Here's How to Get Your Song on EA's FIFA Videogame
A guide to successfully submitting your music for consideration in EA's FIFA video game.

Getting your song to a huge audience is a big deal. Such is the magnitude of the task that it's one of the major selling points of record labels. You make music, and they'll distribute it. But life's not that simple for an indie artist. You have to make the music and find a way to get it out to as many people as you can. The good news is you don't have to go door to door sharing CDs. Thank God for the internet, eh?

Social media is one of the biggest gifts that came with the internet, but that's not the only way to reach people. Social media is such a great idea because so many people use it. So you're putting your music out in a place where tons of people come every day.

What if I told you that social media is not the only place that tons of people go to every day? There's this thing called video games, it's a massive catch for many people, and there aren't many game franchises bigger than FIFA.

Why You Should Want to Get Your Song on FIFA

Massive Popularity

FIFA is perhaps the biggest sports simulation game on the planet. For perspective, FIFA has made more sales than NBA 2K and Madden NFL combined. That is just astonishing if you ask me. On average, about twenty thousand people play FIFA every single day. That's more than enough of an audience to launch your career into the spotlight.

Having your song on FIFA exposes you to a big audience full of young people. These same young people are the ones all over social media and the internet in general. If you play your cards right, having your song on FIFA could have you in Dreamland.

Helpful Connections

To help pick songs for the game, FIFA has a team of professionals that function like a record label's A & R team. This means if you make the cut, you get to work and connect with top-quality musical pros. The connections you make there will be valuable in helping you move to the next stage of your career.

You'll meet producers, fellow indie artists, more established artists, and several other members of the music industry. Who you know is better than what you know, the saying goes. It's more true than many indie artists realize, but you can get ahead of the curve.

Five Tips to Getting Your Song on FIFA

Now you know why getting your song on FIFA is a worthy pursuit. Next, you need to learn how to get your song on FIFA. As you would expect, huge franchises like FIFA get tons of entries so you must stand out from the crowd. Here are five tips that will help you do that...

Have an online presence

First of all, you need to have built your career up to a respectable level. If you're a brand-new artist, don't even bother. To get the attention of a big game like FIFA, you should at least have built up a following of your own. You don't need to have hundreds of thousands of fans, but you should have built up a decent following.

Build your social media presence so that you're not completely unknown. This gives the FIFA song selection team something to look at.

As we delve deeper into the music submission process you start to see how competitive it can be. Don't give up.

Research the FIFA sound

As much as FIFA doesn't require a specific genre, there's still a type of sound they look out for. So go through the FIFA playlists from the last five years to figure out exactly what kind of sound they seem to be going for. This will guide your choice of what kind of music to make.

For example, it helps to have some football references in your lyrics. A song completely about football, on the other hand, might be a tad too much. You wouldn't know this if you don't take a look at the songs that have made the cut in the past.

Build the right relationships

Again, who you know is better than what you know. The right connections will raise your chances of getting your song in FIFA by a mile. You might be getting confused by all this talk of confusion, but stay with me. You need connections to get the FIFA gig where you'll get even more connections to move you up to bigger things. Does that make sense? Good...

So as you build your social media presence, build relationships too. As you grow, your circle of connections will grow wider. This will give rise to better opportunities, which in turn will give better connections, and so the cycle continues.

Start small

Here's another cliche but absolutely true statement. FIFA is the biggest sports simulation game on the planet. If you go right up there from the start, you're like a small fish in a big pond. So start small and work your way up. Get your songs on smaller video games that give you a better chance of getting picked and also allow you to grow. Having experiences like this allows you to show a track record when you get to the big stage. And nothing stands testament to your authenticity more than a track record.

Here's a pro tip. EA Sports have run the FIFA franchise for years, but they have smaller games. Instead of trying to get on random games, target EA Sports games. This way, you're starting small but you're also making yourself a familiar name. By the time you're ready for the big fish, you'll be no stranger to EA Sports.

If you're looking to make music placement part of your music career be ready to network and put the work in.

Make professional submissions

Work on your tone and package delivery. You want to be as professional as possible to make a great first impression. Don't send a demo, send an EPK instead. Don't scream at any executive by typing in all caps, be polite and straightforward instead. Don't send a home recording, send a well-produced track that's ready for licensing. Don't be a bore, but be professional.

They Might Say No Outside Submissions

As you’ll probably notice, there’s no very direct way to get your music onto FIFA because according to EA support forum they say:

"We would generally reach out to artists in order to use their music rather than the other way around, sorry.

The below link is not an exact fit for this situation:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/how-do-i-submit-my-idea-for-a-game” – According to EA’s support forums

Many years back the EA community support also stressed:

“Former Director of Music Relations for Electronic Arts/EA Sports, and current CEO of Eckhardt Consulting Randy Eckhardt:

"Don’t bother trying to meet with top-level people right away,” he suggests. “Seek out smaller developers first, as it certainly helps to show that you’ve had placement before. The current expansion into online social games that are using not as rich and deep content has expanded opportunities to score smaller games."

So, as you see they have their gatekeepers in place, however, things change. One of the last things you can do is build relationships with other artists who have already placed their music with EA games and get a referral from them.

If you are a great songwriter or great music producer, that’s your in to make connections with other EA games music artists as they are always in need of the next hit song or beats. Key point is to network, network, and network some more.

Final Thoughts

Consider the flow of water. The more you let water gather, the more strength it flows with. When it hits an obstacle, it always looks for the slightest space to sneak through. Water does not always overcome obstacles through brute force, but sometimes by sheer persistence. This is the attitude you must adopt as an indie artist.

Getting your song on FIFA might seem unorthodox and unusual, but it could be the crack through which you sneak into the spotlight. Your big break is coming, all you need is a little persistence.