The Musicverse

Editor's Note

Hello from London!

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This week, I wanted to draw your attention to the two sides of the coin when it comes to the metaverse. One the one hand, this new paradigm shows much promise - but on the other hand, we are right at the beginning. This stage of technology adoption has many naysayers - and granted, I don't think we actually will just amble around this virtual space for the sake of it, but if we find use cases that enable value in life and commerce, we will start to see the paradigm shift.

To quote from one Alan Cross piece below:

no one is building a capital-M-one-size-fits-all Metaverse akin to what we saw with The Oasis in the book Ready Player One. A better way to think of what’s coming is many, many different metaverses that offer 3-D interactivity within many different artists in many different ways.

I see much promise in the musicverse, which will allow virtual concerts, immersive experiences, digital tokens to real and metaverse gigs. And in actuality, I can see someone doing that today. Put on some 3d gogs and headphones, and you could quite easily be there, experiencing front-row seats, the latest Cirque du Soleil or a live Lakers game. It's all possible, but we're not quite there yet. It will happen, but I think we need a champion industry. My bet is music.

Stay Curious,

Onward! - Rahim

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Near

A few weeks ago I read an article on another media platform that asserted the need for the metaverse to embrace users beyond the creative teams of game developers and entertainment studios.

SINGAPORE — If you want to kill a conversation quickly, just bring up words like “metaverse,” “crypto,” and “blockchain.” Eyes glaze over followed by some version of “Oh, look at the time. I must go.” I can relate.

What’s going on in the metaverse these days, you might ask. Looking at two of the biggest companies with over $1 billion valuations, the answer is surprising: Not much, or at least not enough to bring users back every day.

My two young daughters are both crying as I tell my husband that he’s on his own because I’m going to the metaverse. Shutting myself in my home office at 7 p.m.

Meta’s VR social network Horizon Worlds — the company’s flagship “metaverse” app — is suffering from too many quality issues and even the team building it isn’t using it very much.

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End Note

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