Auditioning in the Metaverse?

The music-based TV Show “The Voice” is embracing the metaverse.

It launches as an interactive platform and promises to offer fans new experiences such as co-creating music, dance moves, competing in battles, limited-edition virtual clothing and auditioning for future seasons.

It will be freely accessible to all, as part of the entertainment hub of Vegas City on the Decentraland platform. This follows a virtual pop-up event for “The Voice” during the Decentraland Metaverse Music Festival.

Could this really be “the future of entertainment, fashion and youth-culture marketing”? Road Hounds takes a sniff.

The Decentraland Metaverse Music Festival, which took place last year, claimed to be a celebration of music, innovation, culture and creativity.

They had futuristic, cyberpunk festival grounds and various quests including getting for backstage passes. Artists in last year’s lineup included Ozzy, Motorhead and Megadeth. There was even a a Jerry Garcia Acoustic Stage. All of which sounds pretty cool.

For Ozzfest, they included VIP viewing access for Osbourne’s NFT CryptoBatz holders. These NFT holders were able to “take a potion”, transform into a bat and fly to a private balcony to watch the shows from a much closer viewpoint. Now that’s really fucking cool.

Getting any insights into how well the event actually did and what attendees actually thought tough, is quite difficult. Was this a concert without an audience? Did it deliver on its promises?

Apparently, there was a dispute over tracking active wallets and transactions. Decentraland claimed that metaverse users often perform activities without interacting with the blockchain. That’s why the on-chain activity was low. Hmmmmm……………

At this year’s event brands will be sponsoring specific stages and creating their own branded experiences. Road Hounds likes the idea of working with brands to understand the potential of the metaverse together.

And that’s the point. This whole Metaverse thing is still in its infancy and no one has completely nailed it yet. It’s a work in progress. One can never recreate some of the aspects of real-life music festivals but the metaverse does offer new possibilities that are only possible in virtual worlds.

There are clearly new opportunities for revenue and fan engagement too, like virtual wearables (as NFTs), promoting album releases, meet-n-greets, Q&A sessions. Stage design, performances, and appearances can be completely customized to any band’s vision as well.

A key determinant of success will be user Experience (UX).  Road Hounds is looking to give a premium UX and believes if we are to onboard the mainstream into the Metaverse then it needs to be a really rather slick experience. We are invested heavily into volumetric capture in order for our audience to see the “real” artist on stage and not a cartoon equivalent.

Ticket prices for concerts are notoriously high, then there’s the logistics of getting there and back, rising accommodation costs and the ever-present threat of another global pandemic. Virtual gigs dispel all these issues and should be able to co-exist with the real thing.

Good luck with this year’s event. Let’s hope there’s some big innovations. We will be watching.