20/05/2022 Universal Music Group to Release NFTs on LimeWire’s Algorand Marketplace

The major music label behind Taylor Swift, U2, Kendrick Lamar, and BTS will let artists drop NFTs on the new Web3 version of LimeWire.

Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift are signed to Universal Music Group labels. Image: Shutterstock
Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift are signed to Universal Music Group labels. Image: Shutterstock

Digital music sharing services are coming back… inWeb3form. Just days after news broke thatNapster will returnin the form of anNFTmarketplace onAlgorand, LimeWire—which announced its ownAlgorand-based marketplace in March—announced today that it hassigned major label Universal Music Groupto its platform.

The global deal will let artists signed to Universal Music Group and its myriad imprint labels release tokenized digital collectibles via the upcoming LimeWire marketplace. Universal’s imprints include the likes of Interscope Records, Def Jam Records, Motown Records, Geffen, Republic Records, EMI, Virgin Music, and others.

Polygon NFT sales surpass Ethereum, driven by RWA-based Courtyard
Monad Network: 150 Million Active Wallets and Strategic NFT Use
'Blankos Block Party' is an NFT Trojan Horse for the video game industry

Collectively, the Universal Music Group lineup includes such massive artists as Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, The Rolling Stones, U2, BTS, Chris Stapleton, The Weeknd, Abba, and Elton John. Today’s deal doesn’t necessarily mean that any of those artists will release NFTs via LimeWire, but they will apparently have the opportunity to do so.

Music Sharing Service LimeWire Is Back—As an NFT Marketplace

A popular peer-to-peer music sharing service from the early 2000s is about to get a second act. Today, the new owners of the long-dormant brand LimeWire announced that it will be relaunched as...

Andrew HaywardMar 9, 2022

LimeWire will be relaunched as an NFT marketplace that’s initially focused on music-related assets, whether it’s actual music or things like artwork and collectibles from musicians. Serial tech entrepreneurs Paul and Julian Zehetmayr acquired the dormant peer-to-peer music sharing service last year andannounced their Web3 plans in March.

In April, LimeWire revealed that itraised $10.4 million in a token saleled by Kraken Ventures, Arrington Capital, and GSR, with participation from other firms such as Crypto.com Capital and musician Deadmau5’s 720Mau5 fund.

According to the token sale announcement, LimeWire plans to begin its “official launch campaign” later this month and then open up the marketplace soon thereafter. An NFT acts like a proof of ownership to a digital item, and can represent goods like digital artwork, music files, collectibles, and more.

Algorand is aproof-of-stakeblockchain network that’s billed as a rival toEthereum, the leading platform for NFTs and decentralized apps. Last week, Algorand and Web3 investment firm Hivemind announced that they had acquired streaming (and formerly peer-to-peer) music service brand, Napster, with plans to launch a Web3 music platform.

This isn’t Universal’s first move into the Web3 space. Last November, UMG’s 10:22PM labelannounced the launch of Kingship, a Gorillaz-inspired virtual band based on a series ofBored Ape Yacht ClubNFTs. The band will perform in metaverse worlds and sell its own NFTs too.

Meanwhile, rival Warner Music Groupsigned a partnershipwith metaverse gameThe Sandboxin January. The label, which houses artists like Lizzo and Ed Sheeran, will develop virtual land in The Sandbox’s game world and host concerts within the space.

Arts

https://decrypt.co/100704/universal-music-group-nfts-limewire-algorand-marketplace

Interesting NFTs
Rogue Society Bots #10097
Rogue Society Bot is a collection of 15,777 unique Rogue Bot NFTs— unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Rogue Bot doubles as your Rogue Society membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits and experiences. Future perks can be unlocked by the community through roadmap activation. Visit www.roguesociety.io for more details.
30K
Artist notes: the halving ceremony is the most unusual part of modern bitcoin production in which the owners bet on how efficiently an alpha can inseminate the market.
Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys
In this image, a giant sphinx spoons itself in erotic play within an aquatic styled environment littered by various denizens. These creatures include symbols and archetypes both current and nostalgic–each inhabiting a rootedness within mass cultural adolescence. Among the roster are Servbots, video game inspired mushrooms, a Pacman-like creature, a distant sea faring rubber duck, creatures sporting the symbols reminiscent of popular anime, and a Pokemon-like rabbit (a novel incarnation of Ganesha indicated by the Shiva trident on its nose). In addition, a few sea creatures partly inspired by sea monsters of western antiquity conglomerate along the mid left side of the composition. The Sphinx itself is an amalgam of aquatic, fetishist, ancient Egyptian, and 80’s style adornments, both living, as in a clown fish, or material, such as a cassette tape. Nautically colored antennae receive somatic signals from the atmosphere, perhaps from the 8 Ball moon or giant ringed planet beyond.
SPECIMEN No. 20
The beast stirs. Part of small series of jar animations I created back in 2019 that was originally meant to become a Title Sequence project. Although that never came to fruition, I learned a ton along the way. For an in-depth project breakdown, click here: https://youtu.be/bQ7WrhdBMao
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.