Feed.fm Brings In-Game Music to VR Baseball & Softball
The music licensing provider sees opportunities to enhance VR fitness and gamification experiences with hit songs
Feed.fm is excited to see the future of fitness, especially in the VR and gamification realm.
The music licensing solution provider has partnered with WIN Reality, a virtual reality baseball and softball training platform, allowing athletes and fitness enthusiasts to listen to hit music while hitting it out of the virtual ballpark.
The collaboration recognizes that music is an integral part of baseball culture, particularly for WIN Reality’s primary users: teenagers. However, users of all ages can choose their preferred genre in the app, with Feed.fm providing a streaming channel of well-known, pre-licensed music.
“Music is such a part of the baseball experience – walk-up songs and music between innings, so there’s that immersive piece of it, but then the other piece is the actual impact of music on performance,” said Feed.fm co-founder and COO Lauren Pufpaf.
Incorporating music is more than just another entertainment angle – it’s a fitness strategy.
“There’s a physical, positive impact of people being able to actually push 15% harder when they’re listening to music they like, so it makes a lot of sense in those digital experiences,” Pufpaf tells Athletech News.
In a preliminary test, Feed.fm reports the most popular genres are hip-hop and viral hits from TikTok and other social media platforms. Pop and country music, on the other hand, have taken a back seat for the time being.
The spike in interest in music from social media platforms is one that Feed.fm is seeing across a variety of its clients. The end-to-end music provider also offers an exclusive music rating system, which ensures that lyrical content and song contexts are appropriate for younger users.
The music licensing provider also uses algorithms so users can give real-time feedback on songs they like, dislike or opt to skip. Feed.fm’s music curators then review the results.
Pufpaf shared that Feed.fm can fine-tune music preferences with its social teams, tapping into the sub-genres that fitness enthusiasts want to hear, whether it’s a subgenre of EDM or a different version of a country station.
“Getting that kind of qualitative feedback is really helpful,” she said.
In addition to WIN Reality, the music licensing company recently collaborated with Ergatta, the maker of an interactive at-home rower, to enhance its gamified workouts with music, as well as VirZoom, a VR cycling platform.
Pufpaf sees VR continuing to expand into wellness and sports training.
“We’re seeing some really cool applications of VR starting to pop up, particularly in the idea of performance training,” Pufpaf said. “We are seeing a lot of movement towards the gamification of exercise as well. There’s a couple of interesting VR conversations in the works, but we haven’t closed those yet.”
