For over a decade, Monstercat has cemented itself as one of the world’s leading independent electronic record labels. Home to hit tracks like Marshmello’s “Alone,” SLANDER’s “Superhuman,” Noisestorm’s “Crab Rave,” Pegboard Nerds’ “Razor Sharp,” Tristam & Braken’s “Flight,” Vicetone’s “Nevada,” Dion Timmer’s “Shiawase,” Nitro Fun’s “New Game” and Tokyo Machine’s “PLAY,” along with multiple Kaskade projects and countless other notable releases. Monstercat’s tracks have generated billions of streams, with a roster that ranges from global headliners to underground and up-and-coming talent, releasing music across nearly every genre through its Uncaged, Instinct and Silk brands.
But if you ask a gamer, or most ravers, where they first heard Monstercat, they probably won’t say Spotify. They’ll say the outro of a gaming YouTube video, or playing osu!, or Rocket League, or a Roblox boombox, or Fortnite, or Beat Saber. For a whole generation raised online and playing video games, Monstercat isn’t a label people discovered and then happened to hear in games. It’s a label they discovered because of games. And when you take a step back, it wasn’t an accident, and it isn’t a marketing ploy. Gaming has been a core part of Monstercat’s DNA since its earliest days.
Gaming In Its DNA From Birth
“Monstercat” was quite literally named after a gamertag, from one of the label’s earliest team members. The founders stated they met many of their first artists the way gamers meet anyone: online, in-game, and through the communities that grew up around streaming and multiplayer. When Monstercat launched in 2011 as an independent label uploading tracks to YouTube, the audience that found it first were the gamers. Streamers needed music they were actually allowed to use and monetize, and the booming content industry had creators wanting music that matched the energy of play. Monstercat delivered both.
Its earliest footprints in gaming weren’t licensing deals so much as the label authentically showing up where its community already was. In 2013, Monstercat threw a charity music festival inside Minecraft, putting its artists on a virtual stage and livestreaming DJ sets to raise money for Child’s Play. In 2014, Monstercat FM went live on Twitch as a 24/7 stream, a natural fit for the platform’s first real push into music. Monstercat was one of the earliest labels to recognize how much music and gaming belonged together, and it moved early to make the most of it.
Rocket League: The Sound of the Game
In 2017, Monstercat teamed up with Psyonix to launch Rocket League Radio, the game’s in-game music system, alongside a custom Rocket League x Monstercat album: eighteen bespoke tracks from Monstercat artists that players could set as their menu soundtrack and stream on their favorite platforms. Tokyo Machine’s “ROCK IT” even debuted during the RLCS World Championship esports broadcast, and custom Monstercat cosmetics arrived in-game too, including Monstercat car flags, a decal, and a topper for players to rep on the pitch. Music wasn’t just something playing in the background. It became a core part of the game’s identity.
The collaboration flourished over the next few years, with several more custom albums, including Uncaged and Instinct brand editions, remix collections like Legacy, and themed drops tied to seasonal updates. By 2019, Monstercat tracks were going live in the game the same day they released to the rest of the world, something gaming had never seen before.
Rocket League also rolled out Player Anthems, letting fans equip their favorite Monstercat tracks to play as a goal celebration for everyone in the match to hear. Monstercat kept soundtracking the pro scene across RLCS broadcasts, delivered a dedicated original soundtrack for the mobile spinoff Rocket League Sideswipe in 2021, and brought Lo-Fi flavor to seasonal Frosty Fest events. The two brands genuinely grew up together: Rocket League celebrated Monstercat’s tenth anniversary in 2021 with a special Fan Pack of Player Anthems, headlined by Marshmello appearing in the game for the very first time.
That partnership is still going strong today. Monstercat and Rocket League marked the game’s own tenth anniversary in 2025, including a fan-voted vinyl release, and the official Rocket League x Monstercat catalog has grown to over 300 songs across the game’s in-game music ecosystem. With roughly half a billion streams connected to the partnership and nearly a decade of continued integration, few music collaborations in gaming have reached that kind of scale.
Roblox: The First Label In
By 2020, the interests of youth gaming were shifting fast toward sandbox and online multiplayer worlds. Monstercat saw it early and became the first record label to sign a licensing deal with Roblox, handing developers a set of tracks they could legally drop into the games they were building, with more added over time. For a generation of young creators, having real, cleared music available was groundbreaking.
Monstercat then took its innovation on Roblox a step further, opening Lost Civilization, a custom Roblox world with Monstercat-themed quests, hundreds of tracks, virtual merch, custom cosmetics, and virtual artist meet-and-greets. It was one of the first long-term music activations on the platform, a monumental undertaking for any brand, but just another day for Monstercat. And because its catalog lives in Roblox’s audio library, Monstercat’s music keeps turning up organically across the platform’s biggest experiences, right down to the viral hits kids are playing today, like Steal a Brainrot.
Beat Saber’s First Music Pack
Monstercat’s partnership with Beat Saber, the hit VR rhythm game where players slice blocks to the beat, was another of its many firsts. When the Monstercat Music Pack dropped in 2019, it was the game’s first-ever paid DLC, featuring tracks by Pegboard Nerds, Tokyo Machine, Aero Chord, and Stonebank, hand-picked for a game where the quality of the music literally translates into the quality of the gameplay. The relationship kept going, with a second dedicated Monstercat mixtape years later. In a space where plenty of music never quite syncs with gaming’s tempo, Monstercat’s catalog fit right in.
Monstercat’s Music, Everywhere
Monstercat’s takeover of gaming rolled on. In Fortnite, the label took over the in-car radio station Radio Yonder, dropping twenty tracks into the world’s biggest battle royale, and later handed the station to Kaskade for a Rocket League crossover moment. On mobile, Monstercat teamed up with Amanotes, the most-downloaded music-game publisher in the world, to bring its catalog and exclusive themed levels to hyper-casual hits like Tiles Hop, putting its artists in front of tens of millions of phone-tapping players, a perfect fit for a label so at home in rhythm games.
Monstercat’s music also runs deep in Geometry Dash, the notoriously punishing rhythm platformer, where its tracks have long powered community creations. One of the game’s most famous and brutally difficult levels, Tidal Wave, is built around Dion Timmer’s Monstercat-released “Shiawase (VIP).” For years, Monstercat artists have been part of the broader sound that shaped the game’s creator community, with high-energy tracks that naturally fit its rhythm-based level design. It’s another example of how Monstercat’s catalog found a home in gaming not by forcing itself into the space, but by matching the way players were already building, playing and sharing music-driven experiences.
From Esports Anthems to Boss-Battle Remixes
What makes Monstercat’s footprint in gaming so impressive isn’t just the scale of how many games it has worked with. It’s the range and quality of them. The label has scored games that traditionally would never have touched electronic music, breaking down barriers along the way: competitive shooters and cozy racers, MOBAs and RPGs, arcade cabinets and open-world tours, and its music has managed to feel at home in all of them.
Monstercat worked with Hi-Rez to get its artists custom in-game content, including a Noisestorm “Crab Rave” skin in the MOBA SMITE, with a companion partnership in the hero shooter Paladins. It has stepped into gaming giant Riot’s ecosystem too, delivering an official anthem for the VALORANT Champions Tour and a music-festival collaboration inside Teamfight Tactics.
In 2025, Monstercat made gaming history again with an official 10th-anniversary remix album for the beloved indie RPG Undertale, a collaboration with creator Toby Fox featuring fan-favorite remixers like Øneheart, VGR, and No Mana, and one of those remixes then jumped straight into the arcade rhythm game StepManiaX.
Monstercat’s music has ridden along in the Forza Horizon racing series across multiple titles, and it’s back again in Forza Horizon 6, playing across the game’s Bass Arena and Synthwave stations. The connection extended beyond in-game radio too, with the official gameplay teaser trailer using Haywyre’s Monstercat release “Chromatically” across Forza, Xbox and PlayStation channels, turning the track into part of the game’s wider marketing rollout. Its gaming résumé keeps going from Descenders Next and the in-game radio of American Truck Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator 2 to arcade rhythm cabinets like StepManiaX and countless indie titles.
Not an Accident: The Model Behind the Success
None of this happens by luck. It happens because Monstercat can do things most labels can’t. Because it controls both the master recording and the publishing rights to most of its catalog, a gaming studio can clear tracks in a single conversation instead of chasing down multiple rightsholders for sign-off. That kind of one-stop licensing is something few labels can match, and it’s a quiet reason Monstercat has reached so many games so quickly, with well over a hundred songs placed in titles in a single recent year.
More importantly, those placements make a real difference for the artists. Every song in a game is real money in an artist’s pocket, plus discoverability for their music. Hearing a track mid-game gives players a way to look up who made it, add it to a playlist, and follow a new favorite long after the match is over, which loops right back into more income for the artist. It’s central to Monstercat’s mission of building sustainable, long-term careers, and it’s a big part of how the label authentically earned its reputation as a rare artist-first company that invests in people for the long haul rather than chasing one-off hits the way major labels often do.
For a label rooted in both electronic music and gaming, Monstercat always understood that the two belonged together. The music makes games more magical and immersive for players, and it converts into something meaningful for the artists who make it.
Monstercat never chased gaming. It grew up inside of it.
And at a time when fans are cautious about trusting brands and major labels, Monstercat stands as one of the most trusted and reputable names in both electronic music and gaming, still carrying the same gamertag it started with.