With a New Digital Fashion Startup, Warner Music Group Expands Its Metaverse Strategy

As part of its ongoing efforts to establish metaverse partnerships with startups, Warner Music Group has signed a contract with DressX, a company that develops digital fashion wearables both on and off the blockchain, as of Thursday.

Warner Music artists will be able to produce and license digital wearables and goods for fans thanks to the partnership. According to a release, the goods would be wearable 3D avatars or virtual clothes that can be seen in augmented reality (AR) on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

Major talents like Lizzo, Madonna, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are just a few of the well-known performers spread among Warner's several sub-labels.

The extent to which crypto and NFTs might be involved in this specific sale is still unknown. However, the label presented it as another instance of a Web3 relationship, so there might be more to come that isn't currently known about NFT.

As part of the agreement, WMG is also investing in DressX, albeit the sum was not made public. WMG's involvement in DressX, according to Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer and EVP, Business Development, is driven by a conviction that life is only going to become more digital.

Ruxandra stated in a statement that "the portrayal of our future digital selves will be equally significant and, if you're gauging by the sheer volume of interactions, maybe more vital" than how we physically represent ourselves.

In 2020, Daria Shapovalova and Natalia Modernova, founding members of DressX, established the business with the intention of "providing a meta-closet to every person on the planet." Some Web3 purists took issue with DressX's decision to become the first company of its kind to distribute digital wearables in Meta's Avatar Store in July.

For WMG in 2022, the DressX collaboration brings to a close a run of Web3 agreements. WMG announced in January that it would hold digital performances featuring its artists in The Sandbox, a future Ethereum-based metaverse game. A month later, the record label unveiled a collaboration with Web3 gaming studio Splinterlands to create blockchain games for fans with artist themes.

Recently, WMG expanded its network of Web3 alliances by collaborating with NFT marketplace OpenSea to assist artists in entering the market. They also announced plans to release music NFTs via the new LGND platform on Polygon.

Despite the excitement surrounding Web3's digital fashion industry, which has drops from both established fashion companies and numerous startups, NFT apparel hasn't yet generated a lot of general attention at this early metaverse development stage.

However, the popularity of digital devices in Web2 games has already been established. And over one billion digital fashion accessories have been sold through Roblox's platform so far in 2022, according to a recent announcement from the well-known game development tool and proto-metaverse portal that Gen Z players enjoy.