NFTs are not limited to digital arts, gaming items, and collectibles. Recently, a huge trend has been related to the adoption of music NFTs. The market size of music NFT in 2021 was $1240.3 million. Moreover, this market value is expected to reach $42,380.2 million at a CAGR growth of 27.52% by 2032. Impressive right? Celebrity artists like Tory Lanez, 3LAU, and Mike Shinoda are popular names to create their music works into NFTs. The introduction of big players from the music industry also plays a crucial role in the wider acceptance of music NFTs. Now, let’s explore more on music NFT. Stay tuned!
What is a Music NFT?
Music NFT is a trending way that offers its creator ownership using blockchain technology. The musicians can now mint their NFTs to represent their musical work. By doing so, they’ll be verified owners and can list their music at an NFT marketplace. Simply put, music NFTs can be considered a subdivision of NFT that only includes music-related digital products. These products include songs, music albums, or even music videos. Kings of Leon is credited as the first band that released their album as an NFT. This band successfully generated over $2 million from their NFT sales. Moreover, Warner Music Group announced a partnership with Tezos blockchain and OneOf to empower the music industry with the help of NFTs. Music NFT has different types that cover artists across various genres of music. The major sub-categories include:
Musical Albums and Songs: Albums and songs cover a large part of Music NFT. This category has one of the most fans and buyers in the NFT marketplace. In recent times, artists have utilized this opportunity to connect with their fans and to conduct sales. Ticket for Events: The introduction of Metaverse has led to the rise of virtual events. You can now use virtual devices to attend official musical events and concerts. Here, the digital tickets for such events are sold as musical NFTs. Moreover, fans are also gifted in the form of NFTs. Digital Photos: Along with musical work, the artwork also plays an important role in promotions and income generation. For this, musicians create digital posters and album covers as NFTs. Video Clips: After a successful live concert, the event organizers presented the show’s major moments as video NFTs. In that case, there’ll be a limited number of video clips that fans can purchase and store.
Let’s check how the introduction of music NFT benefits creators.
How Do Artists Benefit from Music NFT?
#1. Complete Ownership
Music NFT provides artists with complete ownership and control over their work. They can list their NFTs in different marketplaces with better pricing. In addition, NFT allows people to identify an artist’s original work. This feature restricts the creation of duplicate copies. Moreover, most marketplaces provide licenses for minted NFTs. You can use this as proof to verify your ownership to sellers.
#2. Royalties
Most prominent NFT marketplaces allow artists to set a specific royalty percentage for their NFTs. This feature provides a passive income for every sale. Suppose a creator listed his music NFT with a creator share of 10%. In this case, if their NFT is sold for 20 ETH, that artist instantly receives 2 ETH as royalty. Here the creator doesn’t need to participate in any royalty collection process. The artist’s wallet gets credited with tokens after each successful secondary trade.
#3. Community
Community plays a strong role in the case of music NFTs. The artists now have a huge online audience to showcase their talents. Creating an active fan base can do wonders for emerging artists and their bands. Later, the artists can conduct virtual events by selling tickets in the form of music NFTs.
#4. No Middleman
The traditional music industry charges a large percentage of fees to publish an album or song. Whereas the decentralized nature of NFTs eliminates the middleman between artists and buyers. Simply put, musicians can now list their music NFTs on a marketplace and sell them directly to buyers. Here, the payment is instantly credited to the owner of the NFT. Now, let’s have a look at the best music NFT marketplaces.
OpenSea
OpenSea is the leading NFT marketplace with over 80 million listed NFTs. As of January 2023, this marketplace has crossed its one million user transaction. The vast customer base also inspired OpenSea to list its Music NFTs. The popular names on this platform include Imogen Heap, Snoop Dogg, and Weeknd. Moreover, this marketplace promotes the listing of independent artists. The home page of OpenSea Music NFT welcomes you with “Trending Collections.” This category also helps to display the talents of unknown musicians. Artists can upload their audio or video files to mint music NFT. OpenSea supports formats such as WebM, MP4, and WAV. Moreover, you can also choose from various listed blockchains. The major available blockchain includes Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Polygon, Optimism, and Solana. OpenSea allows you to set a royalty in percentage. However, the maximum royalty value that you can set is 10%. This marketplace allows you to mint music NFT for free. So, you don’t need to pay any upfront fees for minting an NFT on OpenSea. After completing a sale, you’ll be charged a fee of 2.5% of the total value.
Async
Are you looking for a user-friendly music NFT marketplace that allows you to create and sell your music? Then, Async is a great choice to consider. You can use this marketplace to create various layers to your music. In effect, the rarity of your music NFT increases. Rare NFT collections have a high potential to get noticed by buyers. Moreover, the features and simple user interface have attracted almost 9,000 creators on the Async platform. Also, this platform has minted above 53,000 NFTs to date. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Async uses ETH tokens to pay for NFTs and their transaction fees. All the NFTs listed on this marketplace consist of ERC-721 tokens. Besides listing your musical work, you can also use the platform’s features to generate a new music NFT from scratch. For this purpose, Async has its “music builder” tool. Moreover, you can receive up to 10% royalty for every secondary sale. Async provides its users with unlimited minting possibilities without paying a dime. You only need to pay based on your NFT sales. This marketplace charges 20% for primary and 2.5% for secondary sales.
PlayTreks
PlayTreks marketplace allows you to list and monetize from your music NFTs. This platform also supports the promotion of rising musicians and independent artists. You can use the NFT generator available on PlayTreks to create custom music NFTs. Then, you can fix a price for your work and sell it directly to collectors, fans, or investors. Moreover, you can list your quality music NFTs and create a community and fan base around them without any funding. As your community grows, your NFTs will have a higher demand and valuation. Getting a traditional music industry license is not easy, especially for new artists. Whereas, PlayTreks grant you an instant license for your music. If you are looking for fan-funding or crowdfunding, PlayTreks also provides these features. In this case, early believers of your music project fund you in return for future revenue shares. This feature acts as a win-win situation for artists and investors. PlayTreks allows music NFT owners to trade, license, resell, and distribute their work as they like. Moreover, for every secondary sale of your NFT, you’ll receive a fixed 5% royalty.
OneOf
Are you interested in listing your music on an eco-friendly music NFT marketplace? Then, OneOf is a great option to consider. Tezos and Polygon blockchain network powers the OneOf platform. As a result, this is a green NFT platform for music NFT fans, investors, artists, and collectors. To list your NFT for sale, you can go directly to the OneOf marketplace and select “Post for Sale.” Moreover, you can also add more collections if required. Finally, set a price in USD, and your music NFT is up for sale. Simple, right? Lin Dai, the co-founder, and CEO of OneOf aims to make web3 and crypto accessible to general people using NFTs. Moreover, Dai created the platform to provide simple access for mainstream consumers. You can also use this marketplace to attain exposure for your music NFT from people without crypto wallets. For this reason, OneOf supports payment methods using debit and credit cards.
TuneGONFT
TuneGONFT enables you to mint your music NFTs and distribute them through their streaming platform. Artists can also use this platform to secure the creative rights of their music. TuneGONFT is the result of an innovative collaboration of TuneGO with Dapper Labs. This NFT marketplace aims to empower artists with the help of blockchain to mint, list, and sell their digital music. You can also use this marketplace to create an official license for your music collections. In addition, you can sell your NFT for online games, TV shows, or even films. The presence of a license acts as proof of ownership of your work. The prominent advantage of TuneGONFT is that it is a custom NFT platform dedicated to music artists. This impressive feature allows music enthusiasts, buyers, and collectors under one hood. With the wide acceptance of eco-friendly NFT projects, TuneGONFT functions on a proof-of-stake (Pos) mechanism. By doing so, this platform consumes less energy for every transaction. Flow is the blockchain that powers the whole music NFT ecosystem.
AirNFTs
Built using the BSC blockchain, AirNFTs aims to support artists to generate revenues for their musical works. The user-friendly nature of this platform allows you to create music NFTs with a few clicks. Besides BSC, AirNFTs also supports faster and more economical blockchains Polygon and Fantom. You can use any three of these blockchains supported by your crypto wallet. You can mint your music to NFT and set a desired price in BNB, FTM, or MATIC tokens. After the sale, your wallet gets instantly credited with the crypto tokens. AirNFTs has an online community on various social media platforms that promote the works of talented new artists. This platform has minted over 110,000 NFTs to date. In addition, the trading volume has exceeded $8 million. Trust Wallet is the most preferred wallet to mint tokens on AirNFTs. Using this wallet, you can mint your NFTs for less than 1 USD. In most cases, the minting fee charged is around 0.7 USD.
Onlymusix
Onlymusix is a new marketplace that creates, buys, and sells music NFTs. Moreover, this platform aims to aid new artists in distributing their digital works. Powered with Polygon blockchain, you can mint your NFTs for free. Also, this platform doesn’t charge fees from buyers, which helps to encourage more sales. Suppose you are new to the NFT space and want to create your music collection. In that case, you can contact Onlymusix’s creative team for support and guidance. Onlymusix supports digital works that are related to music. You can upload your content in formats like mp3, FLAC, mp4, images, or GIFs. Artists can also set a royalty percentage for their secondary NFT sales. For example, you can choose 10% or 20% of the sale value as earnings. Onlymusix charges a platform fee of 5% of every music NFT sale. The artist or seller receives the remaining 95% in MATIC tokens. The fast transaction speed of the Polygon network allows you to create an NFT in about 5 minutes. This time taken can increase or decrease based on the network congestion.
Final Thoughts
Traditional music industries provide limited opportunities for new emerging artists. Moreover, they rarely get an opportunity to showcase their talents and sell their music. Here, the introduction of music NFT plays a prominent role in transforming the music industry. This NFT marketplace allows upcoming artists to list their songs or collection of songs. Now artists can set a fixed price for their NFT. Moreover, they’ll also get rewarded with royalties for every secondary sale. If you are a fan of trading cards, then you can check out the best NFT trading card games.
