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Poo Bear & D.O.M. announce first-ever “original NFT band”, Ursa Major

On Dec. 7th, Musically introduces a new musical NFT group Ursa Major. This musical NFT group is a partnership between Grammy award-nominated producer and entrepreneur Poo Bear and NFT production company & creative agency, D.O.M. Since D.O.M. doesn’t lean on any existing NFT Ip, Ursa Major becomes its first-ever original NFT band. This NFT band has its original character of four bears called Captain Staynard Othelos, Detty, Tun-Tun, and FuzzEE WuzzEE. Their music will soon be available on NFT Platform Nifty Gateway.

Based on recent activities of music businesses, virtual NFT band has become the new top trend of music streaming business with the rise of Metaverse just as we discussed in class.

Ursa Major is not the first virtual NFT brand of the industry. On Nov. 11th, Universal Music Group announced its creation of an NFT Super Group called Kingship, which consists of four virtual apes. On the next day, Timbaland announces its partnership with Bored Ape Yacht Club after their first music NFT partnership with UMG.

Led by top businesses like Universal Music Group, the NFT bands would certainly become a new marketplace for streaming music to operate. However, Musically raises the question about the relationship between the musician and the character, which would be an obstacle or at least a significant thing to consider for future NFT bands.

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Ed Sheeran is holding performances on Pokemon Go

On Nov. 18th, 2021, Niantic, the parental company of Pokemon Go, has announced that Ed Sheeran would hold a performance on both November 22 and November 30 featuring several songs from his new album. This is also an event “featuring all of the water-type first-partner Pokemon currently available in Pokemon Go”, since Ed Sheeran chose a water-type Pokemon as his first partner.

As mentioned by Niantic, “Overpass Graffiti” will be playing as overworld music in Pokemon Go, so that the users could still enjoy Ed Sheeran’s music even they don’t turn in to hear the performance of Ed Sheeran.

Apart from the live performance, Nitantic also offers free in-game merchandise featuring Ed Sheeran including sweatshirt for the avatar and water-type themed stickers. Players will also find the opportunities to purchase gift packs from the store.

The collaboration between Ed Sheeran and Pokemon Go seems to be the first time ever for Pokemon Go to have pop musician performing in the game, especially that Ed Sheeran is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter. That reveals the trend that various forms of live music performances would continue to appear on different platforms and collaborate with different industries including gaming, fashion, etc.

On the other hand, as discussed by our guest speaker Jayme Frqueroa, the game industry is now reaching out to other different industries for cross-industry collaboration opportunities. He also mentioned about successful cases of in-game live performances which turned out with considerable revenue. Such outcome encourages even more collaboration opportunities in the future.

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Apple Music Launches on PS5 Gaming Console

As reported by MusicBusinessWorldwide, Apple Music just announced its launch on Sony’s Playstation 5 Gaming Console on Oct. 27th, providing access for PS5 users with Apple Music subscription to music streaming services on their console. According to Playstation, this is a “seamless integration” between the two businesses.

Through this strategic change, PS5 users are able to enjoy personalized background music before, during, and after their gameplay session, improving their gaming experience. Consumers can also watch music videos in 4K, and thus upgrade their visual experience. Also, this strategy marks the improvement of the algorithm that Apple Music uses, updating their database and consumer profile with those from Playstation. Thus, customers would find their recommended playlists reflecting the games they play.

It is worth mentioning that Spotify already launched on Playstation back in 2015. And Apple Music is still not available on Xbox even Spotify, SoundCloud, and Pandora have all successfully made their launch. It takes Apple Music 6 years to make the decision and build this bridge between music streaming and the game industry. Apple Music brings in access to a 90 million songs catalog, which is way more than the number of 30 million songs on Spotify in 2015. (updated number not found) The launch of Apple Music would certainly become a great challenge for Spotify.

This integration between Apple Music and Playstation really draws the topic on the growing opportunities of the game industry, and of course the strategic opportunities of the music streaming services. According to our guest speaker Jayme Frqueroa, the gaming industry already has a successful case of holding an in-game music concert, ending up with 40 million dollars of profit. Such examples have proved the emerging trend in cross-industry collaborations between music streaming and gaming.

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Clubhouse Launching Its Music Mode

On Oct. 14th, Clubhouse just launched its product updates, which officially introduces the Music Mode to its users. According to Digital Music News, the new Music Mode provides “high quality and great stereo sound” for its audiences. The improvement of sound quality specifically benefits the music performers and people seeking live music experiences on Clubhouse. The COVID has made live music performance on streaming a new option of music experience, and Clubhouse makes great use of the new trend.

Early this year, Forbes published a newsletter accusing Clubhouse of being “a hot mess”. The newsletter mentions the licensing and latency problems that occur during the live performances, which directly impacts the feasibility. We can see Clubhouse moving its focus to the live music experiences, while the two problems are still waiting to be resolved in its future operations.

Launched during the COVID pandemic, Clubhouse’s audio-only and invitation-only live experience has brought it considerable attention and a great number of users. However, its sustainability still leaves a question mark for the market. With the strong capital base, Clubhouse had attempted to make audio shows but didn't receive a positive response from the market. Improving the sound quality is carries forward what Clubhouse has been succeeded at, but it might not be able to make a big difference if the most crucial problems are not addressed.

Still, Clubhouse’s launch of Music Mode certainly unveils an emerging trend in the music industry that consumers are seeking music streaming experiences on various platforms instead of just professional music platforms. Businesses like Clubhouse clearly find their audiences in live show experiences, and that could become challenging for the leading businesses in the music streaming industry.

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Warner Music Partners with Community

On Oct. 4th, Warner Music Group announced its partnership with Community, a text messaging platform community for influencers to engage with its fans. Such a platform powers direct relationships with one-on-one conversations, which takes a great leap in bringing the artists and their fans closer. Selected artists would be provided a 10-digit community number to personally text with their fans, and the response rate turns out to be quite satisfying. Founded in 2019, Community has already raised a total amount of nearly $90 million of investment. Such an impressive figure substantially proves the potential in a fan-based market.

Warner Music and its artists have been early adopters of such influencer text-messaging platform communities. In fact, Warner is the first large music company that Community partners with, and that certainly marks new opportunities for future corporations between music companies and fanbase platforms, which might thus form the emerging trend in the music industry.

In fact, Fan Economy has already been flourishing in Asian markets like China and Korea. Such operations bringing fans closer to their idol creates more emotional value for the fans, and will thus result in more capital value in return for the artists. In the partnership between Community and Warner Music Group, Community can even more directly convert the communication into sales.

As discussed in our guest lecture on Creator Economy this week, we got to know that the engagement between the creators and their fanbase is quite a significant part valued by the creators. The artists are not typical influencers or creators in our discussion, but we can see them adopting the way how creators operate to engage with their target market. Warner Music believes this would bring more authentic communication between artists and fans. From my perspective, such communication would give the artists a better sense of the tase of their audiences at the moment, and thus benefit their creations.

[sandyyubom]

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This is my first blog here and I will continue to post things in music sector : )

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