There are some interesting things going on this week in the world of music. Big changes afoot. It’s been that kind of week. Between endless political solicitations filling up my inbox, 4K video of SpaceX Starship SN10 detonating on the landing pad after a seemingly successful test flight, and less than joyous side effects from my first COVID-19 vaccination, I’m ready to call it a week. But before I do, I want to call your attention to an interesting development in the Blockchain world. NFTs are about to become a thing in the music world. No — not some new designer drug passed around at live music events when they finally resume later in 2021, but a form of cryptocurrency part of the Ethereum blockchain that you can trade for digital art; which includes music, photographs, videos, and other exclusive items from musicians.
So basically a digital music designer drug. That actually applies to anything digital.
Or vinyl in this case as well. Weird.
Non-fungible tokens are somewhat like bitcoin with the exception that you’re basically paying for something unique. You can trade one bitcoin for another bitcoin, but you can’t trade something unique for an exact copy of that same unique item and still call it unique. Make sense?
I’m confused too. Thanks Pfizer.
NFTs are about to become quite useful for musicians looking to make up some of the revenue they lost in 2020; that whole COVID-19 pandemic thing we’re still going through.
American rock band, Kings of Leon just announced such an arrangement and it will be interesting to see how many fans jump on the NFTs bandwagon.
A lot of artists are really upset (with good reason) at the streaming services because the royalties are not exactly paying the bills if you’re a smaller artist who lost the ability to tour in 2020. Musicians like Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z will be fine, but bands who need the revenue from touring and merchandise have felt the pain.
Speaking of Jay-Z…
It would appear that the rap/hip-hop mogul has finally extricated himself from his Tidal nightmare by selling a majority ownership overnight to Square. The same company owned by Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.
