Welcome to the NFT Era Of Music

In the early days, the benefits and potential applications of NFTs seemed endless. There were, of course, skeptics, as there are today, who saw them as an asset bubble that would eventually and catastrophically burst. But for the true believers, NFTs represented an opportunity to throw off the yoke of centralized control that had so long dominated the Internet, to establish economic autonomy and to push the boundaries of creative expression.

Vérité teamed up with NFT company Royal to release a collection of 505 tokens / Kelsey Byrne

Most artists were profiting from the rise of the NFT market. Here was finally a technology that could allow struggling artists to both establish stronger connections with their fans and earn a decent living. NFTs arguably held particular promise for the music industry, which had become notoriously bureaucratic and exploitative over the decades. Many musicians receive only a small fraction of the money earned from their creative output – much of which goes into the pockets of agents, lawyers, record label executives, marketers and a host of other middlemen. To be fair, these intermediaries are often essential ingredients for a musician’s success; no one becomes a superstar all by themselves. But there has long been a growing feeling throughout the music industry that musicians are left with an unfairly small piece of the pie; Kanye West once called the industry “modern day slavery”.

The advent of streaming has of course been a game-changer for artists, but it’s a double-edged sword. Yes, it has enabled artists to reach a large number of previously inaccessible listeners around the world and made it easier for listeners to discover new artists and expand their musical horizons. But it doesn’t pay much (Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming platform, pays around $0.003 per stream, the equivalent of about $1 for 3,000 streams), and it’s an algorithmically driven ecosystem, which occasionally means that artists whose sounds don’t fit a particular form getting lost in the noise, so to speak, while the Dua Lipas and Ed Sheerans of the world – artists who come with a proven pop flavor – are constantly pushed forward and attract the majority of public attention.

Kelsey Byrne, who goes by the stage name Vérité, is one of those artists whose sound definitely colors outside the conventional lines. Her music is funky with a techno-pop edge, like a hybrid between Sylvan Esso, Lorde and Flume. “It’s definitely in a category of its own,” she says, “[which] presents its challenges in an algorithmically playlisted, mood-based world.”

Unwilling to compromise the essence of Vérité (which translates roughly to “truth” or “truth”), Byrne decided around 2015 to start dabbling in blockchain technology as a means of both creating additional revenue streams and bypassing the almighty streaming algorithm to connect with her fans. “Do I want to play this game [trying] to be algorithmically appealing? No, I have worked too hard to maintain independence and creative autonomy, she says. “I’m going to pivot … to experiment with web3.”

She has started several NFT projects since the first, fateful decision. Just last year she teamed up with NFT company Royal to release a collection of 505 tokens alongside the release of her song He’s Not You; each token grants its holder a significant share of streaming royalties for the track, in perpetuity. (The song currently has just under 1.7 million streams on Spotify.) It was a multi-layered NFT drop; the size of the royalty percentages that a token holder could earn was correlated to the status and price of the tier. The top tier, or “diamond” NFTs, of which there are only five, came with a share of over 0.85%, along with signed cassette tapes and a video call with Byrne.

Later this month, she will drop what she describes as “NFT embedded goods that will act as the key to accessing the next era of Vérité.” Fans will be able to purchase a Vérité-branded sweatshirt containing a microchip that can be scanned with one’s phone to access exclusive content, including the name of her next album, the album’s trailer and a new single. It will be like wearing a digital link to Vérité itself, a cozy portal that can lead the user beyond the realm of pure, mundane fandom and into the realm of something more akin to a collaborative community of creativity.

That sense of community and reciprocity is one of the greatest benefits NFTs can bring to musicians. Vlad Ginzburg, CEO of Blockparty — a company that helps artists and brands launch NFTs — says it should vary from artist to artist and should reflect the unique characteristics of a particular artist’s fan base. “Chances are, if we can figure out the culture of the fans, then we will [can] issue an NFT that defines that culture, says Ginzburg. “[An] NFT should be a representation of what that culture is about.”

An uncertain future

In addition to her talent and ability to adapt to an ever-changing industry (she describes herself not only as an artist, but also as “a creative problem solver”), Byrne’s utilization of web3 has enabled her to build a strong and dedicated fan network and remain independent. “I committed a long time ago to doing things my own way and playing my own game, both creatively and how I write, produce and distribute music,” she says. “I’m not going to dance on TikTok. I’m just not going to do it.”

At the same time, she strives to stay nimble, ready and able to evolve and change along with the wider web3 movement. “The culture of web3 is going to change and attaching yourself to any growing and changing culture is probably a mistake,” she says. “I don’t connect the cart to anything.”

The wisdom of the unreliable cart approach of web3 has been clearly demonstrated in recent months, as the values ​​of leading cryptocurrencies have plummeted to historic lows. Many headlines have speculated that this could be the beginning of the end for both crypto and NFTs. But for many of those actively building in this space, this is not the time to throw in the towel – it’s a time to rebuild so that web3 can emerge stronger than ever. Ginzburg, who likens the health of the web3 market to tides that inevitably bring both ups and downs, says moments like this are actually healthy for the industry’s long-term success. “The tide going out is actually very necessary for many of us to go back to work and keep working at it,” he says. “This is still very new technology and it’s still a very long build. So [at] times like this… you want to see who swam without a bathing suit. You’ll see some of the BS stuff, you’ll see some of the scammers … we’re actually kind of happy when the tide pulls out to see some of the bad actors exposed and shuffled out of the way.”

For more on the power of sound, check out The Drum’s Audio Deep Dive.