Centaurify, Universal Music Partner at Eurovision 2023 NFTs

Eurovision 2023 contestant Alessandra performs live. Photo credit: MandyPettersen

Despite the well-documented non-fungible token (NFT) sale and the adjacent “crypto winter”, Universal Music Group (UMG) is rolling out “exclusive digital collectibles” for Eurovision contestants ahead of the 67th annual event.

Hilversum, Netherlands-headquartered Universal Music, outlined its latest NFT plans in a joint release with Tallinn, Estonia’s Centaurify. In late March of this year, the major label and the “web3-based music marketplace” revealed a tie-up where Centaurify would host UMG artists’ aforementioned digital collectibles.

Some of these virtual items are linked to contests, music releases, exclusive communities and other benefits, the companies involved have revealed, also noting that the appearance of the collectibles will change in step with the commercial exposure of the songs they are associated with.

A track with one million total streams (apparently across all services) will coincide with a “track” collectible, for example, changing to “moon” at 10 million streams, to “solar” at 50 million streams, and so on until it changes to “supernova” with 500 million currents.

UMG (which has partnered with a number of different NFT platforms) and Centaurify previously dropped 3,333 trophies, and the free items available were, according to the companies, “completely minted in a few hours.” Meanwhile, the Universal Music trophies in question are said to give holders “prior rights to all future artist drops,” among other things.

Included in these future artist drops are paid NFT releases from Eurovision 2023 contestants (and UMG-signed artists) Loreen and Alessandra, the companies announced today.

Under the union, Stockholm, Sweden-born Loreen (who won Eurovision 2012 and is again representing her home country this year) and Lillehammer, Norway-based Alessandra are set to debut Centaurify NFTs for their tracks “Tattoo” and “Queen of Kings,” respectively .The “exclusive” launches (comprising 50 collectibles for each artist) are scheduled to go on sale a week from today, when Eurovision 2023 kicks off.

And unlike the 3,333 trophies highlighted above that were made available for free, these digital items will set diehard fans back 0.02 ETH a pop, or $37.50 based on the cryptocurrency’s current price. Universal Music and Centaurify said: “If either Loreen or Alessandra win this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, one lucky holder will be chosen at random to receive two tickets to Eurovision 2024.”

Finally, in terms of the project’s specs, both tracks have generated north of 50 million streams apiece – meaning the trophies will adopt the “solar” look from the get-go. On the horizon are NFT offerings from K-391, CLMD and Victoria Nadine, according to UMG and Centaurify.

Despite a dramatic drop in the adoption of NFTs with limited practical use, tokens linked to communities, events and products are still making waves in the music sphere. In March, Ticketmaster took steps to scale up its experimental NFT-gated ticketing concept, and Snoop Dogg was the same month founding Web3 livestream platform Shiller, where creators can use NFTs to monetize their streams.