Thoughts On NFTs and the Music Industry
NFT's are certainly making a splash these days in the music business. Grimes, Kings Of Leon, Shawn Mendes have all minted music-related NFT's and made headlines of The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and so on. I will assume you know what NFTs and minting is for this, but if you don't you should read Justin Cone's guide here: https://justincone.com/posts/nft-skeptics-guide/
The promise is a big one: cut out the middlemen and sell your digital art directly to your fans. While this seems like a natural development in the more conventional art world (digital paintings, photography, 3D) to prove authenticity and ownership of digital artwork, the jump to the music industry comes off as a little odd. Didn't we just use decades of criticizing copyright and arguing for the freedom to sample and interpret music? Aren't we trying to teach people to pay for music streaming subscriptions still?
But no.
Instead, now we're trying to make artificial scarcity of our digital music, to make sure that it is collectible, tradeable, and speculative. Honestly, it feels like an easy cash grab from artists that already have massive followings. And good on them, I have no problem with musicians earning a lot of money, we just shouldn't kid ourselves that this is democratizing anything. On the contrary, the barrier to success is going to be much harder.
And then back to the promise: cut out the middlemen and sell your digital art directly to your fans. Who is it that buys the digital tokens being minted by known bands? You guessed it! Not fans, but crypto speculators and investors. Portugal The Man said to Rolling Stone recently that "cryptocurrency is the new rock & roll" - it may be right that crypto is punk rock in its anarchistic nature, but the hype of music NFT's, the sellers, and the money involved seems very non-rock to me.
Sources:
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/why-do-nfts-matter-for-music/
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/04/kings-of-leon-to-release-new-album-as-a-non-fungible-token
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/portugal-the-man-cryptocurrency-ptm-coin-1129477/