The Musician’s NFT & Metaverse Playbook
How to bring your music to the metaverse.
In 2021, the music industry was rocked by a revolution. The NFT market exploded from a few $million/month to over $3 billion per month between January and December, with just over 1 million users. There is a proven demand for owning digital art of every kind.
Music videos is by far the most popular category of video on YouTube, which serves over 2 billion users per year. That’s 1/3rd of the entire online population in the world. Many of the world’s top songs have over 1 billion streams.
Meanwhile, metaverse concerts raked in millions of dollars in 2021 and created a whole new avenue of opportunity and creative expression for musicians to explore.
Combine the world’s thirst for music with an exploding market for everything digital, and you have the conditions for an explosion. The music metaverse market is set to explode in value from hundreds of $millions in 2021 to hundreds of $billions over the next decade.
Many artists have asked us lately if this is a game that only established artists and rich people can enter. Absolutely not. Over 60% of the money made in music NFTs in 2021 went to independent artists. And with the latest tech, it’s possible to involve fans at every price range, from free limited editions to priceless 1/1 pieces.
So as a musician hoping to explore these new worlds, where do you start? How do you reach your fans in the metaverse?
The best way to sell something is to build a community of fans who love your music and want to support you. That hasn’t changed just because new technology has come along.
Building a community takes time. Prepare for 5–10 years of hard work. But it’s 1000% worth it. Don’t give up!
Start a Discord and a Twitch account. Discord for always-on community vibes and lots of channels to let fans connect and express themselves, and to share great content with your fans. Twitch to connect with fans in regular live streams. The more time your fans spend with you, the more they want to support you, and the more they care about building clout with the community.
Twitter is a great place to find music NFT supporters. There are Music NFT Twitter Spaces every day. Make an account for your music — follow related artists, follow all the music NFT peeps, jump into spaces and learn. Follow @greenruhm for music Spaces notifications.
Jump into the Greenruhm Discord to learn all about what other artists are doing, how to build your music metaverse presence, produce content, etc.
Grow your fanbase. Most music discovery is happening on Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Festivals are also great opportunities. Metaverse festivals are a great way to connect with fans who are already interested in the music metaverse.
Optimize your release schedule. The best way to pump your music is to release more music. The best way to pump your NFTs is to release more NFTs. If you want to maximize your impact, try to release a new single about once per month or every other month. Upload your tracks to streaming services 3–4 weeks in advance to get a better chance at playlist inclusion. Ask your fans to add your music to their playlists. When fans follow, subscribe and add you to their playlists, it boosts algorithm scores, which means the platforms are more likely to recommend your music to new fans.
Having your music releases ready 3–4 weeks in advance gives you plenty of time to plan a release event. Host a listening party live stream on Twitch. Drop a teaser/flyer video on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Release that flyer drop as a limited-edition NFT — that marketing teaser video that used to be an expense of promoting a new drop can become a lifetime royalty income stream when you also drop it as an NFT. Greenruhm makes free flyer drops easy, and allows you to use them to build your network of tapped-in collectors.
Now that you’ve got your marketing plan, be sure to make some low-cost NFTs. The next step up might be a lyric video, and the next step up from that can be a full music video. Hold one NFT back to reward collectors who collect them all.
Not sure how to handle visuals? Partner with emerging visual artists and animators. They’ll be great connections to have when it comes time to design visuals and lighting for your live shows and metaverse concerts.
Speaking of the metaverse, don’t forget wearable metaverse merch. Greenruhm can help you with that, too.
Make behind the scenes videos, playthroughs, fan cover reaction videos, concert footage, live streams, etc. And mine them for some great rare drops for the big fans.
Do collaborations, remixes, features, and split releases to associate yourself with other acts and push fans to each other and increase how many recommendations you get from algorithms.
Consider releasing your stems as NFTs. Allow other artists to remix you and incorporate your work into theirs in exchange for credits and splits on their NFTs. You may use the (CC BY-NC 4.0) license as a starting point to allow remixing but restrict commercial uses, and then grant those commercial uses in exchange for royalty splits or in exchange for owning your NFTs.
Add related artists to your own artist playlists. For example, Talk Time has several playlists where members share some of their musical influences.
Connect with related fan communities on Discord and Twitch, make friends with similar artists and prop each other up in each other’s communities. Raid each other’s Twitch streams, etc.
Share your story (or persona’s fictional story) with your fans. Give fans something to care about, relate to, and engage with.
Connect with music NFT projects that regularly feature music artists. You can find a whole bunch of them in the Discord Servers channel in the Greenruhm Discord.
Jump into the Greenruhm discord and ask questions. There’s a whole community of people like you ready to learn from each other.
Eric Elliott is the Webby-nominated founder of Greenruhm.com, a music metaverse social network where music makers, artists, and fans can build communities and share valuable digital music experiences, identity, belonging, VIP access, and collections. He helped build BandPage (now YouTube Artist Pages), which hosted 500k bands including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, etc. He was an early contributor to Adobe Creative Cloud, and tech lead on a video social network used by CBS, NBC, BBC, and many more.
He enjoys a remote lifestyle with the most beautiful woman in the world.
