NFT Project Spotlight: Hume’s Music NFT Metastars

Hume is a Web3 record label that develops a roster of virtual artists called “Metastars”.

What is Hume?

Hume is one of the world’s first Web3-native record companies. It focuses on harnessing the power of blockchain technology to create deeper connections between music artists and their fans.

The label pioneers what it calls “Metastars,” entirely virtual artists that Hume NFT holders help influence and develop. The Hume website defines Metastars as Metaverse-native, universally influential, virtual music artists who exist in both the Metaverse and the physical world. Hume’s goal is to become the leading Web3 label dedicated to promoting virtual artists and including them and their fans in the music collective. Crypto Briefing sat down with Hume co-founders David Beiner and Jay Stolar to find out what inspired them to launch Hume, their backgrounds in the music industry, and how NFTs play a central role in creating a community-driven virtual artist platform.

Angelbaby and the Metastars

Hume’s first Metastar is angelbaby, an NFT from Non-Fungible Labs’ FLUF World collection. Before becoming Hume’s founding Metastar, angelbaby was already an established artist in his own right. They have played several live shows this year at leading art and music events, including Art Basel Miami and South by Southwest. In addition, angelbaby’s music has consistently topped the charts for the best-selling music NFTs on platforms such as OpenSea and Audius.

But in Hume’s world, angelbaby takes on a new role as one of the founders of the Hume collective. The project has shed light on the mysterious artists’ background, revealing them as a time traveler from the year 3045.

The story goes that in the distant future, censorship is rampant and all creative expression is controlled by an oppressive force called the Xani Republic. Angelbaby has returned in time to the present day to found a group of rebel artists to fight the Xani Republic. This group, known as the hume collective, is dedicated to preserving creative expression and the open Metaverse at all costs.

“Angelbaby went through a portal that took them back in time, they met me and David, and they’ve introduced us to other Metastars. As crazy as it all sounds, it’s a deep story,” Stolar said, highlighting how Hume is an exercise in creative world-building and a new way for fans to connect with their favorite artists. “Our world is not only developing these tools that allow you to interact with your fans in new ways, but developing each Metastar as part of a larger narrative world that they are all a part of,” he added.

Backgrounds for the creator

Besides Hume’s innovative world-building through angelbaby eyes, the collective’s other founders each have their own stories to tell. Jay Stolar, Hume’s Chief Artist Officer, has an extensive background in performance, songwriting and music production. His claims to fame include writing songs for Aloe Blacc, Selena Gomez, Carly Rae Jepsen and Demi Lovato, and producing music for popular multiplayer games such as League of Legends and Fortnite.

During Stolar’s time producing music for other artists, he realized that the boundaries between the real and the virtual were becoming increasingly blurred. “What I started to realize was that essentially a lot of these projects were being treated as if they were [for] a virtual artist,” he explained.

For example, the projects Stolar worked on with Riot Games for League of Legends involved producing music for virtual artists who are also playable characters in the game. While some initially doubted whether fans would be able to connect with virtual artists in the same way as real-world artists, projects like Seraphine and K/DA showed that virtual artists could succeed, opening the door to a whole new paradigm in music production. “That led us down a path where we really fell in love with the idea of ​​virtual artists early on,” Stolar said.

While Stolar was discovering the untapped potential of virtual music artists, his fellow Hume co-founder, David Beiner, was exploring blockchain technology and the new idea of ​​the Metaverse. “I got deep into Web3 and Ethereum, started thinking about NFTs and Metaverse, and the more I talked to Jay, I thought, what’s the difference between writing songs for Selena Gomez, or a virtual artist we can develop and build the track for”, he said.

This realization marked the beginning of what is now called the hume collective, something the pair have never looked back on. “We had this general perception that now seems obvious – we’re going to have digital products, we’re going to have digital identities, those digital identities are going to blur the lines between the physical and the digital, and then you’re going to have completely virtual artists that also blur the lines between both of those worlds,” Beiner added.

Hume Genesis NFTs

In line with pioneering a platform for virtual music artists, Hume has chosen to use virtual assets in the form of NFTs to bridge the gap between artists and their fans. When asked why NFTs were the best choice for the hume collective, Beiner gave two main reasons: community and intellectual property.

NFTs have long been recognized for their ability to stimulate online communities. Through their ability to provide benefits such as voting rights, Discord access, or airdrops to holders, the nascent blockchain-based technology has made coordinating communities and rewarding members easier than ever before.

However, Beiner takes this a step further in the context of the relationship between music artists and their fans. In addition to knowing exactly who a virtual artist’s fans are, Hume’s Genesis NFTs will allow their holders to make decisions about the future of the Hume community. “We’re a big fan of making decisions,” Stolar said, careful to distance Hume from existing token-voting mechanics popularized by DAO governance structures. “The reason we don’t like the word ‘vote’ is because Hume is not a DAO; we’re not going to have community proposals. It’s more of a story, [in the story] of Hume Genesis in the future, everyone had one, and they would meet in one place and make decisions together,” Beiner explained.

There are 1000 Hume Genesis NFTs that were dropped for free to those who met certain criteria, such as holding angelbaby POAPs or owning angelbaby music NFTs. Upon release, the genesis NFTs revealed themselves in one of three tiers: Rare, Ultra-Rare, and Legendary. Depending on the level, each genesis NFT will give its holder an increased amount of influence in the Hume decision-making process.

As for additional benefits of holding higher-level NFTs, Beiner hinted at perks like exclusive dinners, backstage at events, and priority access to Metaverse concerts. “I let your imagination run through all the possibilities of what you can do,” he said. “Angelbaby wouldn’t be very happy if we started talking about things that are going to happen for each level,” Stolar added jokingly.

Starting with Hume’s first Metastar, angelbaby, every virtual artist launched through Hume will have their own Genesis NFT event, and all Hume Genesis holders will be guaranteed NFTs for all artists for the next 18 months. Little is known about the subsequent genesis cases except that each will be larger in size than the Hume Genesis collection.

Each Metastars genesis NFT will give holders the opportunity to help develop them and their music careers. Possible decisions involving music production include which songs will go on albums, which songs the artist will release as singles, and deciding album covers. “If you have 1,000 passionate fans, let them ‘get in the room with the artist,’ let them be part of the process. They’re the ones listening. They’re the ones who love it the most,” Beiner explained.

The future of music

Although Hume is still in its early stages of development, Beiner and Stolar are confident that NFTs will eventually change the way we interact with and consume music. They see Web3 and blockchain as the next big technological evolution in how people interact with music, like the record player that allows ownership or digitization that makes music portable.

At the same time, the pair acknowledged that bringing music NFTs into the mainstream won’t be easy. “Music NFTs definitely haven’t gotten the same amount of love or attention as PFP projects or visual arts, and that’s definitely been a big barrier there,” Beiner said.

On the virtual artist side, Stolar recommends checking out angelbaby and their music to fully understand the concept of a virtual artist. “We’re just years away from a time where there are, I think, millions of people putting on virtual avatars to represent themselves as artists,” he said, sharing his optimism for the idea.

Whether or not Hume will succeed in its vision of becoming the premier Web3 label will largely depend on the success of the music NFT as a concept. Other Web3 music platforms such as Audius, Catalog and RŌHKI are also helping to develop music NFTs but, like Hume, have yet to find mainstream adoption. Still, as blockchain technology grows, more artists are likely to see music NFTs as a viable option to connect with their fans in a way never before possible.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.