How NFT Projects are Revolutionizing the Music Industry

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are one-of-a-kind tokens that represent ownership in an increasingly digital world. However, much of the buzz around this technology involved owning art and not much else. An artist would create their piece, sell it via an NFT, and the customer would buy it and show it off in their digital home. But that’s it. That NFT is now sitting in the customer’s wallet, remaining there, useless, unless they choose to sell.

As NFTs become more common, developers are realizing that utility is key to keeping these tokens interesting to ensure that the everyday customer will strive to own NFTs, rather than simply art collectors. Such a prospect is especially being realized in the music industry.

In music, artists are releasing songs and albums as usual but with the added launch of NFTs. These NFTs might be of an album cover, a rare image of the band, or some sort of poster. But they’ll also come with utility, as an artist can directly interact with those who acquire their NFTs.

Essentially, a fan holding an artist-issued NFT becomes part of an exclusive club. An artist might hold an AMA event that only NFT holders can attend or offer NFT holders exclusive discounts and promotions. Plus, when a fan buys an NFT, all proceeds go toward the artist rather than a record label. So not only are NFT holders gaining access to exclusive benefits, but they’re also directly supporting their favorite artists.

There are all sorts of projects bringing their own innovations to the music scene. Let’s look at a few:

MoonwalkerFM

MoonwalkerFM is an Ethereum-based, NFT record label aiming to connect musicians and their fans in ways never seen before.

MoonwalkerFM financially incentivizes fans to hold NFTs via passive income. Every time the label drops a song, two NFTs are minted and tied to it — one of common quality and another of a rarer quality.

By holding these NFTs, fans earn passive income based on the success of its linked song. The rarer NFT of the two will receive 30% rewards from the song’s success, and the less rare will receive 15%. These amounts are taken from the label share, and through this, fans have a unique opportunity to be a part of a song’s success.

NFT TONE

NFT TONE is an all-in-one solution helping to facilitate the connection between artists and fans. While artists can sell tokenized album covers, art, and the like, NFT TONE specifically focuses on audio bits as a way for artists to profit. The project offers a marketplace for fans to buy, sell, or even auction their holdings as well.

From there, creators can build and interact with their communities, pitching ways for fans to benefit from their NFT holdings. With discoverability being one of the biggest hurdles artists face, having a space to earn a living and grow a community can mark the difference between success and failure.

Arpeggi Labs

Arpeggi Labs provides artists a digital audio workstation (DAW) to directly build and mint their work on-chain. Once the song is produced, an artist clicks “Mint Song,” and an NFT representing that song is sent to their wallet.

Arpeggi Labs will soon implement an artist royalty system, where artists are directly rewarded for all streams of their music. The project is looking toward the future, where music creation and listening exist entirely on the blockchain.

Of course, these are only a few projects hoping to revolutionize music via NFTs. New ideas appear every day, and who knows which startup will introduce the next big way to harness NFTs and music!