At the end of 2023, the gaming platform Roblox announced that it had more than 71.5 million average daily active users. While still best known to teenagers and their parents, evangelists see gaming hubs like Roblox and Fortnite as the new social media frontier — another space where musicians will need to establish a presence if they hope to remain commercially relevant to younger listeners.
“Just like every artist has an Instagram and TikTok account, eventually everyone will have a presence on Roblox,” he predicts Nick Hill, co-founder of Sawhorse Production. Hill has worked on Roblox projects for Olivia Rodrigo and Elton John, while Spotify, iHeartMedia and Warner Music Group have launched Roblox experiences, and Sony Music has an in-house team developing music-focused games or experiences for both Roblox as well as Fortnite. (The latter boasts more than half a billion player accounts.)
In Roblox, players create an avatar and access an ecosystem of millions of games, many of which are developed by creative teenagers rather than huge gaming companies. Roblox fans, nearly half of whom are women, pay to get Robux, a currency that allows them to buy a variety of items for their avatars and spend an average of 2.5 hours a day roaming the colorful blocky virtual streets of Roblox.
“There are different ways they spend that time,” he says Karibi Dagogo-Jack, head of music collaborations at Roblox. “Sometimes it plays a hardcore first-person shooter game. Sometimes it’s just hanging out with people who have an affinity for a thing they have an affinity for” — like music.
Fornite, by contrast, became known as a battle-to-the-death survival game — its audience is older than Roblox's and male-dominated — but it's trying to diversify its appeal. More specifically, in March 2023, Epic Games released the Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN), which means that creators can now develop their own worlds and experiences and make them available to the Fortnite audience, giving them a part from user-generated Roblox charisma. .
Initially, the music industry's main way of interacting with Roblox and Fortnite audiences was through virtual concerts from the Lil Nas Xs and Travis Scotts of the world. But concerts, even virtual ones, are huge undertakings, often taking six months or more to develop and perfect, according to sources who have worked on them. This means that concerts are mostly meaningful for a small number of big artists. Instead, sources say that creating a Roblox store can take more than four to six weeks.
Even beyond budgetary constraints, concerts are once-in-a-lifetime experiences in environments that prioritize ongoing interaction, an old-school approach on a new-school platform. “Artist events can have a much longer shelf life,” he says Riccardo BricenoChief Business Officer of Gamefam, which built Harmony Hills, the virtual venue that also serves as the home of Warner Music Group's Roblox concerts.
Tony Barnes, founder of Karta, who worked on a popular Roblox experience for TWICE — a “fan hub” where supporters of the K-Pop group can play games, hang out virtually and buy digital goods for their avatars — advises clients to think of the platform as “a new community channel to be cultivated.” “You have to keep your commitment,” he says. “It's an ongoing strategy.”
The music industry is now in a period that Hill describes as “a constant testing and learning” with Roblox and Fortnite. Some projects have generated serious revenue, while others have been lucky enough to break even. “We're still scratching the surface,” says Briceno.
However, the competition is already fierce. “Roblox is becoming a crowded space,” notes Hill. “Even if you're a household name and you come out, you can't expect everyone to be so excited and somehow find you. Many brands advertise their experiences on the platform.”
Both Roblox and Fortnite incentivize artists and labels to treat the platforms as revenue generators. Artists can sell items on Roblox that players use to customize their avatars. the creator of the item gets 30%, the creator of the experience — which could also be the artist — where the item is sold gets 40%, and the platform gets 30%.
Briceno sold icicles for Cher, for example, while TWICE has sold more than 3 million emotes and an Elton John emote was purchased more than 1.5 million times, according to a Roblox spokesperson. Gavin Johnsondirector of sync and partnerships at electronic music label Monstercat, oversaw the sale of a limited edition Ruby pendant necklace for 1,000,001 Robux (about $10,000) — “the highest initial sale ever on the platform.”
In Fortnite, if a tag creates their own custom game environment known as an “island”, they will receive a “loyalty payment”. (Roblox offers those, too.) “40% of net revenue from Fortnite's Item Shop and related real-money purchases” is earmarked for this purpose, according to Epic Games' website, and then disbursed among island creators according to with a complex calculation This takes into account the island's ability to attract new players, re-attract inactive players and keep both types coming back. (A gaming executive says that while UEFN's flagship experiences “drive a lot of play and repeat visitors,” there's a huge gap between the flagships and most of the rest; an Epic Games representative did not respond to a request for comment. )
For now, artists and record labels often find it easier to jump into Roblox, in part because the barrier to entry is low—“basically anyone can create anything and sell it,” as Briceno puts it. Instead, “Fortnite does not allow studios or creators to sell in-game items,” he says Michael Herringer, co-founder of Atlas Creative, which created iHeartMedia's Fortnite environment. “Everything Fortnite skin [an outfit to customize a player’s look in the game]for example, it comes directly from the Epic Games store.”
Selling merchandise, designing artist-themed experiences — these can help raise awareness of an act and lead to what Barnes calls “fan culture,” but they may not involve actual music. Artists and labels are still trying to figure out what effective music integrations can look like. “The idea of using Roblox to drive your song discovery is really cool and maybe untapped,” says Dagogo-Jack.
When Metallica came out 72 seasons in 2023, the band partnered with five popular Roblox games to channel their music into their creations. (“It's a fantastic way to promote these brands, whether it's Metallica or any other music artist,” he says Kohl Couture(who uses MiniToon and created the game Piggy, which was part of Metallica's release.) Earlier this year, Sony Music revealed a Fortnite game called Nitewave, where winners of a flag-like experience can control the soundtrack of Sony artists, including songs by Flo Milli and Calvin Harris.
While Briceno “believes a lot[s] in a future where there will be music discovery on these platforms”, he is not sure that “the right tools are still available on these platforms”. One possible tool is being developed by the company STYNGR: An ad-supported boombox filled with pre-cleaned songs — for now, only tracks from Universal Music Group — that players can equip their avatar with.
In the first experiments, when players have to activate the boombox themselves, 15% do so. if the boombox starts automatically, 90% choose to leave it on. The duration of sessions increases by up to 10%, while players have the musical accompaniment of a radio blast, according to Alex TarrantCOO and co-founder of STYNGR, and for a small group of “power users,” sessions are tripled in length.
“The reason engagement increases is that people stay in games longer if they like what they're hearing,” says Tarrand. “Our thesis is that recorded music makes things better.”
