Hidden Bands

Hipster Bait

In-app purchases

Find new music first for free.

About this game

From March 4–25, 2022 we have a special event called “Tape Traders”.

For this event we are sharing emerging European, Canadian and USA artists. During the Challenge, we have created launch locations in 5 European cities: London, UK; Milan, Italy; Berlin, Germany; Zürich, Switzerland; and Stockholm, Sweden. People living in these cities can use the Hidden Bands app for the month of March. After the event ends the Hidden Bands app will no longer be available outside of North America. We hope to be back in the future. Thank you for understanding.

Find new music first for free.

Hidden Bands is an interactive rock & roll music discovery game. Players use location-based augmented reality to find, discover, rate and re-hide unreleased rock songs from up-and-coming artists.

How Hidden Bands works:

Find the song.
Players find unreleased singles, hidden somewhere in the real world.

Get the tune.
Players rate the single and cache it to their Cassette Box for a limited time.

Reset the trap.
Players hide the song in a new location and create a clue for the next person.

Connecting new music with new fans in a way that's actually fun.

Hidden Bands was created to unite the desires of our audience music – enthusiasts and mobile gamers with the needs of independent artists looking to engage with fans in a cooler way. Hidden Bands complements a modern and diversified launch strategy, letting artists reach audiences in – literally – the most unexpected places.

More about the game.

Use two feet and a heartbeat
Dive bars, coffee shops, cemeteries, public washrooms... music really is everywhere. And we're not talking about the sweet sound of the wind in the trees. We're talking about rock n roll, baby.

Find a song and play it.
When you're close, you'll see the augmented Cassette appear on your phone screen. Tap it, and it'll automatically arrive into your Cassette Box. Go on, try it.
Rate that song.

Do you love it? Does it suck? Songs are anonymous for their two weeks in the game – you won't know who the band is, so you're basing your opinion on the music alone... no preconceived notions or bias.

Think of a cool place to re-hide it.
Leave a badass hint (write a clue, snap a pic) for the next person to find. Or keep the cassette for a few weeks and hide it after you know who the band is. The further away the better. We're trying to infect the world with rock.

Music is fun. Games are fun. It's a music game.

Need we say more? We'll say more anyway. Our game encourages engagement by offering incentives to find and hide more new music.

Collect points.
Players make their way up in the Charts by becoming serial hide-and-seekers. Our superfans don't go unnoticed.

Earn badges.
Get creative, be rewarded. Players learn about historical rock & roll locations in their city and collect badges along the way.

Exclusive content.
Hidden Bands artists give us unreleased singles only. Players get exclusive access to the new tracks.

Grow email lists.
Players can opt in to artists' mailing lists to stay informed, allowing bands to expand their promotional reach.

The ‘Holy Grail’ of Hidden Bands

We’re not talking about Jesus’ pimp cup—we’re talking about real, physical cassettes that you can play in your vintage tape deck of choice.

Yes, a limited number of legit cassettes have been hidden across the continent. They’re a little harder to find. Will you be among the lucky few to discover one of these coveted treasures?

We won’t even blame you if you keep it.

Ratings and reviews

Downloaded for finding local music, but not really a fan of the Pokemon Go style game play, I wish gps free exploration was thing, I'm not really sure how'd that work, so I guess that's just a personal problem for me. But otherwise, I really love this app!! It's pretty quirky and funny with some of the badges and ratings are written. Already found an amazing band, still keeping it downloaded, love doing anything to support local bands :)

So far so good. Best way to describe it is Pokemon go but for music. I thought the app would have more to do with supporting local artists or finding small shows. Where I see this app can fail is having trouble establishing community and encouraging people to go outside. If it had more to do with shows perhaps player submitted locations for people who just wanna gather for live music like snapchat public stories that have hot spots then it could flourish but there's no encouragement to go out

seems alright so far, don't like that you absolutely have to go somewhere to get new music. i appreciate the thought behind it and everything but i have limited mobility because of my disability and realistically i can't walk or drive every time i want to discover new stuff. would be great if you had an option for gps-free music exploration 🤙

What's new

- We've fixed a spelling error when you're using the Armatron.
- We've updated our analytics.