Enter the world of music digital collectibles! The Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs are digital assets stored on the blockchain, the same technology that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and because they are stored on the blockchain, NFTs are immutable, cannot be duplicated, and we can know who created it and who actually owns it. This makes them ideal for music, where artists can sell NFTs of their songs or albums and fans can buy them as digital collectibles directly from them to get access and perks like never seen before.
The benefits of NFTs for the music industry are numerous. For artists, NFTs can provide a new revenue stream and engagement tool. For fans, NFTs offer a new way to show their support for their favorite artists, be part of a community that benefits from the artist’s success, and access the artist’s resources and connections. And for the music industry as a whole, NFTs offer a new way to track music ownership and royalties while providing a different experience. The potential of NFTs is already being realized by some of the biggest names in music.
The sales of NFTs is just the beginning, by using NFTs, artists could be able to ensure that they are paid for their work, and fans will be able to directly support their favorite artists. The future of music is NFTs with the ability to monetize music and track ownership. Digital collectibles seems to be the next big thing in the music industry.
As the social media landscape continues to evolve, so does the way we discover and consume music today. The music industry is actually doing well right now, and social media platforms like Youtube, TikTok and Instagram are playing a big role in its success. By using music on these platforms, artists can reach a wider audience and build a following more easily than ever before.
Artists around the world invest countless hours crafting their art, distributing and promoting it to the world. If it seems a daunting task to do all of it for a fraction of a cent every time someone listens to your music, it is because the streaming services has made it unsustainable for many artists to pursue their careers based solely on listener’s activity. An artist needs 10 million streams on spotify to make 30 thousand dollars a year, that’s really a lot of streams.
The current music industry model is based on a record label providing the artist the capital to produce and promote the music. The agreement typically provides an “advance” that the artist takes to invest in the project’s production and marketing. The record label typically will collect revenue as the publisher. So, it might seem that record labels act al lot as a bank to the artist nowadays.
Anyone can publish the music to all platforms for virtually free these days, so NFTs can allow artists to crowdfund in a way that fans become the label, the artists receives the “advance” as an upfront sales and have way more people interested in the artist’s opportunities than some label executives.
The music industry benefits off of music trends on social platforms to the point of having agencies dedicating full marketing campaigns to create engagement and sync to specific songs. The concept is to create a momentum of people using a particular track to make it into the platforms’ suggestions which leads to overall more people using the song in their videos. Every time the song plays, artists and publishers get a dice of the pie.
Now, consider the potential of a popular 10K size NFT community to trend a song. It’s is huge, such engagement can change an artist’s life forever. The artist gets the exposure, the community benefits from owning the artist’s digital collectibles, and the platforms will appreciate the fresh user-native content created so this is a great cycle, if done properly.
The concept does not involve replacing streaming, digital downloads, or hard copy sales for that matter, but yet attribute higher value to the artist and fans thru the digital collectibles ecosystem because it provides ownership verification potential. Also, NFTs could become a licensing tool to commercial intellectual property as it solves ownership and authentications.
Being able to verify ownership is very important when it comes to providing access to special experiences. As we merge onto a Web3 metaverse, the arena wallet verification becomes essential to provide unique attributes to the tokens you have in your wallet. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter already lets you connect your digital wallet the platform and soon more social giants will provide the feature. Music business is a licensing business at it’s core. When an artist publishes the music as an NFT there’s no copyrights transfer with the sale, unless otherwise specified in the terms of the project.
Social platforms, very much like a supermarket playing Bruno Mars trying to make a customer feel cozy to shop more, definitely should pay for use of music and sync, and they do, but too little for most artists to rely on as a feasible source of income. Artists might want to provide sync license to holders so they can use or sublicense the material in commercial production as an opportunity to provide value to holders and build upon the project’s awareness.
Digital collectibles is the next big thing in the music industry says Paradigm Pictures, CEO Frederico Lapenda. Paradigm is a 20 year old Hollywood production company that is currently guiding new artists to launch their careers using all the new tools.
https://twitter.com/RicoLapenda?t=pUhCFsWkYZpVV0Zu00bXyQ&s=09
<Photographs by - Frederico Lapenda>
