Did you know that artists can sell their songs or even music videos as NFTs?
Music NFTs
This is post number 3 in my "What is an NFT?" series here in the LBI world. The first post was a sort of general overview of NFTs as a whole for noobs, and the second post was a deep dive into how vIRL NFTs can be used for commerce. If you wanna learn more about NFT technology and some of the use cases, I encourage you to take a peak at both of them.
My goal with this series is to try and get people away from the assumption that NFTs are just useless JPEGs. NFT technology can truly revolutionize the way that a lot of things are done, such as music, commerce, and much more. With all that being said, let's dive into the wonderful world of music NFTs.
At the surface level, you might be asking yourself a few questions like... "Why would I buy the NFT of a song when I can just stream that song on Spotify?" or "Why wouldn't I just watch the music video on Youtube?" Both are fair questions to be asking based on what we're looking at. There's actually a lot of reasons that the NFT model can work better for musicians.
Picture this: You're an independent musician with no money, no record label, and no distributors. If you want your music to be heard, you have limited options, and most of them will get you no kind of revenue. You can post on youtube and maybe get paid if your song gets hundreds of thousands of plays, you can try and get your song on Spotify (but you also have to find a distributor which costs money) and get paid a penny per stream, or you can put it on SoundCloud and hope you become the next Lil Pump...
Enter Music NFTs.
As an independent artist, it's up to you to find listeners, either by performing, or by building a social media following. Say you have a pretty decent social media following and you offer your fans the opportunity to get your songs as NFTs, directly from you. You can use NFT technology to mint limited numbers of songs, music videos, or even whole records as NFTs and sell them straight to the consumer. All 100% verifiable on the blockchain. This not only grants you the opportunity to make a lot more money since no one is taking a cut, but it allows you to engage with your fans in a way that hasn't ever really been explored.
It also gives you, the artist, control of how you want to engage with your fan base. Wanna really change the game and distribute a percentage of your revenue to the holders of the NFT? You can do that. Wanna airdrop free concert tickets to people that bought your album? You can do that. Wanna airdrop free merch or discount vouchers straight to the holders of NFTs? You can do that. Imagine how cool it would be as a fan to get airdropped a free concert ticket!
Take @blocktunes for example, built here on Hive. They are taking an approach to music NFTs as a DAO. They offer a platform for independent music artists to sell their songs as NFTs directly to consumers. Treating music as fine art pieces is something I genuinely do believe in, and I think it could change the music industry as a whole.
But Phill, I'm not a musician so why do I care about what this can do for the artist?
Fair point. A lot of people reading this probably aren't musicians. I'd be willing to bet that at least 95% of the people reading this do listen to music though. Let's look at it from that point of view then.
As I mentioned previously, you as the consumer has the option to just stream the song on Spotify (or whatever other platform) any time you'd like. You don't own the song, nor do you have any actual rights to it. You just have the ability to listen to it. Imagine having the option to purchase a music video NFT straight from your favorite artist that gives you true ownership of a limited digital media piece. Glass.xyz makes this possible. The musician now has the ability to give you something in return for being a supporter by airdropping more NFTs to your wallet.
You hold one of 420 copies of your favorite artist's song that is potentially earning you a revenue share or whatever the artist decides. You also check your wallet and see that you've received a VIP pass for a concert that you want to attend. Because you contributed directly to the artist instead of streaming the song from SoundCloud, you're getting exclusive perks like this. Obviously this can come in a lot of different flavors, but you can see how it changes the dynamic of the music industry a little bit.
These are just a couple of the ways that NFTs can be used to change the way the music industry functions.
This post is getting a little lengthy, so I'll leave it there. Let me know what other facets of NFTs I should cover in the "What is an NFT?" series in the comments. Let's get engaged. What are your thoughts?
Post written by: @l337m45732 aka NiftyPhill.