State of the Music Metaverse 2022
A Tour of 3D Worlds, NFTs, and the Future of Music
In 2021, the music industry was rocked by a revolution that will forever change how musicians earn a living.
On March 11, 2021, an Instagram artist who had never sold a print for more than $100 prior to October 2020 sold an NFT at auction for $69 million. That sale rocked the headlines and catapulted the burgeoning NFT community into the limelight. Two weeks later, NFTs were featured on Saturday Night Live. Between January and June, several music NFT drops raised more than $1m in hours, and in some cases, minutes.
As the NFT narratives captivated the world, trading volume on the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea exploded from a few million to over $3 billion.
In the span of just a few months, the narrative shifted from “WTF is an NFT?” to “how do I release my music as NFTs?”
What is the Music Metaverse?
The metaverse is the online world. There are many ways to experience the metaverse, and a lot of people forget that we’ve already been living half our lives in the metaverse for a couple of decades now, but usually we’re talking about 3D worlds and/or Blockchains, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies. NFTs and cryptocurrencies are just the means of exchanging something valuable over the internet without the clunky processes of banks and trusted third party marketplaces.
Quick tips on the metaverse:
- There is only 1 metaverse, like there is only 1 internet.
- There are many metaverse worlds — like sites on the internet.
- The best metaverse worlds let you own stuff. Permanently. Even if the companies that made that stuff go out of business and stop paying their bills, using technology like NFTs, cryptocurrencies, cryptonetworks, Web3, and decentralized storage.
- We say “in the metaverse” like it’s a destination you visit. Conversely, we say “on the internet” or “on TV”. This is a reflection of inclusiveness. In the metaverse, the visitor is part of the experience.
This change is not a passing fad. Like the internet, it’s transformative tech that’s going to permeate every industry and change consumer expectations forever.
The music metaverse is anything musical happening in the metaverse.
Exploring the Metaverse
The introduction of new mediums of expression almost immediately began to influence how artists approach their art. Excited about new opportunities to collaborate and explore artistic expression, artists dove head first into the metaverse in 2021, pushing the boundaries and producing many first-of-a-kind projects.
BT approached his NFT album, Metaversal, as much as a metaverse experience as it was an album. In Ready Player One fashion, they crafted an elaborate treasure hunt that involved digging under the hood of digital experiences to find secret files and clues that eventually led to a (claimed) 3 ETH reward (now worth more than $11k USD). One of the steps in the treasure hunt unlocks a secret song in the Neon District NFT-backed RPG.
In November, Decentraland hosted their first Metaverse Festival which included a lineup of 80 music acts, including some of my favorites, Deadmau5 and KJ Sawka.
Speaking of KJ Sawka (the incredible, pioneering drum and bass drummer from legendary bands Pendulum and Destroid), he also played a killer Decentraland set in the Speakerheads “this is a metaverse festival”.
Decentraland was the place to be in the 2021 music metaverse. Amnesia Ibiza opened a superclub with DJ sets by Paul Van Dyk, Benny Benassi, Yves V, and Burak Yeter.
As I write this article, Amnesia is bumping with club JENR8, the official Decentraland home of the DJenerates, is hosting a launch party featuring Claude VonStroke and Hipworth. Claude VonStroke is the founder of Dirtybird Records and the Dirtybird Flight Club NFT collection.
Metaverse Worlds
Decentraland ruled the music metaverse in 2021 but it will face challengers in 2022. The Sandbox opened alpha access to Windows users for a while and are gearing up for another alpha release soon. If you’ve been paying attention, you probably saw the NFT drop collab with Snoop Dogg.
We’re looking forward to the upcoming launch of Ristband — unlike Decentraland or The Sandbox, Ristband promises a high-fidelity graphical experience closer to what you’d expect from today’s AAA games.
Hopefully Ristband can bring an NFT-backed open metaverse world experience that rivals the concerts being hosted in AAA game worlds. Speaking of which, the game engines also stepped things up in 2021, and we expect more in 2022.
Post Malone played a concert for Pokémon’s 25th anniversary party.
Meanwhile, WaveXR hosted Justin Bieber, Beatport Beyond, and Dillon Francis in 2021.
In 2022, expect to see a lot more virtual influencers emerge in the music space. For example, Teflon Sega started life as a 2D character releasing music videos on social media and racking up millions of views across platforms like Instagram and YouTube. He recently expanded into 3D avatar form and started producing virtual concert performances and music videos made with virtual production.
If you’re interested in creating your own virtual avatar performances, here’s a quick overview of common equipment:
In 2022, expect to see several music acts whose public faces are from NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club’s band, Kingship, signed by Universal Music Group. Wobblebug is a virtual alien music artist created by Grammy-nominated producer, Wuki. Wobblebug has produced a generative PFP (profile picture) NFT collection, 3D avatar, Snapchat lens, etc.
Metaverse concerts don’t have to be 3D rendered. Underoath created an amazing concert film using physical cameras, screens for walls, and clever video editing to make the whole thing feel more live than many of the 3D-rendered metaverse “concerts” that happened in 2021.
I wish I could share the whole thing, but it’s unreleased. For a better view of what’s happening on those screens, check this out:
What to Expect in 2022 and Beyond
In 2022, we expect to see some big changes in the music NFT space. Several big players will introduce music NFT offerings. We would not be shocked to see major players like Coinbase NFT and Shopify selling music NFTs in the coming months, and that will onboard millions of new fans.
User friendly solutions like the ability to price in USD, checkout with regular credit cards, and create accounts by clicking a button instead of wrangling confusing private keys are going to revolutionize usability and make the environment far more user friendly, and that is going to usher in the next big wave of users.
Likewise, the price barrier will start to come down as well, especially as artists with established followings offer something for every price-point. At the low-end of the price range, large, open editions of album covers and inexpensive collectible audio visualizations and lyric videos would work well.
So far, we haven’t seen much of that, but most artists are already producing those materials to promote their releases on Spotify and vinyl. For example, Lala Lala and WILLOW are producing a wealth of incredibly rich source material for NFT drops.
It makes sense that over the next year or two as the usability barrier improves, those kinds of existing art treasures will be shared with the world in the form of NFTs.
That doesn’t mean that ultra-exclusive NFTs will go away. We predict 1/1 music NFT offerings to sell for millions of dollars in the future, and we expect serial #1 from a collection of 10 million to also attract prices in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Getting in early with an upcoming band that eventually becomes the next legendary culture maker will be more rewarding than ever before in history.
Trends to Watch
- Community focused collections and passes to rally fans around shared goals.
- More inclusive pricing options and better UX
- Generative collections and new ways to make and experience music, collectively.
- Metaverse expansion — 3D, extended reality, virtual production, virtual performances, performance venues, party spots, and collaboration spaces in the metaverse.
- Streaming concerts and festivals. If you didn’t record and stream your event, did it really happen? You’re missing out on a global audience and a lifetime of secondary market sales revenue.
- AI — virtual musicians with intelligence — beings who can make music, explain what it means to them, and the process they used to create it. We’re already starting to see early glimpses of that in projects like The Ghost of Frank Dukes.
Notable Music NFT Projects
Let’s take a quick survey of some of the most inspiring music NFT projects we learned about in 2021.
Gramatik, Luxas, Audioglyphs — Synthopia
In December, Gramatik, Luxas and Audioglyphs dropped Synthopia, a collection of unique generative audio NFTs, where the music and graphics are created in realtime in the browser, and the data used to generate them is stored entirely on the blockchain. Generative music that runs live in the browser, accompanied by generative visuals.
“With the Audioglyphs DAW, Gramatik and Luxas created a song called Synthopia Prime, implemented as a signal processing graph with more than 200 DSP nodes. More than 100 parameters of these nodes are randomized, with ranges carefully designed to produce musical results.”
BT — Upcoming Generative Drop
We’ve already briefly mentioned BT’s Metaversal NFT Album. BT recently announced a new generative project featuring realtime animation.
Timbaland — Opera Noir
Timbaland announced the Opera Noir NFT collection — stems released as NFTs that buyers can collect and remix in an online mixing machine (not yet released as of this writing). Collectors who collect 5 stems will be receive a limited edition full song NFT. The first batch of stems have dropped from the first auction. There are more auctions planned, so it may not be too late to mint.
The Ghost of Frank Dukes
Ghost of Frank Dukes from 3x Grammy winning producer 30x Grammy nominated producer (The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, etc.) who has produced a very popular sample library since 2011. A 9999 PFP NFT project with plans to integrate an NFT-backed sample library.
Frank Dukes has moved on from the Frank Dukes persona and is now going by Ging. But the Frank Dukes era continues in The Ghost of Frank Dukes project.
Music Machines
Music Machines is a collection of 8080 NFTs that use 40% of all sales to fund music artists and reward members with free NFTs and ETH. Artists can apply for a grant of up to $15,000, and members of the Studio DAO (token holders) get to vote on who gets funded.
SpeakerHeads
SpeakerHeads is a collection of 8,888 randomly generated NFTs with art by Dave Caron (Hoverchair Studios). Each NFT acts as a VIP pass, cool poster-style artwork, and 2 full-length, limited edition music tracks (1 download, 1 stream).
The Rocking Uniquehorns
The Rocking Uniquehorns are a collection of 9,990 generated PFP NFTs which have sounds that can be mixed in a (yet to be released) TRU web studio app.
“So mint your TRU, claim your bar and come rock the blockchain! Be a part of the biggest NFT song collaboration in the world!”
My favorite thing about The Rocking Uniquehorns is they regularly book bands to perform in the TRU band room in decentraland.
Chi Modu Hip Hop Photography
The music metaverse isn’t all about 3D worlds. There’s plenty of room to crossover with traditional forms of art, like painting and photography, as Chi Modu demonstrated with a drop of his iconic hip-hop photography just before he passed away in early 2021.
Questlove said it best on Instagram: “This is not an understatement in saying he was an intricate part of the hip hop renaissance. His images are burned in our memories. Rest easy @chimodu”
Talk Time — CryptoMusicBox
Talk Time’s CryptoMusicBox collection is a series featuring visual collaborations with orbseer, peenpoon, m0dm0d, newcolossal, and crumpton. The collection brings the Necessary Evil EP to life with intricately detailed and animated music boxes.
I’m particularly excited about this one because since I first heard them several months ago, they’ve become one of my favorite bands. That brings me to an important point that is easy for artists to forget: the creative possibilities of deepening your collaborations with visual artists, diving into the metaverse and virtual production, and making money from NFT sales are just the icing on the cake.
The core of the music experience is and will always be the music. So let’s get out there and fill the metaverse with incredible music.
2021 Music NFT Projects Recap
No list can ever be complete, but these were some of our favorite drops in the last year.
- Gramatik Synthopia
- BT’s Metaversal NFT Album
- Timbaland Opera Noir Remixable Stems NFTs
- The Ghost of Frank Dukes
- Music Machines
- SpeakerHeads
- The Rocking Uniquehorns
- Dirtybird Flight Club
- DJenerates & Club JENR8
- Chi Modu Hip Hop Photography
- Talk Time CryptoMusicBox
Next Steps
Want to learn more? Want to learn how to create and issue drops, host virtual concerts, or build a membership token for your fan club? We’re launching a new community to help.
Join the Music Metaverse Discord, open to all people interested in building and supporting the music metaverse. Browse the channels, learn about what other artists and creators are doing, learn about the various metaverse/NFT platforms, and more.
Follow Greenruhm
Eric Elliott is the founder of Greenruhm.com, a music metaverse social network where music makers, artists, and fans can build communities and share valuable digital music experiences, identity, belonging, VIP access, and collections. He helped build BandPage (now YouTube Artist Pages), which hosted 500k bands including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, etc. He was an early contributor to Adobe Creative Cloud, and tech lead on a video social network used by CBS, NBC, BBC, and many more.
He enjoys a remote lifestyle with the most beautiful woman in the world.
