Introduction
It all began in March 2021, when the musician Grimes led the way by selling a collection of NFTs for nearly $6 million.
A few days later the rock band Kings of Leon were the first ones to offer up their album for sale in form of an NFT. Eighteen “golden ticket” NFTs were linked to a real concert ticket giving VIP advantages like front row seats for life, the auction of this collection raised $2 million.
Since then, the initiatives mixing the music industry and NFTs have multiplied, lets look at some of these below.
The Weeknd multiplies initiatives
The Weeknd is for sure the first singer with international status to turn towards NFTs. Notably, the singer and Strangeloop Studios have been collecting concert visuals and audiovisual works since 2015, the collection included eight NFTs, as well as an unreleased song by The Weeknd “The Source”. The unreleased track sold for $490,000.
More recently, The Weeknd, joined Tom Brady’s NFT platform: Autograph. The NFL star partnered with the former CEO of MySpace’s parent company and has received support from executives at Apple and Spotify. The artist mentioned in his statement:
“As an artist, I’m always driven to push the boundaries of art delivery in culture and have been intrigued by NFTs for a few years already. I was eager to join Autograph in order to launch a new branch in the music space that explores what the metaverse could be”.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) attracts Timbaland and Universal
Grammy-winning rapper and producer Timbaland has announced the launch of an entertainment brand Ape-In Productions (AIP), based on the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.
Ape-In Productions is a music label that seeks to work with talent from within the BAYC community and its first representative, TheZoo, a hip-hop group in the BAYC universe have just released their first EP: ApeSh!t.
Eventually, Ape-In Productions (AIP) hopes to develop a platform where certain Bored Apes can publish music and other content in form of NFTs. Holders will be able to access other exclusive experiences, such as concerts and virtual studio sessions.
Meanwhile, Universal Music Group’s 10:22pm label has teamed up with BAYC and has already created a music group made up of four Apes called Kingship.
A DJ also in front: Deadmau5
Very recently, Deadmau5 presented an NFT collection called “Head5”. The DJ keeps innovating with projects involving NFTs, but this time he wanted to go further and presents a metaverse project. We can read on the site:
“Holders of this token will continue to be rewarded with exciting new mau5 projects and integrations 5ever.”
Together with his longtime collaborator Nick “Smearballs” DenBoer, deadmau5 put 5,555 NFT up for sale on Monday, November 15th and in 3 days, 1870 NFTs were sold at a price of 0.15 ETH.
Audius x Tik Tok
In August, TikTok also turned towards NFTs. The Ethereum-based Audius protocol has become one of the first streaming platforms to be integrated with TikTok. It allows almost 1 billion users to directly share tracks on the social network and directly on the Audius app. The new feature has been called TikTok Sounds.
In another initiative, the application has promised to put on sale several collections, in collaboration with artists such as Grimes (partnership with Lil Nas X cancelled). These NFTs will be offered on Ethereum (ETH), with the help of Layer 2 Immutable X.
Conclusion
As these examples show, the music industry and its artists continue to become more and more interested in NFTs. We mustn’t forget to mention the video game company Animoca Brands who have partnered with South Korean record label Cube Entertainment to create a “K-pop music metaverse”.
Virtual reality and artificial intelligence techniques only expand the possibilities for creating rich, immersive experiences.
Music, music videos, song lyrics, and even concert tickets can take the form of an NFT. Artists and record labels can offer new experiences to their fans and experiment with new ways to monetize their art.
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