Over the past year, gaming platform Roblox has been increasing its activities around music, in part driven by lockdown and the need for artists to connect with fans in virtual spaces.

In October 2020, Ava Max held an album launch there which drew 2.4m visits from Roblox players (with around 49,000 people marking it as a favourite). The following month, Lil Nas X performed a show within Roblox and held a Q&A. Splash (its music creation app) has been used by Tones & I who made a ‘Dance Monkey’ sound pack available for players to remix and perform and also did a show inside the platform.

It is also attracting major investors (despite its planned IPO being postponed slightly), raising $520m in January from a series of investors – most significantly Warner Music Group – to give it a valuation of $29.5bn.

This confluence of marketing potential and music company investment is now most visible in the fact that US boyband Why Don’t We (who are signed to Atlantic, part of WMG) launched their second album, The Good Times & The Bad Ones, in Roblox in a series of events between the 5th and 7th March. The first show was at 4pm PST on the 5th March and three more performances (two on the Saturday, one on the Sunday) took place over that weekend.

Alongside a live performance, there was a Q&A as well as the option to buy limited-edition virtual band merchandise (including digital avatars for each member) and join in on mini games and fun quests.

Zach Herron of the group said, “While we’ve missed being on tour and interacting with our fans all over the world, being able to connect in this way is bringing fandom to a whole new level.”

Fans wanting to attend had to sign up for a Roblox account and could join any of the events over the weekend. WMG had already tested the waters with Ava Max last year, but now it is an investor we can expect a lot more Warner-signed acts to use the platform as part of their marketing push.