As the music industry continues to invest deeper into the lucrative esports space, Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) China and Riot Games China have concluded a songwriting camp focused on promotional songs for the game publisher’s upcoming 10th League of Legends World Championship.
The camp took place at the end of July and brought together 14 UMPG China songwriters — both virtually and in the GUM Studio Shanghai recording facility — to create six songs for the widely-viewed championship, which takes place this year in Shanghai from Sept. 25 to Oct. 31.
“Music and gaming are activities of no boundary. When matching them well, possibilities are endless,” said UMPG China managing director Joe Fang. “I am honored to be partnering with Riot Games on this initiative to create songs to win the heart and mind of the Chinese esport community and celebrate this world renowned event.”
UMPG Australia and Asia Pacific president Andrew Jenkins added that China is a “key creative priority” for the publisher, which recently launched its new UMPG China headquarters in Beijing. The participating UMPG songwriters included Matzka, Gong, CHIYO, Moi Yang, NIA Yang, Tian Mi, JunFeng Xiao, Rtruenahmean, JZlee, Daniel Kim, Dru Chen, Laird Yu, Chris Lyon and Rabitt.
“Putting songwriters first, allowing originality and artistry to shine, and providing a natural platform for creative people to collaborate were the key goals for the Shanghai song camp,” he said. “Thank you to all the amazing songwriters who took part, your songs themselves are the most eloquent expression of how much we succeeded.”
The Los Angeles-based Riot Games released League of Legends (LoL) as its debut title in 2009, and it has gone on to become one of the most popular PC games in the world, helping drive the explosive growth of esports. Over the past few years, the music industry has invested in creating music to soundtrack games like Death Stranding, gaming collective FaZe Clan has worked on merch and music video offerings with record labels like Interscope and Atlantic, and in April, Travis Scott illustrated a further opportunity for music and gaming partnerships with his virtual performance inside the video game Fortnite.
“As a gaming company that values music experiences, we are very happy taking this exploring journey with world leading music publisher UMPG to level up the ‘gaming x music’ creation,” said Riot Games China head of IP and creative Thomas Tang. “We hope Riot Games and UMPG continue this journey from here together to bring more beautiful music experiences to LoL players in China and around the world, as we always put player experiences first.”
