The metaverse will never sound the same again. Today marks the official signing of the milestone agreement between leading micro-licencing and music solutions company, Lickd, and music label and publishers EMPIRE and Kobalt Music Group, who are licencing their music catalogues to bring the noise to the open source VR world of Decentraland’s Vegas City.
After news broke in late 2022 of a ‘first-of-its-kind’ metaverse partnership for Lickd, the company acted fast to build a ‘metaverse enabled’ player and to curate ‘background’ and ‘featured’ music for it with both EMPIRE and Kobalt’s catalogues, amongst others. The music player is called ‘Chorus‘ and is available across all venues and public spaces in the Vegas City district, delivering hundreds of genre and mood specific playlists into the city’s attractions.
Launching in the LaLigaLand venue in Vegas City, Lickd will look to bridge the entertainment worlds of music and sport. After announcing its presence in the metaverse, the new zone, associated with the world renowned Spanish football league ‘LaLiga’, will see a new take on fan engagement. LaLigaLand will tap into a Gen-Z audience with the development of a series of LaLiga-themed land parcels related to the activity of the ongoing football league. With music a vital asset to the success of each district, this is an obvious interest area for Lickd as it looks to expand its offering into this land.
Paul Sampson, CEO of Lickd, said: “We’re thrilled that we’ve officially signed with EMPIRE and Kobalt to deliver music to Vegas City, Decentraland. At the heart of everything we do at Lickd is innovation and the synergies between what we, EMPIRE and Kobalt all envisaged being the scalable opportunity for music in the metaverse were clear. They agreed that the industry needs to act quickly and decisively to capitalise on that opportunity and what we’re announcing today is evidence of that. The growing popularity of the metaverse is inevitable and we continue to lead by example and deliver new offerings to our partners, customers and metaverse users alike.”
Lickd is a micro-licensing, music solutions business that already offers over a million songs from independent and major labels and publishers, pre-cleared, to a growing database of 130,000 existing social video content creators for UGC. Lickd’s new product, Chorus, seeks to provide a similar level of access to music to creators in the metaverse, enabling brands and venues of all descriptions to create as high quality user experience as their users deserve. Partnering with EMPIRE and Kobalt from the off ensures that Chorus has world class partners from day one and that their music will be heard across the Vegas City district and beyond.
Derek Cournoyer, VP, Global Digital Partnerships & Emerging Media at Kobalt Music Group said, “As community building further transcends physical boundaries, music will continue to play a vital role in shaping shared experiences. We’re thrilled to join forces with Lickd to help ensure that our songwriters, publishing clients, and their music thrive in this burgeoning digital universe of creation and experiences.”
Ghazi, CEO and Founder of EMPIRE said, “EMPIRE prides itself on being an early adopter of new technology and culture, whether that’s in the physical world or the ever expanding digital landscape. Lickd has identified a problem and built a solution that allows us to bring our music and culture to the metaverse in a scalable fashion.”
As owners of the largest entertainment areas in Decentraland, Vegas City continues to dominate metaverse offerings, with new venues popping up at a lightning pace. All of the areas, including LaLigaLand, will have music delivered by Lickd, curated by genre, theme and mood to suit the experience. With the support of EMPIRE & Kobalt under its belt, Lickd’s ambitious route map to reach more realms of the metaverse with music includes tapping into new districts as they appear in a world that continues to grow in popularity.
James Ashton, CEO of Vegas City said, It is exciting to think that people from around the globe can meet in the Metaverse and hang out virtually to a backdrop of awesome music like they do every day in the physical world and we are delighted to roll this out in LaLigaLand and make it the first project in Decentraland to have this great service for the players of this gamified experience.
Lickd’s groundbreaking work with EMPIRE & Kobalt Music Group adds to a history of notable industry partnerships, with a portfolio including Warner Music Group, Epic Games and Universal Music Group.
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