Two years after the world stood at a standstill, bands are finally beginning to play again to packed out stadiums and music is starting to bubble to the surface, but surely concerts and new releases alone can’t combat over 700 days of being staved off regular income and merchandise sales. Many of these bands have likely played their last concert – so just how have they been surviving this lockdown.
While not every band will be able to sit back on the profits of previous successes in both the Music and TV industries, several major bands have decided to turn to a new source of income that seems to be becoming very popular in 2021/2022 – branded gaming machines including pinball and particularly slot machines.
When you think of some of the greatest rock bands around, from Ozzy Osbourne to Kiss and Wildflower through to Spinal Tap and Electric Six, they all have one thing in common outside of their eclectic guitar rifts and banging music – they’re all proud holders of branded slot machines in some of the biggest online casinos around. In fact, most of these bands have populated their slots with branded imagery, their own backing tracks and some of the best slot bonuses that money can buy (and believe us they are making money off of these!). In fact, some of the bonus rounds pay homage to their greatest successes (for example, Spinal Tap slot featuring the ‘World Tour Bonus’).
But it’s not just gambling partnerships that have swelled the wallets of some of these legendary retro bands, but the potential of huge collaborations with the likes of major games including Fortnite. Just last year, Epic Games acquired Harmonix to enhance their gameplay experience in Fortnite. Perhaps the Metaverse and online gaming is going to be the next big payday for some of these legendary bands, or even a chance for some of the lesser known 80’s bands to make cut their tooth in the online marketplace. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that several major bands from the last few decades made their ‘online’ debut in Playstation and Xbox games like Rock Star and Guitar Hero. The answer of course, is that nobody can really predict the future – after all – only time will tell.