Article: Metaverse music licensing: ‘We have a window to sort this out’

Music Allay report

The music industry is excited about the potential offered by games and virtual worlds, but are its licensing models flexible enough to realise that potential?

At our Sandbox Summit Web3 Special conference this week, CrossBorderWorks CEO Vickie Naumann addressed the topic, using her experience licensing music for VR game Beat Saber, helping David Guetta clear tracks for a Roblox DJ set, and sundry other projects.

Nauman is bullish on music in the metaverse, but also under no illusions about the challenges that remain to be solved when it comes to licensing.

“I feel like it’s opening a door into new experiences that can really be higher value, that can be deeply immersive and experiential between artists and fans, and I think there’s an enormous amount of potential,” said Nauman. “But we’re seeing the early stages of some big tangles around rights and licensing.”

In her role as a consultant, Nauman is working with the full gamut of web3 startups and projects, from NFTs and fractionalising rights through to games, virtual worlds and artists as avatars.

“It’s early. It’s really, really early! The experiences we’re starting to see now are kinda clunky. If you want to set up a Metamask account or transfer crypto from wallet to wallet, it’s not easy,” she said.

“The platforms and technologies are rapidly evolving. Every single NFT is different, all the metaverses that are out there now – a lot of hem being built, a handful of them that are live – they’re all changing quickly: what their models are and who they’re trying to appeal to.”

“The moral of this story is that it’s time to experiment and to gain first-hand knowledge… You can try some fairly low-barrier-to-entry projects, and it’s okay to fail.”

Nauman added that the current state of web3 reminds her of the internet in 1999-2002, when a lot of startups failed.

“Companies that raised tens of millions of dollars, and they crashed and burned. There were things that were not necessarily business models. They were proof of concepts. And that’s really where we are with web3 and the metaverse.”

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Metaverse music licensing: ‘We have a window to sort this out’