Today Warner Music Group announced another blockchain deal with NFT and play-to-earn game platform Splinterlands, which operates a strategy-style game based on cards. It’s currently one of the most popular blockchain games in terms of user numbers but not based on the value of NFTs traded. More than half a million people participated in the game last month.
In Splinterlands, one of the objectives is to increase your ‘power’. Rare cards have more power than common cards. And power is needed to progress through the game levels. Additionally, based on your power, you earn SPS, the game’s cryptocurrency. Hence the play-to-earn (P2E) moniker.
“I don’t think we can underestimate how massive the opportunity around P2E gaming is,” said Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer & EVP, Business Development, Warner Music. “Our partnership with Splinterlands pulls focus to our artists and their music as we all work together to develop and maintain tokenized games. As we build, we will be unlocking new revenue streams for our artists while further solidifying fans’ participation in value created.”
In January, the music giant announced a partnership with a very different kind of blockchain game, The Sandbox. In that case, Warner Music secured ‘virtual land’ for a combination of virtual music theme park and music venue. Whereas Splinterlands is a strategy card game, The Sandbox is a 3D metaverse experience. Its cryptocurrency market capitalization is almost $3.5 billion, compared to Splinterland’s $47 million, despite Splinterlands having many more users. But they are vastly different experiences.
This year, Warner Music has also partnered with NFT platforms BlockParty and OneOf.
Before this flurry of activity, the music company was an early backer of Dapper Labs in 2019. Last year, it partnered with avatar technology company Genies to create avatars of some of its artists. The same year Warner participated in the $725 million funding round for blockchain games platform Forte and partnered with Beeple’s NFT marketplace.
