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The result is a piece of music that has a living, changing composition. The owner of each stem can tweak to any variant as they like. Within each stem is another different set of variants. The music can be split into five different layers (called stems).Įach stem is an NFT in itself that can be owned by a different holder. Here’s how it works - An artist mints an NFT out of his music: This is the master track. Another protocol Async, has gone a step further and allows artists to split up their digital media and tokenize individual layers of their music (Async can be used for more than just music). That’s not all in the music NFT department. Just from one song, he raised US$369,000. These tokens are also broken down into different tiers that comes with additional benefits. To take one example, legendary rapper Nas tokenized 50% of the royalty rights to his song Rare into 1,100 tokens. To date, data from a Dune dashboard shows that a small submarket has emerged from Royal, with total sales volume of all Royal NFTs amounting to US$1.1 million. If owners don’t wish to receive a passive dividend, they can sell it on OpenSea. Fans who purchase the NFTs of an artist’s song in effect entitles them to future cash flows (think of it as stock dividends).ĭepending on the legal contractual arrangements of the artist and their record label, the better the song sells, the more royalties will be generated that will accrue to owners of these royalty NFTs. Royal is one marketplace doing just that.
#The next big thing music verification
As these platforms are still in its early beta stages, artists typically to undergo KYC verification before being onboarded.NFT-skeptics will likely dismiss this as trivial, but its design is aligned with the whole ethos of music NFTs, which is to allow artists to monetize their trade through a small community of dedicated fans, rather than having to cater to as many casual fans as possible. Sound also lets artists curate a personal listening experience with their fans called “listening parties”.įans who purchase the NFTs are able to have little benefits like an audience spotlight and commenting privileges during these virtual parties.
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Other marketplaces like Sound lets artists sell NFTs in collections instead. Yes, the entire song, not a 15-second teaser snippet like on Apple Music. In fact, all the listings on Catalog lets you listen to the song for free. It’s worth repeating that you’re buying the music NFT as a digital collectible, not the song itself. There is also a “creator share” percentage that goes to the artist when the NFTs are resold, the equivalent of a “creator fee” on Opensea. If you go onto Catalog, you can bid on any NFT like you would on OpenSea. The top example right now is Catalog, built on the Zora protocol. NFT music marketplacesĪfter minting their music into NFTs (popular options are OpenSea or Rarible), artists can list them for sale through NFT music marketplaces.
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Here are a few avenues by which artists are marketing their music in this niche NFT submarket.
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The music NFT market is nascent right now, but its early activity is showing some promise. The artist may use the NFT as a token for access to his exclusive events or future content, like many PFP NFTs are doing for social clubs and events. Owning a limited NFT copy of the song may be worth much more down the road when the artist blows up.
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