Roblox wants to be its own Billboard

Billboard may run the music industry’s official performance rankings, but YouTube and TikTok also have their very own charts tracking what music is popping with their user bases. And soon, those platforms will be joined by Roblox, which announced that as part of its partnership with indie music distributor DistroKid, it’ll start publishing charts in 2025.

As Music Business Worldwide points out, Roblox–which is becoming a force in our industry, having generated $1.2 billion for the creator economy between 2017 and 2023–has, unlike TikTok, gotten off on the right foot with the music industry. It’s tapped Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music for various in-game events, promotions, and other partnerships, and Warner actually invested in the platform in 2021, during its $520 million H round.

This past March, Roblox, Universal, and Republic Records debuted a feature called Boombox, an ad-supported music player that integrates with the platform, allowing its nearly 80 million users to listen to music while they’re playing the 40 million games and experiences (the majority of which are user-created) on its platform.

Now, Roblox is adding another feature: What’s Playing, which sounds like a YouTube Music/Spotify-esque player that offers music discovery and the ability for players to “like” tracks they enjoy. This is also integrated into Roblox’s overall platform, so users can interact with music without leaving their games.

Roblox didn’t give many details about the charts it plans to create, but did say they’ll be based on track performances in What’s Playing, and that tracks will highlight popular artists and “audio experiences,” per MBW.

A few years ago, we would’ve said Roblox’s primary competitor was games like Fortnite. But it’s become a different beast. Back when the metaverse became the thing of the moment, Roblox jumped on that, but without changing everything about its company (ahem, Facebook). Because it was already part of the metaverse, having sold virtual merchandise and immersive, Second Life-like experiences for years. Creators of its virtual merch were already making tens of millions of dollars per year, and brands like Chipotle had virtual locations there.

We’d argue Roblox is now in a league of its own, with elements that challenge gaming platforms, game creation engines, what remains of the metaverse/crypto sphere–and, with more music-listening tools as well as charts, it’ll take on YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Apple, and more.