Over the last week or so, there have been many “music + gaming in the metaverse” high notes. We thought it would be a good idea to put them in one place and just put it out there - we believe that the future wave of music will be completely consumed by cutting edge gaming spaces and NFTs! Gamers have shown us the way on this - as we spend even more time hanging out in the metaverse, who wouldn't want to be simultaneously listening to our favorite tunes? And as a latest check in quantifying the NFT market - Sotheby’s reported that the auction house’s NFT sales totaled over $100 million in 2021. Dapp Radar had previously reported that in Q321, NFT sales totalled $10.7 billion, up 8x from the previous quarter (!) I'm still finding myself in conversations with people who wonder if NFTs will actually be a thing. A few years ago, it was a harder argument to make. Now all we can really say is - it's happening!
deadmau5 is a leading force for music innovation in the metaverse
We stumbled onto deadmau5 when we bought his NFT in Mythical’s game Blankos and we are now seeing ears everywhere we turn.
PIXELYNX: so much good is happening at PIXELYNX, with ~40 employees and growing, led by CEO Inder Phull. Founded by Joel Zimmerman (deadmau5) and Richie Hawtin, plus Ben Turner (Graphite, IMS, International Music Summit, AFEM: Association for Electronic Music), Dean Wilson (Seven20 Entertainment / mau5trap). PIXELYNX is developing a new virtual world ecosystem that will allow artists to launch their own interactive environments and monetize them through NFTs, social music experiences and virtual performances.
This week - announced a partnership with Globant, a company with >20k employees “where innovation, design and engineering meet scale.”
Recently announced a partnership with Niantic, Inc. who will power their first mobile game and allow fans to discover and unlock playable NFTs, attend concerts and visit physical locations to collect NFTs (think PokemonGo) that can be used in-game.
Announced $4.5m seed round led by Animoca Brands plus Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, Republic Realm, and Sfermion.
Wolf3D/Ready Player Me: Complementary to PIXELYNX, Wolf3D, led by CEO Timmu Toke, is allowing players to create their own avatars, using their Ready Player Me Hub. The avatars travel between a network of what they believe will be thousands of virtual worlds people visit daily to play games, work, and collaborate.
How many companies are supporting Wolf3D? The chart below is pretty impressive - Ready Player Me avatars are now used by more than 800 companies across the metaverse!
This week, a partner of Ready Player Me called Spatial announced that the company was pivoting from wearables / VR to the NFT space. Spatial noted 80% of current users, mainly NFT creators who want 3D platforms, are accessing Spatial via web and mobile and not via headsets, compared to 80% via headset last year. Side note: at SGC we do not believe people will ultimately wear a lot (if any) gear to enter the metaverse so this is a flippening that makes sense to us!
Finally, check out the site head5.io - 5555 Head5 compatible with 600+ metaverse platforms. Holders of this token will continue to be rewarded with exciting new mau5 projects and integrations 5ever. Listed at the bottom of the page in addition to deadmau5: Ready Player Me, Pixelynx, Smearballs, Metacake.
In another land far, far away called DeFi Land (evoking Farmville)...
DeFi Land, in Beta at the end of this month, will be teaching defi through a gamified experience via its native governance token. The Beta is only accessible now to holders of 10,000 or more DFL ($1300 at time of writing), with only about 800 users playing. Adding to the experience of passive farming is Defi Land's latest integration with Audius, a free, on-chain music streaming platform that allows users to monetize their own music through tokenized listens. DeFi Land will host a radio station in the game where users can choose playlists and songs while they farm. Both DeFi Land & Audius are also on the Solana Blockchain, meaning gas transactions will be much lower than Ethereum. DeFi Land raised $4.1M in September from Alameda Research and Animoca Brands.
Oh and this on the Audius site -
Finally, even though it's not gaming related, we can't end this post without mentioning last week’s sale on the Quincy Jones platform OneOf - Whitney Houston’s never-heard-before demo, recorded when she was just 17 years old, sold for $999,999. According to this list of the most expensive NFTs, this is a record for a music NFT!
Other Important NFT News
Async Art is an NFT platform that we comment on a lot - it is a unique marketplace that helps artists and musicians create NFTs, providing a suite of software tools that allow them to “layer” their art and sell it in pieces - this unlocks a world of collaboration as fans have the ability to change audio, scale, positioning, color, and more. Blueprints are a new feature to the Async platform, which allows artists to create en masse a set of generative NFTs like Bored Apes and Crypto Punks. To kick off their new feature, three of our favorite OG's in the NFT space XCOPY, Coldie, and Alotta Money have each created a set of PFP projects.
This is big news and we need to brainstorm it a bit more but Shopify Plus members are now able to sell NFTs through their storefronts using GigLabs, which creates user-friendly and easily integrated NFT apps. The first storefronts integrated and provided user testing were BreakingT, licensed sports apparel and merchandise, and Infinite Objects, who creates physical frames for NFTs. Shopify Plus storeowners will have access to a streamlined NFT minting experience on the Flow Blockchain.
Coinbase has announced that it's wallet will soon support NFTs in it's browser extension. This new feature will allow users to view NFTs in browser, previously only available in its mobile app, and will also provide the ability to monitor floor prices, i.e. a collection’s lowest priced item, in the extension. Our Take: Coinbase has introduced the browser extension as it has seen a rapid increase in the number of wallet users over the last 60 days, up 300%. The news follows the unveiling of Coinbase’s plans for an NFT marketplace in October and will complement the offering. We would expect to see a UI/UX of the wallet browser extension which is more user-friendly than Metamask.