The pandemic forced many artists to move online in order to continue connecting with their fans as they waited for live shows to return, and these digital experiences will remain an important component of engagement strategies moving forward.
Independent record label Monstercat recently launched its Lost Civilization Roblox experience, where fans can listen to music from Monstercat artists while completing quests and engaging with the brand.
While Monstercat is not new to engaging its audience in the virtual world, it has also innovated new experiences throughout the past year to strengthen its brand and support its artists.
Monstercat Partnerships Manager Marc Giustra spoke with XLIVE about the label’s approach to digital engagement and the value of creating these types of experiences for fans.
XLIVE: How long has Monstercat been involved in virtual worlds such as Roblox?
Marc Giustra: We've been invested in gaming essentially since the inception of the company. It's very much part of the label’s DNA. As it pertains to the metaverse, this isn't really our first introduction into it. Going back to 2013, we had an unofficial Minecraft charity music festival called Monster Charity. MiWe've also worked with virtual reality companies, including Sansar, with whom we built out a live experience for our Call of the Wild show in 2019. Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time working with video games like Rocket League and Fortnite, where we helped organize virtual performances for Slushii and Kaskade, and we recently dove into the world of cryptocurrency, NFTs, and digital collectibles. We've been working with musicians like Varien and RAC, as well as visual artists like Giant Swan and Jose Delbo to place Monstercat in the metaverse of 2021 and onwards.
XL: How has the pandemic changed how you've approached these types of experiences?
MG: The pandemic has certainly accelerated how we could innovate and create new opportunities for artists. Most of our artists are obviously relying on touring revenues, and with the pandemic, they weren't able to do that. So we wanted to look into all types of technologies and opportunities out there to see if we could find those new revenue streams for artists. Since then, NFTs have really blown up over the last year or so. For us, it was a key area of innovation, where we saw a highly engaged community with of synergy between not only the musicians, but visual artists as well.
XL: How did the Lost Civilization experience come about?
MG: Roblox has always been on our radar as a platform and metaverse that we wanted to interact with. We started having conversations on an individual game level with a game called Royale High. They wanted to integrate some music in their new beach realm, and it was at that point that we realized developers didn't have access to a lot of licesned, high-quality music. After that, we were introduced into Roblox proper, and we became the first label to ink a partnership with them back in July of 2020. At that point, we released 51 tracks, and this month during our 10-year anniversary, we released another 75 tracks that are available to developers for free so they can use them in their games and create experiences. When it came to actually creating Monstercat's Lost Civilization in Roblox, we really wanted to create a hub for Monstercat fans, Roblox players, and lovers of music in general. We wanted to create a place where people could discover new music and artists, engage with Monstercat as a brand and earn exclusive accessories, and meet new people. And ultimately, at the end of the day, music for a lot of people is a medium where they can relax and disconnect. So we thought that was very important as well.
XL: Can artists connect directly with fans through Lost Civilization as well?
MG: With this experience, we want players and fans to explore, engage with the music, and discover new artists, but we also did host some artist meet and greets for the launch. Koven, Throttle, Vintage & Morelli, and Arielle Maren all had meet and greets during the launch, which were very successful. All of them had full servers, which was exciting, and a lot of people engaging with them. And it was really nice to see fans being able to engage with the artists at a time when they otherwise can't go to shows or do those in person meet and greets. It's a new way to cross into that virtual world for them, and we’ll continue to build out these opportunities in Lost Civilization.
XL: What would you say is the value of engaging with fans on platforms like Roblox? Did the Lost Civilization world meet your expectations?
MG: It really exceeded our expectations. Community is core to our brand, so we're always looking for ways to innovate and bring people together. With Roblox, we were able to bring 21,000+ people at our max concurrent on day one into the world to engage with the brand, each other, with the artists, and even experience other Roblox games. For us, that was highly important. It was also key to us because Lost Civilization was a pivotal piece of our 10-year anniversary, which we're celebrating this month. It was a way to celebrate our brand’s lore and also allowed us to bridge our worlds of music, tech and gaming, which are all areas that we're really passionate about.
XL: What are your future plans for other virtual experiences, whether in Roblox or elsewhere?
MG: These experiences are key to our vision within music and gaming and the metaverse. With Roblox, we're certainly exploring additional experiences within this world. We want Monstercat's Lost Civilization in Roblox to be a permanent and ongoing space that we continue to evolve and grow and involve more artists as well. This is just V1 for this Roblox world, you could say. Outside of that, we are very committed to taking our next steps into the virtual exploration of what Monstercat looks like as a 3D model. We've partnered with Animism Studios, and they've created a 3D version of our Monstercat mascot that can interact with artists and fans, whether it's on livestreams, at live events, through social media, and hopefully one day we can integrate this into games as well. So this is really a continuation of what we've been working towards over the last 10 years, and we’re excited to build these virtual experiences, share them with our fans and get them involved in what we're doing.
XL: How do you see these types of experiences coexisting with live experiences as tours resume?
MG: I think these experiences will be able to coexist and work well together. I think what this has really reinforced is that virtual experiences are integral to what we and artists do when it comes to events. It's just an extension of how we're able to reach the global community. We’re very excited about live events and bringing fans back together in a in a physical place, but at the same time, we really value the virtual space for people who are unable to attend in-person. We’re going to keep building these out side by side and figure out ways that we can innovate in both worlds to make the experience for people at live events and online as special as possible.