How Gaming Is Reshaping Music Discovery, And What It Means for the African Music Scene

For decades, radio has been the heartbeat of music discovery. A record breaks on air, builds momentum, and moves from speakers into culture. But today, there’s another powerful discovery engine operating alongside the airwaves, and it’s transforming how music travels the world. It’s gaming.

Video games have evolved from background entertainment into fully immersive cultural spaces where music doesn’t just play, it lives. The turning point came when massive multiplayer games stopped feeling like games and started feeling like cultural spaces. And increasingly, Afrobeats and African artists are finding new global audiences not just through streaming playlists or social media, but inside virtual stadiums, open worlds, and competitive arenas.

Open-world franchises like Grand Theft Auto V built entire in-game radio ecosystems, exposing players to hip-hop, electronic, rock, and global genres as they navigated fictional cities. Sports titles such as FIFA became known for spotlighting international and emerging artists, often introducing players to songs that would later dominate streaming playlists.

When Fireboy DML’s “Scatter” appeared on FIFA 21, it introduced millions of players across Europe, Asia, and the Americas to a distinctly Nigerian sound. For many gamers, that menu loop was their first exposure to Fireboy, long before they searched his catalog on streaming platforms.

That formula has only strengthened. Bad Boy Timz and Olamide landed “Skelele” on FIFA 23, further cementing Afrobeats as part of football culture’s global soundtrack. Now under its new era as eFootball 2025, the tradition continues with artists like Tems whose track “Me & U” brings atmospheric Afrobeats into a competitive, international gaming space. Meanwhile, contemporary Afrobeats collaborations, like Pheelz featuring BNXN on “Finesse,” or Rema and Shallipopi on “Benin Boys” represent the kind of high-energy, rhythm-driven records that naturally fit interactive environments. These tracks thrive on repetition, bounce, and momentum, qualities that mirror gameplay itself.

This isn’t random placement. It’s strategic cultural alignment. Football is global. Afrobeats is global. Gaming connects both.

What makes gaming so powerful for African artists isn’t just reach, it’s immersion. A radio spin lasts three minutes. A gaming session can last three hours.  Songs loop in menus, echo through stadium simulations, and become emotionally attached to moments of victory, rivalry, and connection. When a player scores a last-minute win while an Afrobeats music plays in the background, that song becomes part of a memory.

And it’s not limited to sports titles.

Open-world and lifestyle platforms are expanding the ecosystem. The Sims 4 recently introduced African artists such as Fola, Chella, Ogbonjayar, Amaarae, and Rocky Dawuni into its in-game music rotation. The Sims franchise has long been known for translating songs into its fictional “Simlish” language, meaning African records are now woven directly into gameplay culture in unexpected, creative ways. That kind of exposure subtly normalizes African sound in households across continents.

There’s also a generational layer to this shift. Younger audiences don’t separate their entertainment into neat categories. Music, gaming, social media, and culture blend seamlessly. A gamer might first hear an Afrobeats track while navigating a tournament mode, clip a highlight for TikTok, then add the song to their personal playlist. The discovery path is fluid, and often starts inside the game.

For the music industry, this shift is more than a trend. It’s structural, and most importantly for the African music industry, this represents something bigger than a sync deal. It’s infrastructure. Gaming companies now function as global curators, shaping taste across borders at scale.

And unlike past eras, African artists are no longer peripheral to global soundtracks, they are central to them.

Afrobeats’ rhythm, tempo, and cross-cultural appeal make it uniquely suited to interactive spaces. It’s celebratory, kinetic, and emotionally resonant are perfect for competitive and social gameplay.

Gaming companies now sit alongside radio, streaming platforms, and social media as key tastemakers. A well-placed track in a global franchise can trigger massive Shazam spikes, streaming growth, and social buzz. For emerging artists, landing inside a major title can be career-defining.

None of this replaces radio. In many ways, it complements it. Radio remains immediate, communal, and rooted in real-world connection, the shared experience of a city or region tuning in together. But gaming extends that communal experience into digital spaces where audiences are spending increasing amounts of time.

The airwaves introduce the sound. The game worlds embed it in memory. And for Afrobeats, that combination may be one of the most powerful global accelerators yet.

What’s clear is that discovery is no longer confined to one channel. It happens in cars, on smart speakers, on streaming platforms and now inside virtual worlds.