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Gamifying Live: Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox & Wave Pack In Millions Of Fans Virtually
Gamifying Live
Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox & Wave Pack In Millions Of Fans Virtually
In April Travis Scott’s “Astronomical” concert in the video game Fortnite showed the potential of the in-game performances to make an impact on the entire music industry.
The “Astronomical” concert functioned much like an interactive music video in which fans got to control a character and move around a digital world alongside dozens of others while a giant Travis Scott performed a 10-minute set of some of his hits and the debut of his song “The Scotts” with Kid Cudi. And the experiment was a smash hit, reportedly drawing 27.7 million unique participants who showed up a total of 45.8 million times during the three-day series of shows. And the song broke Spotify’s record for most streamed track in its first day of release, with 7.45 million streams.
Scott hasn’t been the only one taking the stage in Fortnite, as the game has featured a stream of artists like J Balvin, Major Lazer, and Marshmello (the first to stage a concert in the game) in smaller-scale events.
And Fortnite isn’t the only game getting major artists into its pixels, as Minecraft staged the Block By Blockwest festival in May and Lil Nas X recently announced he would be putting on a concert experience in the game Roblox, which has been hosting other kinds of concerts as well.
The startup Popgun has developed a platform called Splash for
Roblox which brings gamers to an in-game club and allows them to perform concerts with AI-generated music. Bob “Moz” Moczydlowsky of Music Techstars told Pollstar The AI engine behind Splash took three years to develop and the platform has had 20 million users since May.
Wave is another company that has emerged to use gaming and broadcast technology to stage immersive concerts that invite users into highly interactive VR experiences on YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, Facebook and within Roblox while their favorite artists – including The Weeknd, John Legend, Lindsey Stirling, and Galantis – perform.