Fletcher, who’s released projects via Vault Music. Photo Credit: Justin Higuchi
Vault Music, a limited-edition music platform co-founded by former FanDuel CEO Nigel Eccles, has launched an artist-focused game billed as a “brand-new take on fantasy football.”
Vault just recently announced the game, entitled Fantasy Record Label, in a formal release that was emailed to DMN. Already live on the Web3 business’s app, through which artists including Sid Simons, Wilmah, Cotoba, and Telescreens have made projects available to superfans as “limited run NFTs,” Fantasy Record Label will see players compete for “weekly cash prizes,” according to Vault.
As its title suggests, Fantasy Record Label tasks players with “signing” the five acts they judge to have “the most growth potential,” which is measured by their week-to-week cumulative “change in Spotify monthly listeners.”
According to Vault’s description, players must own at least one NFT on-platform from each musician on their fantasy roster, and the top-10 rosters in a given week (as judged by the overall movement of all five artists’ Spotify monthly listeners) will win the aforesaid cash prizes.
“Think fantasy sports but for the music industry,” elaborated Vault Music co-founder and CEO Nigel Eccles, whose company announced a $4 million Series A in February. “I believe that unlike the sports and gaming industries, music has failed to energize top fans and embrace new formats.
“Streaming has been great for the music industry’s bottom line, but it serves passive listeners, not diehard fans. Our goal is to bring joy, pride, and competition back to collecting music, and create upside for both fans and artists in the process,” concluded the BetDEX Labs co-founder.
Meanwhile, Vault Music throughout its official announcement message emphasized “the streaming economy’s payment inequity” and specifically acknowledged Spotify’s newly confirmed compensation overhaul. Among other things, the latter is set to halt recorded royalties on tracks that fail to rack up at least 1,000 annual streams.
Expanding upon the points in remarks of her own, Vault Music chief marketing officer Kara Burney drove home that Fantasy Record Label is utilizing “fandom to put more money in artists’ pockets at the time when they need it most.”
“Already we’ve seen artists earn more with a single release on Vault Music than they’ve earned from streaming in a year,” continued the former Skyword chief marketing officer Burney. “That’s because in our game, just as with real record labels, up-and-coming artists have the most potential upside. Our players are incentivized to discover, collect releases, and sign the next music stars to their fantasy label before their big break. It’s a music economy where everybody wins.”
In other superfan-monetization news, We Are Giant earlier in November rolled out with approximately $8 million in funding, after Sony Music- and Warner Music-backed Fave in October disclosed a $2 million raise.
