Sony: some spend thousands on SingStar

By Robert Purchese Published 10 August, 2011

"A very few" own over 900 songs.

How many extra SingStar songs have you bought and downloaded? 10, 20?

Pathetic.

There are people out there - "a very few" - who own more than 900 SingStar songs, Sony revealed to Eurogamer - a figure that represents roughly £1000 of content.

There are even "a few hundred users who have downloaded over 500 songs".

SingStar songs today cost £1.15 to download individually or £5.35 to download as part of a multi-track Song Pack.

Those statistics and more were revealed to Eurogamer by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and follow an illuminating comment made by SingStar game director Dave Ranyard at the Develop Conference 2011.

He said he'd been told about "someone who's got 735 songs in SingStar", which he worked out to be "about £800 of content they've bought".

Sony went on to tell Eurogamer that 27 per cent of SingStar users have downloaded more than 40 songs; 64 per cent have downloaded more than 10 songs; and 89 per cent have downloaded more than one song.

You can supplement your song collection by buying SingStar PS2 or PS3 disc releases, which contain anything up to 30 new songs. But songs on another disc cannot be ripped and stored on the PS3 hard drive - you must have the appropriate disc inserted to play.

SingStar was released on PS3 in 2007, and was awarded 8/10 in Eurogamer's SingStar PS3 review. Numerous supplementary releases - as well as wireless microphones and dance and guitar-enabled editions - have launched since then.

There was SingStar Vol. 2, SingStar Vol. 3 and SingStar ABBA in 2008; SingStar Pop Edition, SingStar Queen, SingStar Motown and SingStar Take That in 2009; and SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar in 2010.

SingStar Back to the '80s was announced for PS3 earlier this month. The game will be out in time for Christmas.

SingStar Dance and SingStar Guitar add new angles to the karaoke game.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 10 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RodHull #1 10 months ago

    I'm glad I'm not their neighbour.

  • thefan604 #2 10 months ago

    why don't you reward them for wasting money then

  • gjgjg #3 10 months ago

    Did it mention if the ip was located In the crazy house?
    Also that's where guitar hero went wrong, too much plastic crap not enough virtual crap.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #4 10 months ago

    Wow the attach rate on those downloads is extremely high, much higher than i thought it would be, clearly a very passionate consumer buys singstar, i know my mrs has bought like 20 songs, but i thought she was an exception not the rule.

    I guess this means we will be seeing singstar updates for a long time to come.

  • wez_316 #5 10 months ago

    I'm sure a lot of these people who own that many songs will run a karaoke night in a pub or something. I don't know what the legality of that is but it probably happens.

  • Eldritch #6 10 months ago

    Sounds like a very good business model, hats off to them.

    Still, the thought of people spending 1,000 quid on DLC is somewhat unsettling...

  • miiiguel #7 10 months ago

    Great and deserved, the best thing that happened to video-gaming since chukie egg.

  • skunkfish #8 10 months ago

    Once a month me and my girlfriend will buy a handful of new songs, having picked up most of the PS3 discs already (I never want to hear another ABBA song again!). Actually running out of good songs to buy in the store now...

  • Skooch #9 10 months ago

    ZOMG!!! +1 to Miiiguel for mentioning Chuckie Egg....that was an awesome game. I played it for hours on my Amiga 500 until Double Dragon took over... :D

  • LazyDan #10 10 months ago

    It is a great game - the maker of many party evenings. And people buy the songs because they're reasonably priced, you get the video to go with it, and the store is at least moderately simple to use. It could be simpler though - some kind of Amazon-style 1-click purchase would be incredibly dangerous on pissed up nights. Especially if they put some kind of 'similar songs to this' feature into the game and let you do your 1-click purchase from there...

  • JayScott #11 10 months ago

    I love it, and have purchased about 140 songs. It's just a pity that the SingStore (at least in Australia) is so freakin' sloooow. Couple that to the fact that recently I have had to re download all 140 three times because of borked consoles, and it is quite annoying.

    Still, nothing beats a good SingStar night.

  • kingpin3000 #12 10 months ago

    I think I must be around the £80 mark. I really haven't got my money's worth when I think about it. But I have no regrets because the few parties I have used it at were very, very fun.

  • layleeloo #13 10 months ago

    That is just a bit sad in that no one would want to sing that many in the present catalogue. My circle of friends have around a couple of hundred - there's a difference between liking a song and wanting to sing it. There's probably aout another 200 I like but wouldn't buy as they are just not songs I'd wanna sing - but I'd listen to them etc. Some people must just have the completists attitude and a very fat wallet

  • kingcrowbar #14 10 months ago

    I'd bet they have lost sales since upping the price of tracks from 99p though.

  • MasonMk #15 10 months ago

    I think i have brought around 100, it's just so easy to plonk down a fiver now and then for 5 songs, howevevr now that the updates are getting worse (although this week is a better one) and song prices have increased i haven't brought as many lately. Still love singstar though, and glad it's still doing well so they keep on supporting it. Now get some more 2011 songs on there!

  • havoc2011 #16 10 months ago

    You have unlocked a trophy: "Big Spender - purchase 1000 songs."

  • Ryze #17 10 months ago

    I grabbed Singstar with a dual mic pack a few days after I got my PS3.

    I have bought... 0 songs for £0

    I spent my first session browsing the store, and put probably 10 songs in my 'basket'. When I went to pay, I got a stupid SonyPSNfail message, and my basket emptied.

    I haven't been back.

    The people buying ALL of the songs are probably DJs who have a PS3 as part of their equipment, or pubs who host karaoke nights weekly.

    That's VERY likely the situation there, as it's a great video karaoke jukebox.

  • chrisjm #18 10 months ago

    wonder if they purged test / dev accounts from that list :)

  • edhe #19 10 months ago

    If you find the game you love then you'll treat it as a platform in itself and spend the money on it.

  • Toothball #20 10 months ago

    That's not so surprising, I've got over 900 tracks for Rock Band and am still far behind some people I've spoken to. With a music game, having as wide a range of music as possible is a significant benefit when playing with friends or parties and the like. That way no one can back out with the excuse "But I don't know any of the songs".
    Edited by Toothball at 10/08/11 @ 14:00

  • layleeloo #21 10 months ago

    @tooth ball. But then don't you say "I have no money left to afford snacks for a night in" etc ;)

  • Atropos #22 10 months ago

    I've got about a 150 - usually because of house parties were everyone gets to pick three songs to buy, which we then sing drunkenly. Adds up quickly.

  • Farzlepot #23 10 months ago

    "That way no one can back out with the excuse "But I don't know any of the songs"."

    That's my usual excuse. Works too. I'm enough of a cultural Luddite that even with a thousand tracks I still probably wouldn't know the words to any of them.

  • Mattattattatt #24 10 months ago

    Yeah, I've bought too many. (Not that many though!)

    I'm always slightly vexed that Sony won't let me play my downloads through the SingStar viewer. They've gone that way with Buzz now.