Marshmello's Universe: Shockwave, Stuffed Puffs and The Future of Artist Brands

Recognizing the speed at which our online lives now run, Marshmello and team wasted no time in continuing to deliver the goods. A week after the first single’s release, Marshmello hit us with Back In Time—a dance music cut featuring Carnage. The Back In Time visuals, which premiered the same day, take you through an animated vista of dozens of scenes both past and future oriented.

Quickly following was hard-hitting tune Hitta featuring Juicy J and Eptic—fit with a fight club inspired music video. 

Just 4 days after Hitta’s release, Marshmello kept the singles coming with the 4th cut off the record—Bad Bitches featuring Megan Thee Stallion and Nitti Gritti. A club track through and through, the tune features samples of crowd banter from Megan Thee Stallion’s live shows. 

With that came Marshmello’s official announcement of his fourth studio album, Shockwave. 

To top it off, today Marshmello released the fifth single off the album with House Party, a collaboration with Subtronics.

Tonight at midnight, the album is out and available everywhere. 

So let’s recap real quick.

In just three weeks, Marshmello released 5 singles, each with visual support, culminating in a 12-track album. Not so long ago, such a flurry of art would get dripped out over a multiple month time span. But we got all this in less than a month. 

“People have an appetite for music right now.” Marshmello’s manager Moe Shalizi explained their thought process to us behind going this heavy with releases out the gate for Shockwave. 

“A lot of people have been holding off from releasing music through the pandemic because there’s been no tangible prize to it in a sense. Typically you put out a big single, you tour off the back of it... and you haven’t had that for the last two years. A lot of people have been holding back songs, albums, releases. The bad part about that is you lose that relevancy. So for us, we’ve been on a tear the last few weeks. It’s been a big rollout. We’re releasing at a much more frequent pace.”

Such is the state of our current music climate. Marshmello and team understand the quality and frequency of content it takes to send a shockwave through the online spaces in which we reside. 

The announcement also shared that this would be “the first Defi-powered NFT ever”. 

Marshmello was clearly approaching the sprouting NFT space from a digitally-native lense. Knowing that every artist is jumping into the space, Marshmello and team were taking a very fresh approach. 

Instead of selling all of Marshmello’s NFTs flat out, the second NFT auction was run via a mechanism called staking. Instead of giving up their cryptocurrency for the NFT, the winning collector would be depositing their money into a protocol that earns interest. That interest goes to the artist, while the collector still maintains end control of their deposited funds. 

In this way, both artist and collector earn something without taking on as much risk. In essence, it is akin to depositing your money into a high-yield savings account, and giving that yield to your favorite artist in support.

Marshmello’s manager Moe Shalizi told us about their unique perspective on NFTs, and how they thought about approaching Marshmello’s debut: “It’s a whole new mechanic to the space. Imagine if you can just park your money in a wallet that gives a return to the artist versus you. It’s a mutually beneficial thing for creators and fans.”

As Marshmello puts it, “I chose to work with Aito because it enables me to connect with fans in ways that were never possible before. DeFi empowers people and takes out the middleman which has always been the ethos of my brand.”

The top 50 bidders earned various perks, with the 1-of-1 piece coming with the following sweet add-ons:

On the future potential of NFTs, Moe said: “when the music industry really taps into it in real ways, then I think it could become something powerful.” 

It’s still early, and with that comes the volatility of a space that is still finding its footing. But the Marshmello team is clearly thinking about this stuff in new and interesting ways, and we can envision a future in which more avenues to experience The Melloverse take shape.

“We’re excited about it because it’s our first case study in Marshmello putting his name behind a brand,” said Moe. 
We can probably expect more from the Stuffed Puffs brand partnership, as well as potential future partnerships that Marshmello and Moe decide to undertake. Clearly, funneling well-aligned brands through the high-exposure content that Marshmello creates is a winning recipe.