What if the stars of tomorrow didn’t need to exist in the flesh to break into music? Today is Universal Music’s new bet. The record company, which has already worn stars like Taylor Swift or Drake, set up the very first “metaverse group”, called Kingship. This fully virtual formation is represented by four avatars from the Bored Ape Yacht-Club Collection, a landmark project in NFT (Non Fungible Token) art, comprised of a set of 10,000 unique digital monkeys. The label has recorded streaming music for Kingship. It is expected that the group can perform at virtual concerts, but also participate in video games on online platforms.
The idea of a virtual group is not new. In 1998, musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett decided to create a virtual quartet called Gorillaz with four animated characters who appeared in music videos but also during live performances, in the form of three-dimensional holograms.
A novelty then, which then becomes a fashion to which many artists succumb, such as the Icelandic singer Björk who, for her futuristic clip Notget (2017), appears as an avatar inspired by a heroic fantasy game. For their return to the stage in March 2022, Swedish band ABBA will perform in ‘abba-tars’, digitized holograms that work using lip-sync and video. The musicians will appear young, as if time had never done its work.
Music from algorithms
“The Gorillaz group was already way ahead of its time. It is the logical consequence of going beyond the stage of avatars, by creating artists who would only exist and develop in the metaverse. The success of Gorillaz finally gives legitimacy to our project », says Celine Joshua, founder of 10:22PM, one of Universal Music’s labels.
The Bored Ape Yacht-Club collection, which includes the four monkeys chosen to represent Kingship, is a particularly lucrative business. According to data from Opensea, the online market for NFTs, one of Kingship’s monkeys would be quoted at more than 300,000 dollars (270,000 euros). “We have no economic interest, however assures Céline Joshua. The world in which our audience grows is that of video games and virtual reality. It is natural to offer them musical experiences that resemble it. The metaverse is today one of those spaces in which we must be. »
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