Muse releases next album on Polygon-based NFT Platform Serenade

‘Will of the People’, the ninth studio album from iconic rock band Muse, will be released on August 26 as a NFT and is set to become the first ever release to chart in the UK and Australia.

Formed in 2014, Muse won the NME Award for Best British Band in 2007, 2010 and 2011, the MTV Europe Music Award for Best World Stage Performance in 2019, and the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2011 and 2016, among many other accolades.

Back in 2020, Mused also worked with Dapper Labs CryptoKitties project to create digital collectibles.

“Will of the People” will be sold via Serenade, the “eco-friendly” platform that helps artists capitalize on the NFT boom.

“Muse have always had a huge appetite for innovation and pushing the boundaries of how they deliver their music to their fans, so using this technology to elevate the experience of their new album made a lot of sense,” said Serenade CEO Max Shand Decrypt.

According to Serenade’s website, the platform uses a layer-2 solution Polygon to mint NFTs – the company calls Polygon’s proof of effort (PoS) mechanism “far more efficient” than Ethereumits current proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm.

“All Serenade NFTs are embossed on the polygon [chain]because we value its affordability and environmental friendliness,” Shand shared Decrypt. “At Serenade, we bear gas fees on behalf of all users—artists and fans—because we want to recreate the frictionless shopping experience today’s customers are used to, and Polygon allows us to do this at scale.”

Serenade’s one notable feature is that the platform does not require users to create a crypto wallet before purchasing NFTs, and people can use debit and credit cards to purchase NFTs on the site. Users can also use their existing ones Bitcoin or Ethereum wallets linked to Coin base.

As further explained by Shand, when a fan registers on Serenade, the platform automatically creates a digital wallet on their behalf using Web3 infrastructure authentication solution Web3Auth.

“The fan then has the option to store the NFT in the Serenade collection or transfer it to an external wallet of their choice,” said Serenade’s CEO. Decrypt.

First NFT album to reach the charts

The Official Charts Company (OCC), home of the Official UK Top 40 charts, made NFT albums eligible for the charts in April this year, when British indie rock band Amazons released a digital box set of NFT, limited to 100 copies.

However, it was a release “containing NFT content” in the form of animated unreleased footage taken from a key moment from the band’s past, rather than a stand-alone release.

Muse’s upcoming NFT release is limited to 1,000 copies globally and will come in both an NFT and a limited edition format, according to Guardian.

A £20 ($24.50) purchase will give fans a downloadable version of the album as high-resolution FLAC files containing digital signatures from the members of Muse. Apart from that, each of the 1000 buyers will have their names permanently listed on the associated list of buyers.

According to Martin Talbot, CEO of the OCC, the Muse release did not force an update to the OCC’s chart eligibility rules, as it becomes the first NFT album to meet the entry criteria with Serenade being approved as a digital retailer for chart return.

“There’s been a lot of noise about NFTs being the future of music, the future of entertainment, the future of ownership,” Talbot said Guardian.

And it seems to be just the beginning of a new exciting journey.

“Following the release of Muse on August 26, we will be working with a range of emerging and iconic artists to use the digital press format to release albums, EPs and singles to fans, focusing on the music,” Shand told Decryptadding that Serenade will also look at “the joys of unlocking bonus materials and having [the fans’ names] etched into history for an all-time record.”