03/12/2021 How a Collection of 1M Music NFTs Could Mint the Next Platinum Record

Deadmau5 and Portugal. The Man are debuting NFTs of their new single at Miami’s Art Basel festival.

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The artists rolled into Miami with a wrapped bus touting their new NFT project. (Eli Tan/CoinDesk)

MIAMI — Electronic music producerdeadmau5and rock bandPortugal. The Manare looking to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), not music streaming services, to sell their next platinum record.

The artists’ newest song “this is fine” is being sold exclusively as a collection of 1 million NFTs on the Mintbase NFT marketplace, which runs on the Near blockchain, with tokens going on sale Thursday.

Some 250,000 of these NFTs will be sold at Miami’s Art Basel festival for $1.29 a piece. The remaining NFTs will be sold as a mix of singles and bundled units and will come with additional rewards that have yet to be announced. A Mintbase representative told CoinDesk it has listed68,000 tokenson its site as of Thursday morning.

In a rarity for a music landscape dominated by platforms like Apple Music and Spotify, the artists’ election to circumvent streaming services, and the largely unfavorable revenue sharing that accompanies them, is indicative of how musicians have been willing to experiment with blockchain to disrupt industry standards.

Fromconcert ticketingtomusic streamingtoNFT marketplaces, artists have used digital collectibles for utility largely similar to social tokens, where creators can continuously reward their token holders after an initial purchase is made. (Portugal. The Man has already experimented with social tokens, minting its PTM coin onsocial token platform Rallyin January.)

Deadmau5 has been a collaborator in numerous crypto-related projects as of late, having backed amusic-streaming DAOas well as aphysical NFT installationwith artist Gregory Siff at a Colorado music festival in November.

“It’s about adoption. It’s about adopting this way of doing things for artists, and it’s also about public adoption and companies working together to adopt technology that’s going to make this easier for everyone,” deadmau5 told CoinDesk in a statement. “It’s not about me working to better my bank account, it’s about all artists working to gain more control of their work.”

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/12/02/how-a-collection-of-1m-music-nfts-could-mint-the-next-platinum-record/