If you love singing in the car or shower, Realize Music: Sing is about to blow your mind. The stunning new virtual reality app, which launches this week via Meta Quest, invites users to belt out their favorite songs in transcendent, interactive dreamscapes – without the anxiety that an audience might elicit. With over one million songs from the biggest artists in the world, Sing appeals to all music fans with the biggest catalog ever presented in a game.
Created by Mark Roemer (a longtime creative executive) and Mike Wilson (veteran game publisher and co-founder of Devolver Digital), Sing puts players into surreal environments where their voices help to reshape the world around them. A great leap forward from karaoke, Realize Music: Sing offers an immersive experience that’s as much a wellness ritual as it is a joyous escape from the stresses of the day.
“It’s singing for yourself,” Roemer explains. “You lose your self-consciousness, and you exist only as a voice. Most people are very self-conscious to sing in front of even one other person, but when you lose your environment and you’re transported elsewhere, it’s much different. It’s therapeutic and there’s real magic in that.”
“At the moment, users can put themselves into fantastic expanses with beautiful scenery where the lyrics are projected in the sky,” he adds. “When you put the headset on, you’re no longer in your living room. You’re now standing on a cliff, on a Scandinavian plane and there’s rainclouds in the distance. You exist solely as a voice and there are stars that emit from your mouth when you sing. And those stars travel up to meet with the lyrics of your favorite song – whether it’s by Kendrick Lamar, The Killers, Billie Eilish or your favorite classic rock band.”
Built in Unreal Engine — the same tech that powers the mind-melting visuals at the Las Vegas Sphere — Realize Music: Sing was designed to make that feeling both personal and spectacular. Each note you hit, hum, or even whisper ripples through vast otherworldly spaces. You can drum, paint streaks of light, search for songs with your voice, or lie back completely reclined while the universe moves with your melody.
Moving forward, Roemer says the sky is the limit with what Sing will offer visually. “As the headset technology increases, we anticipate photorealistic environments.” At some point in the future, when the device fidelity is in place, the plan will be to offer venues. So the hope is that VR can put users onstage at Coachella, Red Rocks, Wembley or Madison Square Garden.
For now, thanks to blanket licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment, Sing launches with more than a million songs — making it the largest licensed music library ever in a video game. Be it Chappell Roan, Green Day or Greta Van Fleet, users can pick a song and instantly be transported into a stunning virtual world, with lyrics projected across the sky in glowing script.
That scale wasn’t easy to achieve. “It took about 18 months to make those deals,” Roemer says. “But we had something truly different — an experience that helps people feel good through popular music. Once the labels saw that, they wanted in.”
“We offered the possibility of streaming music to the VR headset in a way that hadn’t been done before,” Roemer explains. “In the past a game would download to the headset or console and you’d have it locally. But we built a live operation. So when you choose a song, it queries a catalog, pulls the song, queries another catalog, pulls the lyrics for that song and joins them together in less than half a second and presents it to you. It’s quite a feat of engineering.”
To get started, players can preview the experience for free via Meta Quest, purchase individual tracks or albums a la carte or subscribe for unlimited access. Subscriptions launch at $9.99 for the first two months before moving to $14.99 per month or $119.00 per year. It is available on the Quest 2 and later devices, with plans for other platforms to follow next year.
Wilson and Roemer found inspiration for Sing during the pandemic, when isolation, uncertainty and depression were at an all-time high. “Singing is tied to our health and wellness,” Roemer explains. “It regulates your breathing, increases your lung capacity, stimulates your vagus nerve and can even bring on frisson – those goosebumps and full body chills that you get when you connect on a cellular level with a piece of art or music. “You know that feeling that you might get when you’re at a concert the artist starts singing one of your favorite songs and the hair stands up on your arm? That’s rare. But it’s a regular experience when people put the VR headset on, sing and connect with the music in these environments. That’s how I knew we were onto something really special.”
“Most people are afraid to sing in front of others,” Roemer adds. “Maybe in the past someone told them that they were no good at it. So we sing when we know we’re alone, but we stop ourselves the minute someone might hear us. With Sing, we put the person inside the song. It gives us permission to sing our hearts out and allows us to emote. It eliminates that fear of being evaluated and allows us all to achieve that simple, beautiful, primal, cathartic release. And it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.”
Find Realize Music: Sing here.
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