UPDATE: Luminate, the company responsible for sourcing Billboard sales information, has issued a statement claiming Boombox will not count toward Billboard’s charts.
“Due to an unfortunate miscommunication, the information regarding the data referred to in this announcement’s eligibility for the Billboard Charts is false,” it shared. “It will not count towards the Charts at this time.”
The original story continues below.
Universal Music Group and Republic Records have announced the launch of Boombox, a new product being integrated into Roblox to allow players to stream in-game music that artists can monetise and have count toward Billboard charts.
This collaboration will start in the Twice Square experience, a level in Roblox where players can leave messages for the K-pop girl group, play minigames, and collect virtual items. With Boombox, players will be able to “share and collectively enjoy” Twice‘s music, with each playback being monetisable, as well as counting toward Billboard charts.
Boombox is apparently the first “scaled music product across the Roblox platform”. Launching it in Twice Square, the game’s most-visited music experience, seems like an appropriate testing ground for the new product. Twice Square is the first step in a larger planned rollout, with Boombox coming to over 3,500 Roblox experiences over the coming year.
Boombox’s monetisation potential is achieved through Styngr and its “ad-supported portable music player”. It hopes to “encapsulate the future of fan interaction”, allowing for increased audience reach and engagement within metaverse-esque platforms such as Roblox.
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Twice isn’t the only K-pop girl group to boast an experience within Roblox. Blackpink has its Palace level where players can “visit various spaces designed around BLACKPINK’s iconic music video scenes, and enjoy some of the artists’ favourite things – from digital fashion to signature choreography”. So, more experience like this will likely incorporate Boombox.
Much like Fortnite, Roblox is one of the few games to actually provide a metaverse experience players actively engage with. Through constant partnerships with real-world brands and musical acts, players can obtain digital items and attend virtual concerts.
In other gaming news, the Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection has been dubbed “a total mess” by a prominent modder whose work appears to have been used, uncredited, in the launch build of the game.