Enter the dream house: an immersive world built for Island artist easy life by Abbey Road Red alum XONE

09 May 2023 - Press release

 

XONE, the 17^th music tech start-up to complete Abbey Road Red’s six-month bespoke incubation programme, has partnered with Island Records-signed band easy life, an opportunity generated via the incubation process, to launch a first-of-its-kind immersive experience for music fans. Dubbed the "dream house", the experience brings the band's latest album artwork to life in 3D and allows fans to engage with easy life inside a mobile-based virtual world. With this activation, XONE is making yet another step towards a new era of fan-artist interaction.

XONE is on a mission to enable artists and creators to easily build immersive experiences centered around music. Its co-founders James Shannon and Alica Molito founded mixed reality agency Auras Studios building immersive experiences for artists and labels before venturing into building their own mobile XR platform. 

Launched in beta in 2021, XONE gained traction in the web3 space before branching into the music industry. 

Their incubation with Abbey Road Red has helped the founders and their team build a concept tailor made for music artists and fans as well as pitch to artists and prepare XONE for its public launch.

Alongside the public release of the XONE mobile app, launched out of beta in April 2023, the team collaborated with leading UK artist easy life and Universal Music’s legendary Island Records label to create an immersive 3D world based on the cover artwork from easy life's latest album release "Maybe In Another Life."

Throughout the six-week campaign, fans will enter the dreamlike world as their virtual avatars, enjoy music, play minigames and explore and discover easy life branded collectibles in the dream house. To take interactivity to the next level, fans will be able to use XONE’s drag and drop builder tool to build their own easy life-inspired rooms inside the house and compete for the best fan room.

 

XONE’s co-founders James Shannon and Alica Molito say:
“This activation completes the journey we began with our first AR activations five years ago, making augmented reality filters for Glass Animals and other brilliant artists. We wanted to develop that experience and bring music a mobile first metaverse experience that’s rich, rewarding and easy to use for both artists and fans, while opening up new experiences and possibilities. As XONE evolves we will make creating these kinds of experiences available to all artists and creators. We see this as a new type of content that could greatly enhance fan’s connection to an artist and to each other.”

easy life’s Murray Matravers says:
"We're so excited for our fans to be able to go inside the ‘Maybe In Another Life’ house and explore it. Our album cover was based on a real life model created by Will Child, so to have XONE build it digitally and create rooms & experiences inspired by songs from the album is so cool for us, loads of hidden gems in there, enjoy!”

Lewis Lister, Senior Audience Manager at Island Records, says:
“We’re so excited to partner with XONE to bring this innovative digital experience to the easy life fans & beyond. Will Child’s model house formed the basis of so much of our album creative, so it’s amazing to be able to bring it to life as a playable 3D experience. It’s also a great way of bringing fans back into the world of ‘Maybe In Another Life’ with rooms themed around album tracks to shine a light on some of the band’s most recent catalogue.”

Abbey Road Red’s Innovation Manager Karim Fanous says:
“It’s been inspiring to watch our XONE-ies live and breathe the journeys of their nomadic and highly creative digital lives into this first artist activation with easy life. The way easy life and Island leaned in to help make it a reality is testament to the value they see in the XONE platform as a rich, authentic and distinctive engagement experience for their fans. It was a pleasure and an honour to play Red’s part and help secure this opportunity during incubation with our board members and team-mates at Universal Music.”