Want to collaborate with Deadmau5? Now you can.

The future of combined music and gaming is upon us, in a way that’s poised to revolutionize the music industry by combining both worlds into one – the roots of which began a year ago with deadmau5 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Last year, deadmau5, aka Joel Zimmerman, launched a series of NFTs that gave access to a whole spectrum of three-dimensional assets that you could play with – an opportunity for fans to not just listen to music, but to interact with it. Quests and challenges were launched for players to engage with, including a music video challenge where if you owned one of the NFTs you could start to create imagery for deadmau5’ latest music video – When The Summer Dies. Over 6,000 fans participated, the video has over 1.5 million views online and was made 100 percent by fans. Thus began a new trajectory for the music industry, where the intersection of music and gaming are creating new relationships between artists and fans where they can create and build together.

The success of deadmau5’ fan-fueled NFT music video led to the formation of PIXELYNX, the music gaming company founded by Inder Phull, deadmau5, Richie Hawtin and the management team behind both artists, which is currently leading the gamification movement within the music industry.

“We came together to reimagine what the future of the music industry would look like,” said Phull, the PIXELYNX chief executive officer. “We’d all sort of been existing in the background at the intersection of music, gaming, and technology and both artists – Richie and Joel – have always pushed the boundaries of the industry. Richie invested in early technology that brought mp3s to the DJ booth and was chastised for this since many people thought vinyl was the only way to go. Richie’s conviction led to an explosion in DJ culture that we know today and Joel—deadmau5—is an equally visionary performer, musician, technologist and was one of the first artists to perform in Fortnite.”

Their first release is called Elynxir, a cross-platform game on mobile and desktop, which is a new way for fans to collect, create and share music through a gamified environment. In mobile, it’s built on the same technology as Pokémon Go.

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“You can explore the world around you and can start discovering music NFTs for free,” Phull said. “It brings that accessibility piece to life so easily and mobile is really our first step in onboarding. Fans could go to a show and start collecting their first NFTs without even realizing that they’ve purchased one or collected one. You can just open your phone and suddenly you’ve collected 50 music NFTs without necessarily knowing. We’ve been testing it out and have seen some really fun engagement with people spending 15 to 30 minutes per day going around and collecting music.”

Phull believes the idea of music is static in its current form and that the way people experience it is very passive. With PIXELYNX, he thinks music can be much more immersive.

“Fans are not willing to buy music when it's just a static mp3, but they are willing to invest into an experience that they can actually be part of and shape,” Phull said. “PIXELYNX is all about reimagining music and reimagining how the experience of music could be delivered, and we think gaming is an amazing platform for that.”

Beneath the platform, web3 and NFTs power the ownership and economics but gaming was always the pillar Phull and company wanted to build upon. It’s where they saw the future of music being further developed to become interactive and for the format to ultimately change.

Like the deadmau5 music video challenge, PIXELYNX is tapping into the power of user generated content as a collaborative tool that can be used to create alongside an artist. 

Phull believes if fans are helping create alongside the artist, they can also then be rewarded. “It’s such an interesting moment for the fans because not only have they been part of this creation experience, they can also potentially get ownership in it in some way,” he said. “It’s why I think everyone is so excited about web3, how we can build new economies within communities.”

PIXELYNX is also creating tools such as an AI companion called Korus to let fans create music in the style of their favorite artists. 

a Korus NFT

“What we’re going to see are fans being able to use these tools to build incredibly immersive content that is very personal to them, but is also highly aligned with the aesthetic of the artist or creator that they’re basically collaborating with through this medium,” Phull said.

With its AI companion, PIXELYNX is looking to shift the music paradigm from consumption to active participation.

“The deadmau5 video example is really the first stepping stone that led us towards this effort,” Phull said. “What we saw was when you give fans the ability to co-create with their favorite artists, they really love it. We see it on other mediums like TikTok – fans want to be active collaborators. They want to express themselves with the music they love and bring their identities to light. With the AI companion, you get to earn something out of the collaboration process – an NFT that you can keep as a memory or continue to build value around in other ways.”

The other hope is that the gamification element of deadmau5’s and other artist’s music will help provide other lifelines to artists so that the music industry isn’t so reliant on live shows. It also provides a new direction for the fan/artist relationship and where that can go.

“What gaming provides is such an amazing canvas for storytelling and music has been sort of limited in some ways,” Phull said. “We have the medium of music which is amazing and can take you to many places. We have music videos. But games start to bring all of this together. It’s interactivity, it’s dynamic storytelling that can react to what a player is doing in real-time. I think gaming is eating culture on every level and music is just naturally going to lean into it and view it as a medium to grow the art form.”