North American gaming lifestyle company XSET has inked a partnership deal with Atlanta, Georgia-based record label Quality Control Music, and signed Atlanta native and pro-Fortnite player Ashton “Astonish” Harris as its newest member.
According to information released to the Washington Post, Quality Control is also part of a $10M USD funding round that includes a line-up of pro athletes, VCs, hip hop stars, and others. XSET declined to comment to WaPo on how much of the $10M investment could be attributed to QC, but we suspect that the organization will be making more formalized announcements about the funding, including other participants, in the not-too-distant future.
QC, founded in 2013 by Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “Pee” Thomas, is owned by Universal Music Group. Its line-up of talent includes Offset, Takeoff, Lil Yachty, City Girls, Layton Greene, and Migo, among many others.
In a separate release detailing the particulars of the deal, XET said that it plans to collaborate with QC on long- and short-form content, “recurring series,” music collaborations, recruitment and management efforts of new gaming talent, adding QC talent into the XSET roster, gaming and music activations, “music-related licensing deals with gaming publishers,” and more.
XSET also announced the signing of Atlanta-based Fortnite pro, Ashton “Astonish” Harris. Harris was a 2019 Fortnite World Cup Finalist with an inspiring backstory hinted at by XSET co-founder Clinton Sparks in a January opinion piece for The Esports Observer called, From Poverty to Prosperity: How Gaming is the New Hip Hop. In the op-ed, Sparks mentioned a young man he recently met who helped his family get out of financial trouble by winning at a Fortnite competition:
“Recently I met a talent in Atlanta whose family was struggling with past due bills and they would have become homeless had he not qualified for Fortnite’s World Cup, winning $50K from his bedroom – saving his family. So whether it’s joining an organization, streaming, building an online fan base, participating in tournaments, or creating content and merchandise that you can monetize, there are numerous ways to make money in the ever-growing gaming space.”
