The Role Of Music In Online Slot Games

Music is important for how we experience an event, especially a digital one. Sometimes music is the event, as we see with live music shows, but the internet has created a raft of new online experiences that need a soundtrack, where a live band won’t work. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to create and apply music to slot games and other forms of entertainment. Here’s why that music is important.

Music Is Everywhere To Set Tone

First, we should touch base with the music we’re talking about here. Familiar, licensed music aside, so many slot games have music attached to them. While the genre can and does vary dramatically, this music is ubiquitous and aims to enhance your experience.

This exploded with iGaming, where digital slots made it easier than ever to pack music into the game file instead of blasting music across a casino floor. In online slots, you get so many games that share core features but come in many different themes and styles, so there’s a lot of creative opportunity there visually and musically. When looking at slots at Paddy Power Bingo, this variety can be seen with games like Eye of Horus to Cosmic Cash. One needs Egyptian-style music while the other has space-age synth music, and then there’s games in between like Ancient Disco that fuse house music with an Egyptian setting.

In each case, the music needs to set tone and accompany the player, adding to the game without distracting. The same principle follows music in movies, where a soundtrack can take away from the experience if it’s too loud and takes audience’s attention away from the entertainment. With slots, if there’s no clear theme, you typically find that digital experiences lean towards synthesizers and genres like house and electronic music.

Music Is A Part Of The Game

Music and other forms of audio design often have a more important role – informing the player of certain events or actions they may need to take. While musical loops are common to establish tone and follow the player through the game, musical stings and other cues are a great, unobtrusive way to inform the player. Music can also help players engage with the game, as has been discussed with music’s effect on productivity, explained by Help Scout.

It’s common for music soundtracks to signal a win, for example. They’re not necessary – players could still see a win if they muted the game – but it adds a lot to the experience and further engages those who do play with music on. The same can’t be said for those that can’t see well, who can use music cues to help them play. In those more thematic games that try to take you to ancient Greece or Egypt, it can become more immersive. Playing those kinds of games with a deafening silence can definitely take away from the experience as intended by the game developer.

Music Needs To Loop But Not Be Repetitive

Repetitive tends to be a bad word when used to describe music. However, repetition is key to music and is present in every musical piece – it’s just satisfying when done well, so we don’t take ‘repetitive’ away from the experience. When music is used for digital entertainment, it needs to cover a lot of ground which exposes it to the risk of becoming repetitive.

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Fortunately, we have ways to make background music easy to listen to. As Healthline mentions here, music with lyrics can be more distracting than music without. For casual audiences, the difference between music and background music is if it has lyrics or not. Background music also avoids niche genres that don’t have widespread appeal, since background music that’s grating or distasteful becomes distracting too.

The exception to that is found with our themed examples, typical Egyptian-styled music doesn’t stand out too much when playing, even though most people wouldn’t listen to it in their spare time. As for non-theme genres, that’s why house and electronic music have become a popular style for online slot games with modern and futuristic aesthetics. It’s lively, lyric-less, and relies on positive repetition.