Game Design for Music Drops

DNS

Leaderboards, collector tiers, and unlockable perks on a Kane Mayfield drop. Game design pointed at fandom.

A DNS experiment built around a release with rapper Kane Mayfield.

Most music NFTs are a single buy button. We asked a games question instead: what if collecting a song worked like a game?

For Kane Mayfield's New Jack City, buying editions entered you on a public leaderboard, and collector tiers unlocked real rewards. Everyone got the track. The top 50 collectors got a Kane Mayfield Soundmoji. The top 20 got an alternate edition. The single top collector got their face cut into the music video.

Leaderboards, tiers, status, unlockables: the mechanics I spent years on in games, pointed at fandom. The standings being public is what made it work, because a superfan wants their support to be visible.

It is the cleanest crossover between the two halves of my work, games and the open web aimed at the same thing: giving a superfan a reason to show up.

Gallery

• The release page: buy more editions, climb the leaderboard, unlock better perks. The mechanics are in the open.
• The tiers: top 50 get a Soundmoji, top 20 an alternate edition, the top collector their face in the music video.
• The drop itself.