Exclusive Q&A w/ Mark Cantwell, Marketing and Partnerships Director at Lickd

Can you tell us about how Lickd helps content creators in the games space?

Lickd has the world’s biggest catalogue of music for content creators. With over 1.4 million tracks: including songs by Dua Lipa, Coldplay, Justin Bieber and more. We believe gaming creators have the right to access the same high quality mainstream music that all other creative industries have, and that’s why we’ve been campaigning for 8 years.We won’t stop until content creators have access to every mainstream track that TV, Advertising and Movie producers have.

Lickd works with a a lot of gaming creators already,  like MARCUSK (who used seven tracks through Lickd in one video), as well as Smallish Beans, Wifies and Parker. We are proud to have helped these content creators take their content to the next level.

We also work with brands like EPIC Games, specifically on their Support a Creator Program – where Lickd helps to protect YouTube creators from any copyright claims that may arise content that includes music from the game. We are a long-term partner of theirs and love their approach to investing in their creator community.

How does licensed music help gaming creators grow their audience?

It is a huge obstacle for creators, especially those at the start of their career, to find tracks that fit their audience and the tone of their videos. The wrong track could mean your video leaves a small dent or doesn’t land at all.

For creators who use Lickd both in the gaming space and beyond, licensed tracks can help capture the essence of what the video is aiming to achieve in a simple manner, recognisable music helps put it in front of viewers and grabs their attention.

Recently, gaming content creators Chris and Mat from TwoSync had this to say about our service:

‘Lickd is the only platform that’s convinced music labels to allow creators like us to use chart music. There’s over 500K tracks to choose from(actually there are 1.4 Million, but who scrolls that far), that’s more than all of the stock websites combined, that is insane! Our AdSense actually improved with chart music.’ 

Can you tell us about your recent gaming video analysis data, and what it means for the wider industry?

We analysed 5,000 of the best performing games related videos that used mainstream music to see which tracks stood out.

The results showed that there isn’t necessarily a recency bias to what gamers listen to with Coldplay’s 2008 track Viva La Vida, coming 2^nd and John Newman’s 2013 hit Love Me Again at number 7. Most surprising perhaps was the appearance of Howard Shore’s iconic Lord of The Rings score with At the Sign of the Prancing Pony in third place, showing gamers taste is more wide-ranging than just current pop artists.

The data underlines the breadth of what is capable with licensed music and the variety on display showcases how important licensed music is to gaming creators.

What can we expect from Lickd in 2025?

Our mission in 2025 is the same as it was in 2024 to give content creators of any shape and size access to the same mainstream hits that other creative industries have.

We are always looking for ways to innovate with games studios in the way we have with EPIC. For example, we have a product that allows us to stream rights cleared music into virtual spaces (kind of like in store radio, but for virtual spaces).

We would also love to work with a few more brands and studios on helping them use mainstream music in their social content and have built our Brand Tool for just that purpose.

Can you imagine being able to cut your social game trailers with recognisable mainstream music and make them awesome again? Well, talk to us and you won’t have to imagine it any longer.