Technology
Fortnite Videogame Star Ninja Drops An Album, And A Peek Into The Future
Seventy feet from Nat King Cole’s piano, with Frank Sinatra’s microphones nearby, in Capitol Records’ historic Hollywood recording studios, a lanky guy with spiky aqua hair plays the world’s most popular video game alongside a string of musicians.
It’s a decided change from the usual reasons people load thousands of dollars worth of expensive gear into Studio A, where countless musical stars have recorded hit records for decades. This Sunday night, it’s about Capitol, a division of Universal Music Group, trying to remake itself for a tech-driven future, and about the world’s best-known gamer getting himself a new side gig as a musical tastemaker.
Just outside the building, teams of code writers are presenting projects they built over the previous 36 hours as part of a hackathon at Capitol’s Hollywood offices. The hackathon – run in concert with Spotify, Amazon-owned streaming site Twitch, Red Bull Esports and Verizon – is part of Capitol’s efforts to make sure it doesn’t get blindsided by another tech revolution like the one that has savaged the music business the last 20 years.
Inside, the gamer Ninja, real name Tyler Blevins, is a 27-year-old savant of both video games and of talking about video games while playing online before tens of thousands of fans on Twitch. A former esports athlete, Blevins crossed over to broader pop culture last spring when he played Fortnite with music superstar Drake, and more than 600,000 people watched simultaneously, a Twitch record.
Blevins is also huge on YouTube, where he has 20.1 million subscribers, and Instagram, where he has 11.7 million more. YouTube’s release this week of the site’s most popular 2018 videos gave the top two slots for gaming to Ninja: 32 Kill Solo Squads!! Fortnite Battle Royale Gameplay (37.7 million views) and Fortnite with Ninja | Overtime 3 |Dude Perfect (34.5 million views). Suffice it to say, he’s an online power.
Blevins came to Studio A to help launch Ninjawerks Vol. 1, an album released on Capitol’s Astralwerks label that features 13 tracks of electronic dance music curated by Ninja. Several tracks have already been released, but the full album hits Dec. 14. The songs are all electronic music or EDM, and help boost Blevins when he’s gaming. But he insists music is much more than gaming atmosphere. It’s really a set of soundtracks to parts of his life.
“When I travel and do amazing events, I usually pick bands and just listen to that album,” Blevins said. “I can listen to an album and it takes me back to that time. That’s the power of music.”
The project started in June, a product of a college friendship between an Astralwerks employee and one of Blevins’ management team at Loaded. Those conversations quickly turned into a Blevins wishlist of electronic and EDM artists, then the label thinned that list to a group of interested musicians willing to join the project.
“When they came back with the list of musicians that I wanted and who wanted to be on the record, I couldn’t believe it,” said Blevins, who actually contributed to one of the first tracks released, 3LAU’s Game Time.
Tycho, whose Jetty contribution to the album is one of his typically glistening, upbeat instrumentals, is among the day’s attendees. Like many of the album’s musicians, Tycho is a long-time gamer and a Ninja fan, though recently, he said he’s been playing on a virtual-reality rig instead of a PC or console. But getting the chance to be on the Ninjawerks album was something Tycho said he couldn’t resist.
“It was a huge honor to be asked to take part, this idea of having music cross over into gaming,” Tycho said. “Games were the backdrop to my childhood really. Then they became an escape when I was working really hard (on a song). They were really kind of a cure of relaxation.”
In this iteration of music and games, Astralwerks and Loaded had to quickly hammer out a number of important deal points, then the label set to assembling the compilation and building a global marketing plan. The label even commissioned an artist to create characters inspired by Ninja and the 13 musicians, said Astralwerks General Manager Toby Andrews. Those images will be turned into collectable items, another way to drive engagement and fan anticipation as some tracks dribble out ahead of the full release.
The result has been a formidable project that occupied not just the Astralwerks staff but Universal Music sales and marketing teams around the globe, said Andrews. And when it’s come to marketing, Blevins and his team have worked closely with the label to get the word out.
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