Gaming Audience Research & Strategy — SoundCloud
SoundCloud wanted to engage the gaming audience — for new users, revenue, and artist support. We surveyed more than 1,600 gamers to find out where music and gaming actually meet, and where the assumptions were wrong.
SoundCloud had already dipped into gaming — the SoundCloud Player One stream series, a Twitch Soundtrack partnership, an Xbox listening app — and the big question was written into the brief: well, now what? The goals were concrete: new user acquisition, revenue growth, and support for the artists already on the platform.
Two surveys anchored the work: 627 US gamers from the general audience (deliberately over-indexed on ages 13–17, SoundCloud's target) and 1,012 SoundCloud users, plus stakeholder interviews, a content audit, and competitive scorecards for Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
The overlap was already there: 83% of gamers listen to external audio at least sometimes while playing, and SoundCloud users even more so. The reasons were wonderfully specific — music for "the grind" (repetitive gameplay), music for "the void" (turning your brain off), and the survey verbatim that says it all: "Issa vibe."
The counterintuitive findings mattered most. Fanart and cosplay outrank esports tournaments and in-game concerts for this audience. Battle royales and MOBAs — the genres brands default to — are less popular than simulation and action/adventure games. And nearly a third of gamers consider themselves music or audio creators, which for a creator platform is the whole ballgame.
Three creative territories came out of the data. Reach further into gaming — more Player One, but pointed at niche fandoms and left-of-center games where credibility is earned. Make gamers feel at home — gaming playlists built for real moments (grinding, commuting, entering the void), gaming iconography, and platform integrations where players already are. And supercharge the cultural overlap — a games-music summit and a headline-generating game jam built on SoundCloud's own API.
1,639
Gamers surveyed across two studies
83%
Listen to external audio while gaming
1 in 3
Gamers consider themselves audio creators
Two-audience survey design and analysis. Content audit of SoundCloud's existing gaming work. Competitive scorecards. Trend analysis of gaming-music culture, from Travis Scott's Fortnite concert to Monstercat's Rocket League deal. Three creative territories with scalability and KPI considerations for each.