Warner Music Group (WMG) has revealed a partnership with Splinterlands, a renowned blockchain gaming firm, on 23 February 2022. The two firms will work in a first-of-its-kind partnership to provide chosen WMG artists the opportunity to build and implement creative play-to-earn (P2E) arcade-style blockchain games. Splinterlands is now the most popular blockchain game dapp (decentralized app) in the world, called Splinterlands.
Splinterlands is a blockchain-based decentralized digital collectible trading card game. It was founded in 2018. The company’s fantasy-themed collectible card game now has 1.8 million enrolled gamers, 450,000 daily active users, and has recently exceeded the one billion battle mark. Splinterlands is a community-driven game that is built and improved with the participation and advice of its gamers.
One of the goals in Splinterlands is to build your ‘strength. The power of rare cards is greater than that of common cards. And you’ll need the power to get through the game’s stages. In addition, you earn SPS, the game’s cryptocurrency, based on your power. As a result, the term “play to earn” (P2E) was coined.
Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer & EVP, Business Development, Warner Music, said,
“Our partnership with Splinterlands pulls focus to our artists and their music as we all work together to develop and maintain tokenized games. As we build, we will be unlocking new revenue streams for our artists while further solidifying fans’ participation in value created.”
Warner music group’s early association with blockchain games
The Sandbox, a different kind of blockchain game, announced a collaboration with the music behemoth in January. Warner Music obtained ‘virtual land’ for a virtual performance theme park and music venue in this case. The Sandbox is a 3D metaverse encounter, whereas Splinterlands is a strategy card game. Despite having many more users, its cryptocurrency market capitalization is about $3.5 billion, compared to $47 million for Splinterland. However, they are two quite different experiences.
Furthermore, Warner Music has also worked with BlockParty and OneOf, two NFT platforms, this year.
The music label was an early backer of Dapper Labs in 2019, prior to this frenzy of activity. It collaborated with Genies, an avatar technology startup, last year, to build avatars of some of its artists. In the same year, Warner joined with Beeple’s NFT platform and participated in a $725 million fundraising phase for blockchain games ecosystem Forte.