Music games on consoles may have fallen on hard times, but they’re alive and well on mobile devices: Smule, the company that brought us apps like I am T-Pain and Ocarina, earned $ 12.6 million in revenues in 2012. The company told Eliot van Buskirk over at Evolver.fm that it is on track to reach $ 20 million this year.
Smule also shared some other interesting stats with Evolver: Its apps, which have been downloaded over 100 million times, are now being used by 15 million people a month, which have recorded one one billion individual songs so far.
That’s a lot of auto-tuning, auto-rapping and Glee Karaoke renditions. But it also goes to prove that there is money in music gaming – at least on the smaller screen.
Console games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band were once seen as the saviours of the music industry, and Viacom and Activision snapped up the companies behind both titles to cash in on the craze in 2006. However, the genre couldn’t meet these high expectations. Viacom sold off Rock Band maker Harmonix in 2010, and Activision ended up shutting down Guitar Hero in 2011.
Ironically, Smule’s next move is targeting all those guitar heroes left in the cold: Its new iPhone game is all about playing guitar.
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