The latest crossover between the music and mobile games industries comes in the form of UMG’s investment in startup Nuday Games, developer of music-trivia app Rock Science.
The investment is for an undisclosed amount, and is being characterised as strategic by Universal.
“Our investment is not first and foremost about making money. We see it as a strategic investment for us to learn to understand our bands’ and artists’ superfans better and to be able to give something meaningful to them,” Universal Music Sweden boss Per Sundin told Di Digital.
It’s still early days for Rock Science: the game has been downloaded 100k times so far, with Nuday Games having generated SEK 1.9m ($223k) of revenues last year, while recording a net loss of SEK 5.8m ($682k).
VC firm Northzone, which got in to Spotify early, is one of Nuday Games’ other investors. CEO Jorge Bravo says that the UMG investment will help it add more than 100 bands to the Rock Science app within the next year.
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