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/

Interesting NFTs
Who's in control?
In a society where everyone wants to control everyone, who's in control? "Who's in control?" is a mirror of a controlling society, a futuristic vision of a current reality. Artwork with three different states in all Layers (day, night and sunset) allows owners to make different combinations and show who is in control of this artwork! *** Scanning this artwork with the ARize app [https://arize.io/] will trigger an AR video experience*** ***Music used in the videoart by Midranger (feat. Holly Drummond) - "Unrequited" ***
Tametomo and the inhabitants of Onoshima Island
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) Tametomo and the inhabitants of Onoshima Island 1811 - Japan
PERSIAN + ELK (Flamingo)
Uh, hi! I'm PERSIAN + ELK (Flamingo). I'm a Train Conductor by day, and I like volunteering at the local kitten rescue shelter by night. I'm often described as ridiculous, and I own it. We can be friends, but keep the ultra purrsonal stuff to yourself, please.
The Scion
A young figure caught in a moment of distraction, aware only ephemerally of his unconscious being, as it engages in psychological and psychedelic layer spaces. His right arm casually cradles a moray eel; the figure is comfortable but not truly aware of the potentials for danger in such negligence. His shirt reads “Bello” in Pokemon style font, harkening back to a childhood straddling the millennial threshold. To his right side, out of the unconscious deep, shrouded alien heads propagate as a fractal totem, each new iteration a more sophisticated rendering of emotional masking over the cold mystery of the greys. As the scion of the Budgie-Sattva, the young man, in his distraction, is also simultaneously aware of higher levels of self discovery. To his left a psychological topology sets beneath the oracle side of an 8 ball ,hovering; its message a purest concept of acceptance. The “Scion” lettering is in 80’s HeMan style bold declaration. The lower right side of the painting is like a hybrid of melon, feathers, and seeds. The crystals in the background bring light; conducted, refracted, reflected, and dispersed, to balance the dark shadow of the figure’s physical body. The aura of the scion succeeds in layers to point, with a finger, and the crown chakra, toward a center of a mandala existing as nigh pure application of strokes, in essence painterly abstraction, but also revealing hints of the Aura of migraine, and the bi-hemispherical nature of the brain–noting concerns of the possibility of inherited mental disease. Yet the flourish of chakra as it sets against that center is robust, active, coherent, and reveling against all fear. Fundamentally, the piece speaks to the activation of one’s potential to begin to “Know Thyself”, and find greater awareness out of the enigmas of the mind–as an inculcated seed given to the rich soil of one’s own birthright.
The Harvest
An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower “node”, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads “uWu”. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).