The upcoming MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) have been given a new category. This year, in addition to the already known categories, artists are also eligible for the ‘Best Metaverse Performance’ Award.
Started in 1984
In 1984, the Award Show originally began as a prized recognition of music video prowess. Several well-known artists have since received an award, including Kanye West, Madonna and Nirvana.
Here are some ‘big’ categories, such as the ‘Video of the Year’, ‘Artist of the Year’ and ‘Song of the Year’. The Metaverse will therefore be included in the upcoming VMAs.
The VMA Experience
In addition to this new award category, the Awardshow also announced its first-ever Metaverse experience. Last week ‘The VMA Experience’ was released in the Roblox-Metaverse. It is available until September 3 this year.
Roblox has 2 shows that have been nominated and is a virtual world that is very active with pop culture events, including concerts and festivals. Last year, it teamed up with Insomniac, a major electronic dance music festival producer, to create virtual festivals in its Metaverse.
Artists and Web3
In recent years, the number of views generated with the VMAs has been decreasing more and more. This while the Metaverse is currently continuing to expand and also attracts a younger audience. With the move, MTV is trying to capitalize on this, which can certainly help keep the show up-to-date and attract more viewers again. It is still too early to say whether this has been successful or not, but the right steps seem to have been taken.
The music industry is also going full steam ahead with Web3. For example, artists release singles as NFTs, as they now qualify for recognition on international charts, while others use the blockchain to improve their music licensing sales. However, it is not yet known whether this trend will continue in the long term.