Warner Music Inks Deal With Splinterlands to Work on Arcade-Style Games

Warner Music Group (WMG) has announced a partnership with blockchain-based trading card game Splinterlands in a first-of-its-kind deal that will enable select WMG artists to create and develop unique, play-to-earn (P2E), arcade-style blockchain games. The deal aims to help artists leverage their influence and creativity to develop arcade-like games for the GameFi market, while also creating a new revenue stream thanks to in-game tokenisation. Developed by the company of the same name, Splinterlands is a fantasy-themed collectible trading card game first launched on the Hive blockchain.

Splinterlands and WMG have opted to work on an arcade-style gaming experience for this particular venture in order to ensure that the games are accessible to the masses. Both companies are also of the opinion that it is easier to build larger user communities using arcade-style games.

The company's fantasy-themed collectible card game, Splinterlands currently boasts 1.8 million registered users, 450,000 daily users, and a recently passed billion battle milestone. Splinterlands lets players own their in-game assets as NFTs stored on Hive. Players can also earn SPS and HIVE crypto token rewards by playing the game and participating in the Splinterlands community. According to data from DappRadar, Splinterlands was the second-most-played blockchain game over the last 30 days.

Splinterlands Co-Founder and CEO Jesse Reich expressed his delight at working with WMG in a blog post, describing them as a leader in the music industry. He added that the partnership epitomises the best interactions among music, crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFT), decentralised finance (DeFi), blockchain, and gaming.

On the other hand, Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer and EVP, Business Development, WMG, stated that the company was keen on ensuring that music takes center stage as the world grows into Web3. He added that “By partnering with Splinterlands to build custom tokenised games, we'll unlock new revenue streams for our artists who have an interest in the space”.

Record labels attempting to increase revenue through fan engagement via Web3 should come as no surprise — many musicians have been doing this to supplement insufficient royalties and advances. Veteran DJ and music producer Steve Aoki said at a recent event for Gala Music that he's already made more money from NFTs than from 10 years of music advances.

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