Opinion: Snoop Dogg Will Inspire Artists to Enter the Metaverse

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In the space of a few months, Snoop Dogg has become a Metaverse mainstay. We explain what it could mean for other artists.

How Snoop Dogg Embraced the Metaverse

Snoop Dogg has been causing quite a stir across the music industry over the last few weeks, and not only for his Super Bowl Halftime performance alongside Dr. Dre and a host of other GOATs. 

The bigger news that likely has music moguls around the world scratching their heads at the minute is Snoop’s B.O.D.R. (Back On Death Row) release. On Feb. 11, he dropped his new LP via Gala Games, offering 25,000 NFT “stash boxes” that allowed fans to own one of the record’s 17 tracks. They were priced at $5,000; he’s already made over $50 million and will rake in another $75 million if it sells out. 

Tied in with the album release, Snoop also bought Death Row, the legendary hip-hop label that kickstarted his career in the early 90s, and then announced that he wants to turn it into the first major NFT label. “Just like when we broke the industry when we were the first independent to be major, I want to be the first major in the Metaverse,” he said in a Clubhouse call. 

Of course, while these are pretty major developments, it’s not as if any of this whole Web3 thing is new to tha Doggfather. He’s dropped a bunch of NFTs over the last year, perhaps most notably this collab with Coldie that sold for $750,000 around the Ethereum top in November 2021. Just this week, he dropped a collection of Snoop-style “Doggie” avatars in The Sandbox, a popular Metaverse world that’s become the gold mine of virtual real estate in recent months (Snoop and others own Sandbox plots; someone spent $450,000 on a neighboring one). After building a reputation for his stash of blue chip NFTs, he also claimed to be the pseudonymous digital art collector Cozomo de’ Medici, though the rumor was quickly debunked. 

While Snoop is now indisputably a Metaverse mainstay, it’s important to note that he didn’t start off this way. At first, he dipped his toes in by dropping a few NFTs. Then he saw the power of the technology, started collecting his own, and now appears to be all in. This kind of journey is pretty typical for most people in crypto, so I’m certain we’ll see more Snoop Doggs from the music and entertainment world double down on the Metaverse over the next few years—especially once they hear about the success of his latest album drop. Only this week we saw Warner Music tie up with Splinterlands, and Universal Music recently launched a Bored Ape supergroup. Expect much more of the same in 2022 and beyond. 

In 2021, we saw countless artists experiment with minting their own collections on Ethereum. Yes, some of them were undeniable cash grabs, but a few will catch the bug and stick around. In fact, only a couple of weeks ago we saw Justin Bieber pumping his Bored Ape and Inbetweeners NFT bags to his 220 million Instagram followers. Paris Hilton has also become one of the space’s advocates after becoming increasingly involved in NFTs over the last year; last month, she and Jimmy Fallon shilled their Bored Apes on The Tonight Show (and probably contributed to the floor price surge that followed). 

The takeaway here is to strap in, because even when Ethereum experiences a downtrend, mainstream Metaverse adoption isn’t slowing down. While plenty of celebrity-endorsed NFTs have bombed, people like Snoop Dogg are bringing more eyes to the space, and that’s definitely a good thing.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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