The 10-Million-Fan Gig

How Marshmello’s virtual Fortnite rave got the industry’s attention

On February 2nd, Marshmello performed for millions of fans in a made-up world. The masked DJ — who’s released hits with Khalid, Selena Gomez, Bastille and others — was the first star to play a virtual concert in the wildly popular online game Fortnite, performing for a reported 10 million concurrent gamers. (A music-industry source tells Rolling Stone the audience was likely “significantly bigger.”) To put that in perspective, 10 million people is nearly three times the world record for a real-life concert, set by French

musician Jean-Michel Jarre in Moscow in 1997, which drew 3.5 million on the city’s 850th anniversary.

To see Marshmello, Fortnite players had to halt their usual in-game activities (i.e., shooting one another) and travel to a virtual venue, where trucks had been spotted “unloading” a digital stage in the days preceding the show. “We were just praying it would go successfully,” says Marshmello’s manager Moe Shalizi. “[Mello] was in this room, geared up head-to-toe with a body-motion suit, maybe 30 or 40 people [supporting him]. It was a crazy thing to be part of.”

The gig was a marketing masterstroke for Marshmello, who saw his weekly YouTube views grow by more than 100 million that week, and his Instagram-follower count balloon by a million within four days. It also brought in a nice payday, with in-game purchases, and Fortnite x marshmello hoodies going for $55. “This idea has had its tires kicked plenty over the last 20 years,” says Sammy Andrews, the founder of London-based music-marketing agency Deviate Digital, who experimented with early virtual concerts in the then-trendy realm of Second Life in the 2000s. “But there simply wasn’t a way of reaching a meaningful mass of people, plus the tech wasn’t there to meet the ambition.” Andrews thinks the Marshmello gig has changed that: “What’s new here is the sheer level of integration, and the scale of exposure to a far larger audience.”

TIM INGHAM