brand, music, merchandise, and any other associated businesses.

When a musician joins the Games for Artists program, they will be integrated into the game based on what works best for the artist’s needs and the game experience. Gismart will be responsible for game marketing and monetization, including a multi-million-dollar budget that will be used for game advertising, guaranteeing a large audience. In addition to using the game as a platform for marketing, the artist will share the game’s profit with Gismart.

So far, Gismart has 10 hypercasual games. Some of the most successful games (e.g. Cool Goal!, Domino Smash) were ranked number one in the game charts in 62 countries.

Cool Goal! has more than 60 million downloads worldwide. The most popular music entertainment apps that regularly appear in the music-making apps charts are Piano (130 million downloads), Guitar (80 million downloads) and Beat Maker Go which received 40 million downloads and made more than $40 million in revenue since its release in December 2016.

The company’s portfolio has over 500 million downloads. Over the past three years, the company has shown strong growth, partly due to successful hypercasual game releases. Gismart has more than 300 employees. It is based in London and has offices in Minsk, Beijing, and Kyiv.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/venturebeat/SZYF/~3/43_7UFNz_vQ/