But it's a double-edged sword. Perhaps the background-friendly nature of music creates an engagement challenge, simply because great music can easily recede into the background. That makes gaming, music videos, mash-ups, and other technologies alluring solutions to increase the focus and attention of the consumer. And, hopefully tighten the bond and increase the monetization potential.
Enter Facebook, a fertile and growing testbed for all sorts of music ideas. The latest is coming from MXP4, which is creating app games that encourage users to play with the music, not just play the music. A recent Facebook beta app involving David Guetta, EMI, and the track “Who's that Chick (feat. Rihanna)" received some interesting numbers, albeit from a front-running crowd. The 'Play With It!' game encourages all sorts of remixing and modifications, and features a number of different prizes—including a meet-and-greet with Guetta himself.
That has gotten good initial reviews from fans, and the teams pointed to the following initial stats:
- Over 15,000 users actively played with the game for more than 15 minutes per track
- 50% shared and competed against friends across the social networking site
- 60% of users played more than 20 times
- Some fans played more than 300 times
