Composium Digest: Celebverses
№31 | Anouk Dyussembayeva | April 5, 2022
Composium Digest is a newsletter-only addition delivered once a week. Get overviews of interesting stories happening in the music industry, stay informed of various opportunities music startups and companies offer and catch up on some of the Composium articles you might have missed.
A0K1VERSE and all the other celeb-verses
With all the talk around metaverse, NFTs, and web3, we continue to see every other celebrity creating their own metaverse/NFT platform — is it a long-term move or just another hype bubble?
Steve Aoki did an interview about his own NFT-centered metaverse membership platform, A0K1VERSE, just this week (great interview btw). Tom Brady has his own NFT platform, Autograph, which recently raised $170 million Series B funding. 3LAU, who has been actively taking part in this wave since 2021, partnered with JD Ross to launch Royal, and brought Nas onboard to pump out his own NFTs. I mean, even John Legend is now part of the caravan.
If your favorite other musician hasn’t yet minted their own tokens (although I highly doubt it), it’s just a question of time. It seems like all everyone talks about these days is Web3, Web2, NFTs, metaverse, and all the other fancy words. With so many entrepreneurs, artists, celebrities, and companies launching their own platforms, will the bubble soon pop?
At the same time, there are also signs that NFTs, especially given the rise of the metaverse, are here to stay. Both big-name and independent artists strove to diminish the gap between them and their audience, and developing one’s own app/platform seems like the closest step in developing the direct artist-fan relationship. On top of that, there’s the promise of democratizing the creator economy and fair pay.
But then again, we see giant record labels trying to get a piece of that cake — from partnering with NFT platforms to create digital 2D celebrities (Warner x Ownft World) to building music-themed worlds in the metaverse (Warner Music x The Sandbox).
Warner seems to be particularly active in the field, and Universal launched the infamous Bored Ape non-fungible tokens, while Sony is going heavy on buying out music catalogs: it recently bought Bob Dylan’s catalog for about $150 million to $200 million, according to Reuters.
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Catalogzzz
Pophouse Entertainment, co-founded by ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus, bought Swedish House Mafia’s back catalog. The company plans to “amplify” the band’s brand and its presence on the global market.
Pick a partner
SEEHER x BREAKR
The two initiatives teamed up to launch an accelerator program for emerging female artists.
The lucky winners will get performance opportunities, mentors from companies like Billboard and YouTube, and learn more about marketing.
DREAMVILLE x AMAZON MUSIC
The festival inked a broadcast deal with Amazon Music’s Rotation. This means you will get a chance to see J.Cole’s performance without having to attend the festival.
Amazon Music streamed Tyler, The Creator’s concert on Prime Video for free. While concerts and events are returning back to in-person and live, the virtual element still stays present and is here to stay.
With the hybrid model which rose primarily as a result of the pandemic, artists can create more immersive experiences and come up with new ways to interact with their fans. I’m hoping to see more experimentation with that from the industry’s musicians soon.
Stats
BMG racked up around $748 million in its 2021 annual revenue
Vampr now has 1.4 million users
NFTs, NFTs, NFTs
ICYMI, Grammy’s is officially in the NFT boom too. Developed together with OneOf, the exclusive collection was available since March. It offered free tokens as well as a special token that offered an opportunity to travel to the ceremony.
Articles to check out
Financial Times on the NFT craze and whether it brings any actual value to fans
Are super-short songs going to take over the music industry? The Music Network explores this question