Ibiza without Ibiza: Virtual Amnesia dancefloor launches on Decentraland

The coronavirus pandemic has boosted the virtual entertainment industry and provided an opening for blockchain-based ventures to tie leisure to the expanding market for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.  

On April 26, community-owned metaverse casino Decentral Games and veteran Ibiza club Amnesia announced their new partnership and launch of two virtual Amnesia dancefloors, dubbed "Amnesia Experience" and "Amnesia Hype." 

The partners expect they will generate at least $10 million this year from the venture, largely from sales of tickets, NFTs and advertising revenue. Each will take 45% of the earnings, allocating the remaining 10% to an unnamed event organizer, with whom negotiations are ongoing.

Ibiza clubbing without Ibiza taps in to a trend that has brought other monetizable leisure, including casinos and gaming, into the virtual realm. 

Decentral Games has plans to offer partygoers real-time music events featuring live streams from celebrity DJs. It will meanwhile pitch the virtual dance floor as an attractive online site for advertisers to lease and also launch an Amnesia merch store within the club selling NFTs tied to electronic music, DJ autographs and in-game accessories tailored to the metaverse. Decentral Games founder and CEO Miles Anthony said, "There’s a shift in how people attend music events these days," noting:

“We have seen an increase in individuals joining our Decentral Games community when we held our recent event featuring DJ NIGHTMRE’s live performance. Our next event for the launch of our [...] Atari-themed casino featuring platinum-selling DJ Dillon Francis’ live performance is expected to break the record number of users.”

A full line-up of DJs and featured artists is expected to be announced in future, with whom $DG token holders will be granted "meet and greet opportunities." Decentraland's native token MANA is currently up almost 9% on the day, according to CoinMarketCap, trading at around $1.20. Following last month's news of the venture's partnership with popular game manufacturer Atari, MANA had climbed over 30% in value.