The potential value of NFTs and how NFTs change the music industry in today’s age?

Jane Nguyen
NFTify News
Published in
5 min readJul 7, 2021

Non-fungible tokens are gaining the spotlight in many large industries in the world, especially music. The role of music NFT is significant as the NFT footprint in the evolutionary road of global music is largely recognized in recent ages.

Many famous artists issue their innovative works in the form of NFTs and broaden the product accessibility to music supporters. In this article, we find out how NFT changes to the music industry by benefiting the artist business and promoting musical activities to help fans get closer to their celebrity.

What is a NFT?

So, what is NFT phenomenal and its feasible practice in crypto space? NFT refers to non-fungible tokens, meaning unique assets that can’t be replaced with something else. The NFT is a part of blockchain technology and allows the user to verify ownership of digital assets. There are original assets such as inheritance letters, works of art, album, digital files, which presents uniqueness and are impossibly faked and copied by someone else. Hence, it creates high value because the owner has a rare digital asset.

NFT- the magic word for artist assets

Embracing multi-million dollar value, the music industry presents a lucrative business in the entertainment field. Celebrities get into business with a plethora of music videos, live stage, world tours. All shows us the glamorous and alluring picture in today’s age. However, after a period of time, the revenue from the music sales has decreased significantly. At that time, music streaming services emerged and blew a wind of change to the music world.

Along with the success that music streaming brings to the whole music industry, many controversial concerns arose around royalty payment. Many streaming services get money from subscription fees and advertising. When a song is played on a streaming platform, the revenue is distributed to the streaming parties, the music publisher- the songwriter, and the record label. The record label then shares the revenue with the artist. Accordingly, the artist only receives a portion of the revenue.

However, the appearance of music NFT projects help artists to earn more profit from their valuable artworks. The music creators establish their own NFT store and sell their products on that. They can sell almost any innovative products related to their work such as songs, album files, exclusive concert pictures, album images,… directly to their customer without sharing the profits with other parties. Another plus point is that NFT blockchain music tracking is transparent and effective. When the artist launches a song on the blockchain, there is no chance it can be pirated, distributed, or faked because that song is encoded in the blockchain as the one and only original item.

Aside from getting money from initial sales, the artists also keep the share of revenues from future sales. For instance, if someone buys their NFT item for 10000$, the artists can designate that sale so they can keep 10% of all future sales. Thus, they will get the 10% every time the sale happens in this NFT. That means they don’t need to do anything at all and still see their profit growth.

The role of music NFT is largely recognized as many famous artists are no strangers to the NFT platform. “Mean Girls” star Linday Lohan made her business with NFT and so far made $50,000 on Rarible. Recently, she released her single “Lullaby” as an NFT on Fansforever. Rapper Snoop Dogg also joined the NFT team when he issued an NFT collection named “A journey with the Dogg”, featuring eight original pieces of art, an original musical tracked called “NFT”, and a limited edition “Snoop Dogge Coins”.

How can NFT help the fans to live out their dream?

Other than giving artists a fair commission, NFT technology also gives the fan a platform to get closer to their idol. Even though NFTs are digital tokens, they still present real-life experiences, activities, or physical items. For instance, NFT fans can purchase the exclusive meeting with idols backstage, have a photo picture with them, get the concert live video and unique pictures,…

Otherwise, the NFT platform can record the fan’s public data on the blockchain and personalize the fan experience. Fans could achieve their non-fungible token badges to prove their status and commitment to a band or artist. Strikingly, fans with NFT status can have some access to an exclusive meet-and-greet with the artist and some special VIP rights.

In fact, many artists employ NFTs to create one-of-a-kind experiences for their fans. Admirers of “Someone you loved” vocalist — Lewis Capaldi certainly felt happy when he decided to launch a set of NFT ticket experiences offering the fans to join an exclusive journey with him, including private in-person meetings, access to the backstage tour,…

Other famous celebrities- Tennessee rock band Kings of Leon also made NFT sales of their album “When you see yourself”, coupled with “Golden Ticket” auction. The NFT sale offers fans four front-row seats on every Kings of Leon tour for life.

Another way for fans to connect with their artists is via the Defi platform. The Defi musical platform provides a pool for investors and music supporters to allocate their money in. The smart contract will automate the interest repayment and direct profit to the investor, this interest rate will be much higher than the bank’s. Aside from getting interest rate payments, fans and investors can also receive exclusive rewards such as gig tickets, backstage passes,… On the other side of the pool, the artist can borrow money out of the pool and invest into their musical production scheme. They don’t have to borrow from the bank which requires a lengthy and sophisticated process. Loans from the DeFi lending platform will be given to the artists based on their past streaming revenues with copyrights. Accordingly, Defi platform provides win-win solutions as the fan can get the interest rate payment and other exclusive rights while artists can easily get access to the loan for funding their musical activities.

Music NFT as the source of inspiration

NFT is a flourishing land for artists to utilize and deploy their music production and marketing strategy. These musical outputs are the innovation without boundaries, ranging from the musical unique experience, physical products, to digital creation. The music supporters, therefore, have more entryways to interact with their idol and manifest their tremendous adoration among artworks. In the meantime, artists can also earn a vast amount of money from selling their NFT exclusive items. Thus, NFT, albeit a novel field, still develops vividly in the musical industry down the road because of the huge potential it brings to music endeavour.

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