This week’s Web3 Wrap includes pplpleasr’s Shibuya video platform and its stunning first series, White Rabbit, a new product roadmap, SXSW event, and Head of Brand from Friend’s With Benefits (FWB), Pianity’s $6 million seed round, The Willow Tree (TWT) DAO’s Keepsakes NFT collection, Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFTs, and more.

Check it out below.

Friends With Benefits Announces Product Roadmap, SXSW Event, and New Head of Brand, Lindsay Howard

Across this week, Friends With Benefits (FWB) released its product roadmap, announced a SXSW event, and appointed Lindsay Howard as Head of Brand.

The product roadmap, which was released via Mirror, begins by offering a retrospective of the products that have already been built by the FWB product team. Firstly, the piece describes internal tools such as an automated onboarding concierge Discord bot; Pins, another Discord bot that tags messages with high engagement and sends them to a review channel for the FWB weekly digest; WalletLink, a bot that allows members to link a wallet and opt-in to member programs; FloorFinder, a bot that calls the floor price of any ERC-721 token; and DailyPaper, a tool that scrapes an inbox for newsletters and posts them to a dedicated channel as a PDF with a short description. Secondly, the piece outlines public-facing projects and tools made by the team, including Gatekeeper, a Web3 RSVP and ticketing system that has already recorded 6,400 RSVPs across three internal and four partner events; FWB.ART, an NFT gallery and marketplace; and Events, a token-gated events platform.

The roadmap then details the products being built that will be rolled out over the year, including FWB.Archive, a community tool to archive digital events; Upvote, a tool to allow more open discourse before proposals are taken to a Snapshot vote; FWB Bio, a “traversable on-chain identity” that will allow FWB members to “connect, grow, and move fluidly across the Web3 ecosystem”; and Gatekeeper SubDAO, a team focused on turning Gatekeeper into a white-label solution. 

Elsewhere, FWB announced a SXSW event in partnership with Zora, which will take place on March 12 at House of Medallion at Empire in Austin, Texas. Further details, including a lineup and RSVP link, will arrive on Monday.

Finally, it was announced today that Lindsay Howard, former Head of Community at Foundation, would be joining the FWB team full-time as Head of Brand.

You can find the full product roadmap here, with the other announcements on the FWB Twitter.

Sony and Universal Enter NFT Market with Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFTs on Snowcrash Marketplace

Sony and Universal will be entering the NFT game, partnering with the upcoming Solana marketplace Snowcrash on Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFT drops in 2022.

No further details have been released, although, as reported by Decrypt, Sony’s President of Global Business, Dennis Kooker, said in a statement that Sony is looking to “develop a range of opportunities for our recording artists with a focus on delivering accessible, user-friendly experiences for both creators and fans.” Universal music’s Michael Nash also commented, saying, “a critical part of UMG’s strategy in this space is to develop artist-focused, premium campaigns and fan-oriented collectibles with world-class partners, which will enable our artists and labels to advance their cultural influence at the forefront of innovation.”

You can read more about the launch of Snowcrash here.

Pianity Announces a $6 Million Seed Round Raise

Music NFT marketplace Pianity this week announced a $6 million seed round investment.

Since its launch last year, Pianity has reportedly sold 11,000 NFTs, with over 20,000 users on the platform. The announcement also noted that artists on the platform have collectively earned over $1.9 million from NFT sales. Some of the artists selling on the platform include Mathew Jonson, Guti, Dan Ghenacia, and Tolga Fidan.

The seed round was led by Digital Renaissance Foundation, Big Brain Holdings, and Longhash Ventures, with further participation from Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO at TheSandBox, ArkStream Capital, and Arweave, among others.

According to the announcement, the investment will allow Pianity to increase its employee headcount, execute major partnerships, open offices in the US and Latin America, and “support the development of a mobile application and additional functionality for Pianity’s streaming services, such as creating an NFT playlist and building a library.”

You can read the full announcement here.

The Willow Tree Releases Keepsakes NFTs

The Willow Tree DAO (TWT) has released a new collection of NFTs, titled Keepsakes.

The Keepsakes collection, as its name implies, looks to offer a permanent memory of nightlife, in this case, memories and content from TWT’s inaugural event, which took place in January of this year. The collection features three one-of-one NFTs, featuring a visual piece and a 30-second audio clip, which is a sped-up version of a DJ set recorded at the event. Owners of the NFTs will also have access to the original wav file recording of the mix attached to their NFT. Notably, 66% of the sales will go back to the artists who performed and helped with the event.

The artists featured in the collection include DJs Not Telling, Dan Peplow, and James Collard, who were paired with visual artists Rose Draper, Kes Inkersole, and Dozier, respectively.

The Keepsakes collection is up for auction on objkt.com on the Tezos chain, with bids starting at 100 XTZ (around $326 at the time of writing). You can check out the collection here.

Pplpleasr Launches Shibuya Video Platform

Emily Yang (a.k.a. pplpleasr) has launched a new video platform called Shibuya.

Shibuya, according to Yang, is “a web3 video platform allowing users to engage, fund, vote on the outcome, and become owners of long-form content.” The platform will use a crowdfunding model, via NFTs, to fund and produce films, an idea which stemmed from Yang’s history in Hollywood—she lost her job due to the loss of funding for a project, leading her down the crypto rabbit hole—and her help in crowdfunding the Ethereum documentary via a series of NFTs. 

Shibuya was launched with White Rabbit, an animated feature series by co-founder, artist, and director Maciej Kuciara—Kuciara is known for producing concept art for Marvel, The Last of Us, the live-action Ghost In The Shell, and more. White Rabbit will combine Yang and Kuciara’s love for “anime, Black Mirror, Love Death + Robots, and web3.”

The White Rabbit series will allow NFT “producer pass” holders to vote on and guide the direction of the series (the producer passes sold out in the first few hours). The series went live with the pilot episode, which features a protagonist waking in and searching an achingly beautiful and awe-inspiring animated environment. At the end of the pilot, the character ends up at a crossroads moment, which then allows NFT holders to vote on which way the character will go. NFT token holders can vote once they stake their NFT, which also earns them $WRAB and represents fractional ownership of White Rabbit.

You can read more about the project via Yang’s Medium article here, and check out the platform and pilot here.

What to Join and Who to Follow:

Whitelights: Web3 artist, producer, and engineer.

Pixelord: forward-thinking electronic producer and Web3 artist.

ASEC: techno artist and Zora product lead.