Meta Music Studios is unveiling The Apollo Project as a metaverse for music and games.
The so-called MusicVerse will is being created by Steve Gray, founder of Meta Music Studios and a former executive at companies such as Tencent, Electronic Arts, and THQ.
The Apollo Project will be based on a new blockchain dubbed dVerse, which is short for the Decentralized Metaverse. It will also be known as a Decentralized Online Entertainment (DOE) platform. The dVerse will host entertainment products focusing on music and games.
These games incorporate a combination of free-to-play games and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the play-to-earn model, where players can earn rewards and own items that they can resell for a profit.
The Apollo Project is the first NFT project developed by Gray. The first batch of NFTs for sale will be available by the end of the month.
TAP Stars, an avatar growing game, will be the first game with the launch set for February 2022. Additional games will be introduced over the next twelve months including TAP Crews, TAP Karaoke, TAP Runner, and TAP Capoeira.
“I have been watching the metaverse for years as the market developed, but now there is definitely a hot market opportunity and I’m excited to create the new MusicVerse which will become a world for entertainers and entertainment,” said Gray, CEO of Meta Music Studios, in a statement. “Today the metaverse is home to the newest blockchain-based games which are on a fast trajectory, estimated to have a compound annual growth rate of as much as 25% to 30% — three to four times the growth rate of the traditional, and mature, games market.
The newly created MusicVerse mixes Gray’s lifelong passion for music with his love of games. Gray spent years as an executive at Tencent Games, the world’s largest game company, where he developed an innovative user and data-driven game design and development method that helped Tencent Games grow from $500 million to $15.6 billion over
the course of eight years and popularized the Free-to-Play genre. Prior to Tencent, Gray worked at other games companies including Electronic Arts, where he was executive producer of the Lord of the Rings which had sales of more than $1 billion.
“Our innovative Free-to-Earn category will let the elements of avatars, worlds, and music come to life and all our tools and services related to creating content will be free,” Gray said. “The platform leverages the size, high production values, and game design ethic from F2P (free-to-play) games, but merges in the ability of the community to participate financially in the success of the products and their content.”
The team has about 15 people, including contractors. Previously, it raised $1.8 million, and it plans to raise more money in the first quarter.
“We all have been frustrated by the level of progress that is being made in the ‘metaverse,'” Gray said in an email to GamesBeat. “Many of these efforts seem primarily focused on short-term profits or are simply not delivering on the quality of presentation or game experience that users and gamers alike expect. With our extensive backgrounds in publishing and game development, we believe we can create something interesting and bring value to the users in our MusicVerse.”