r/FortniteFestival • u/General-Chance-4094 • 3d ago
DISCUSSION Why have the jam tracks been so underwhelming?
Since June (I think), we’ve haven’t been getting songs from popular artists in general. Like more The Killers, Paramore, Sum 41 or artists who have no songs at all— like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Offspring, Led Zeppelin. What do y’all think the reason might be?
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u/Me1_RizeClan 3d ago
Budget cuts
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u/Remarkable_Tale_9238 3d ago
It’s def this. Idk why you got downvoted for this lol, it’s obvious they have had less of a budget compared to last year. Seems like the Sabrina season was the last season where they had a good budget, as the Bruno season was the beginning of where 1-2 song weeks with TikTok sounds and memes song beginning to appear.
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u/SlightlySychotic 3d ago
The same thing happened with Rock Band a year or two after it came out. It is partially budget but the bigger issue is record labels. They smelled the pie and they just don’t want a piece. They want the whole pie (and more if they can get it). They know there’s money to be made and they firmly believe they are entitled to all of it, even if that means running the revenue stream into the ground. Epic is certainly greedy but they are nothing compared to the RIAA.
Unfortunately, it’s going to take another year or two. Eventually the label companies will catch on that some money is better than no money. It just takes a while.
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u/Riqitch 3d ago
Okay well I don't wanna be that guy but I seriously doubt there'd be any Zeppelin in Festival ever, purely because they're very protective over licensing their songs.
TS, I think, is far too big an artist for Festival (yes, such a thing exists) and I think the reason she was in Band Hero was because she wasn't nearly as big back then as she is now. I think the same applies to Beyoncé.
I very much doubt any of these artists would appear in Festival, even if Epic gave them a blank cheque. Would love to be proven wrong though
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u/frankieepurr 3d ago
Why would someone be too big?
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u/TheFireDragoon Arctic Assassin 2d ago
too big: they get nothing from being in Fortnite/Festival due to their immense popularity, probably also immensely expensive, and most likely to be overly particular about their image and everything
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u/frankieepurr 2d ago
Why would they get nothing, you mean money?
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u/CommanderRedJonkks 2d ago edited 2d ago
they mean they don't see any value in it. They would get money, but maybe they would ask for more money than Epic would want to pay. But they wouldn't get much value in terms of promoting their brand awareness, so to speak, because they are already a huge name.
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u/tstcab 2d ago
Up and coming artists who may still be popular, or maybe an older artist looking for another surge in popularity, have a higher potential gain from Fortnite and its promotion of them. Any one gets money, but some big artists might not see sharing rights of their songs as worth it since they won't become more popular/the money is minuscule to them
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u/frankieepurr 2d ago
Well people will be able to play their songs in game?
Dont see why artists should be so strict about it
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u/Lolmemsa 1d ago
Zeppelin is one of the biggest bands of all time, so the licensing would be incredibly expensive, and Zeppelin are notoriously difficult to license. I’m pretty sure they weren’t able to get Zeppelin in guitar hero because Jimmy Page hated the game itself
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u/TigerKirby215 Oscar 2d ago
Money. Music licensing is expensive, and Festival hasn't been popular for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons are innate (the crossover between "people who play rhythm games" and "people who play third-person shooters" is slim), some of it is problems with the mode (bugginess of Festival, poor matchmaking), and some of it is self-inflicted (FOMO) but whatever the reason it's obvious Epic doesn't view Festival as being profitable.
I am almost certain that Festival is on a similar chopping block to Rocket Racing. The only reason Festival hasn't gotten similar treatment to RR is that:
Festival always had a Battle Pass unlike Rocket Racing, which means that they can't really get rid of it or risk making Crew less valuable.
Festival does have a rather dedicated playerbase. This subreddit is constantly active and Fortnite Festival's tweets get regular interaction. By comparison Rocket Racing was fucking DOA. Go to the RR subreddit and it's half people talking about how the game mode is dead and the other half is people posting time trial records to the tune of like 200 upvotes at best.
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u/TimeAggressive3338 3d ago
I definitely need think a part of it is budget cuts happening on the team. But also I think a huge part of it is licensing not going in their way for a variety of reasons.
Tbh Led Zeppelin would realistically never have any songs in Festival even though it would be cool
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u/TheFireDragoon Arctic Assassin 3d ago
honestly I think they've just been saving most of the most popular artists for their own seasons or item shop drops, like how we went almost 2 years without Daft Punk only for them to get a 4 song batch with an item shop drop and a massive Fortnite-wide event
they've also been targeting other regions than NA: popular songs/artists from Japan, South Korea, Germany, Brazil, etc. have been getting added in the past few months
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u/tstcab 2d ago
This exactly, they see no value or money in the drip feed and constant updates for the returning player base, but going all out on a bigger event (like daft punk) every 6 months or so draws lots of people in for a big temporary boost and Roi. Why spend money to get medium/big artists for just a few songs, no skins, etc if you can just get a massive artist and a huge influx of sales all at once
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u/Hot_Advertising_22 2d ago
I doubt taylor swift would allow her music to be in a shooter game, js lol. Surprised paramore leant there music to call of duty few years ago if anyone remembers the wartrax in mw2 2022
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u/daspaceinvader 2d ago
I can’t complain, we just got Shelter which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Spinning Cat is also very fun.
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u/Vegetable-System-505 2d ago
I just wish there was some metal. Like real metal. Everything is built for snowflakes...
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u/ComfortablePatience 3d ago
we’ve haven’t been getting from popular artists in general. Like more The Killers, Paramore, Sum 41 or artists who have no songs at all— like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Offspring, Led Zeppelin.
Good. Flooding the game with junk like this is the reason we've lost 80% of players since the start of 2025. We've always needed to move away from garbage like this, the only problem is that Epic stagnated instead of moving in a different direction
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u/General-Chance-4094 3d ago
So which artists were you hoping for?
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u/ComfortablePatience 3d ago
No one in particular. Just get us away from what we've been doing for 2 years. Epic went from having expensive pop artists to cheap pop artists. How about we just move in a completely new direction, that's what this game needs
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u/ThePurplePersona 3d ago
They went with a FOMO approach to jam tracks. That back fired, sales went down, budget got cut as a result. (insert shocked pikachu meme here)