Founder
Game Over Talent
Years with Company: 5
Address: Los Angeles, CA
Web: gameovertalent.com
Email: gameovertalent.com/contact
Publicity: Alexandra Greenberg
Falcon Publicity, agreenberg@ falconpublicity.com
Clients: Warner Records, RCA, Amazon Prime, TBS, Fortnite, NFL, Scopely, Columbia, Google Play
BACKGROUND
In recent years, the connection between music and video games has grown increasingly stronger. Fast to capitalize on this synergy is Anthony Pisano. His company, Game Over Talent, has grown into the premier destination for musicians who want to position themselves in front of a gaming audience, creating virtual and IRL experiences that broaden artist awareness.
Fazing In
I come from the DJ/producer space. I was signed to Ultra [Music] and Sony for about four years. I’ve toured the world. I did the Ultra Music Festival and EDC [Electric Daisy Carnival, all that good stuff.
When I was getting out of my record deal, I met FaZe Blaze from [professional gaming team] FaZe Clan. At the time, he wanted to get into music. I noticed how engaged his audience was, especially on YouTube. He was averaging about a million views per video. I said, “Okay. Let’s get you on this song, shoot a music video, and put it on your channel.”
Next thing you know, that song was number three on the Spotify Global Viral charts. We had major labels wondering how we did this. It changed the trajectory of my career.
Next Level
We continued to put out music and make custom content within the gaming space. I started to meet with the major labels about this. We explained to them what Twitch was and livestreaming, and then the Marshmello/Fortnite activation happened. Everyone was intrigued.
My anchor client was Atlantic Records. They said, “We have a new artist, NBA YoungBoy, who is an avid gamer.” So I put together a campaign around his new release. The song went viral within a bunch of FaZe Clan content. It went from one or two labels to working with the entire music industry. The company transitioned into working with big brands as well, like gaming publishers, the NFL, Amazon, the list goes on.
Twitchy Times
During the pandemic, we created the Twitch listening party experience, bringing artists like Lil Durk and NLE Choppa on with these big streamers. And really creating viral moments that transcended out of Twitch onto the different social platforms. Another massive campaign I did was with [singer] Tyla and [YouTuber] Kai Cenat, which did over a billion impressions. So Game Over has really spearheaded that intersection of music and gaming.
Beat ‘Em Upbeat
The genres I gravitate toward are hip-hop, pop, rock, alternative, and country. Upbeat tends to work better in this space. But it comes down to the song. Electronic music works extremely well. R&B records that are up-tempo can also work.
Parts of a Campaign
They’re broken up into a few different capabilities, one being creator marketing, which consists of feeding music into gaming creators’ content across all the short-form platforms.
Then there’s the Twitch listening party activations, which are primarily done around big album releases. We built a music widget that fits on the stream. And we created smart links with Spotify Pixel built in so we can track the streaming consumption back to the DSPs. We brand the streamer’s channel with the album or single art.
Plugging In
When artists got signed to major labels in the past, it was, “I want to be on the radio.” Now it’s, “We want to activate on Twitch and in the gaming space.” And [the labels] say, “We work with a company that does that very well.” That’s where artists are at the moment.
And also, it is important for artists to be in this space, because entertainment is merging. It’s going to grow and be part of the landscape of where marketing and entertainment lie. When I started Game Over, there was no in-house gaming person within the labels. Now, every label has an in-house head of gaming.
Custom Virtual Spaces
[Fortnite and Roblox] have been at the forefront [of offering users unique spaces.] It’s just like music. Genres come in and out. Artists come in and out. And gaming is constantly changing. Fortnite and Roblox have been the most consistent. What makes them different from Call of Duty or other games that come and go is they have given users the opportunity to create their own environments within those platforms.
Feel the Rhythm
Rhythm-based games are going to become more popular. They’re very popular in Asia, where they’re three to five years ahead of us. So there could be a surge in that.
We’re starting to see certain rhythm-based games in the U.S. Country Star just did something with Morgan Wallen. They did something with Post Malone. I think we’re going to see more of this. When mobile gaming starts to grow here like it does in Asia, that’s going to be a big moment.
Game Tune
We’ve been building a tool called Game Tune that I’ll be launching through next year. It’s a fully A.I.-powered piece of software that is going to automate our services. Not only will we have a full index of influencers but also they’ll be authenticated.
It’ll have deep analytics from all our campaigns, monitoring Spotify APIs [Application Programming Interfaces,] Twitch APIs, every social channel. We’ll have impressions, views, comments, all the normal reporting, but then also a social analytics section where we’ll see how many times a song is played on Twitch, how many times an artist has shown up on the streaming platforms, which streamer is promoting the artist.
And then we’re going to have A.I. social listening tools that will find all the data on where artists are showing up across the internet. You’ll be able to directly target the types of creators you’re looking for.
The Promise of A.I.
We’re going to be using A.I. to provide better results for our clients. It’ll help labels make decisions with their marketing in the gaming space, which songs they should be pouring more gas on. And from the influencer marketing side of things, A.I. could eliminate human error from these campaigns. We’ll have capabilities within our software to tell the label or gaming publisher, “This is the type of content this creator makes and that he’s had the most success on, so this is what you should do strategy-wise.”
A New Kind of Star
I’m going to be launching Game Over Records with a digital gaming character. It will have full albums specifically for the gaming space. This character is going to have games, music, and branding. There’s so much we’re going to be able to do with that.
