Is the Future of the Music Industry in Metaverse? Case Motel Finlandia

Abstract

Metaverse has been trending considerably in past years, and there have been many openings regarding that across sectors. Finnish music export organisation, Music Finland, created and implemented a pilot metaverse-project in 2022. The project consists of a VR promotion platform, Motel Finlandia, and collaboration with Decentraland space for metaverse. This metaverse-project serves as an empirical case for this research. This thesis is commissioned by Music Finland. This thesis is a qualitative research studying the metaverse as a phenomenon in the context of music business. The aim is to examine what kind of position could the metaverse have in the music business in the context of business models, and how could artists and music creators benefit from it? Empirical material for my research was collected from this project. This thesis is building on the theoretical frameworks of music industries, digitalisation, and metaverse. The data consists of four semi-structured interviews with representatives of the metaverse-project. Data was additionally collected at the Metaverse Festival by participatory observation. The findings show that the metaverse is still lacking definition, and clear purpose. Furthermore, more development is required. Music licensing, finding a working business model, and how to police music usage in the metaverse are the main challenges that arose from the findings. However, new business opportunities are in artist brand development, and in events hosted in metaverse.