The music industry, worth billions of dollars, has lately shown interest in nonfungible tokens (NFTs), as musicians worldwide see the significance of decentralizing economic frameworks.
Pioneers such as legendary rapper Snoop Dogg, who just acquired Death Row Records to transform it into the Metaverse’s first NFT music company, are showcasing this concept. Dolly Parton, a country music queen, just published her first NFT collection, “Dollyverse,” which features tokenized artwork and songs as part of a promotional campaign for her album Run, Rose, Run.
The 64th Annual Grammy Awards, held on April 3, 2022, at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, marked the culmination of the merger of music and NFTs. The Grammy Awards, a series of honors presented by the Recording Academy to recognize outstanding achievements in the music industry, may very well be one of the most important events in the history of the United States music industry.
Led to the introduction of nonfungible tokens, nonfungible tokens were a hot topic of discourse during the 2022 Grammy Awards. “You know it’s been rough when your favorite artists go from trying to sell you music to pictures of digital monkeys,” Trevor Noah, comedian, and host of the 2022 Grammy Awards said halfway through the evening. The phrase was made in response to the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s NFT collection. However, NFTs was more than a joke at this year’s Grammy Awards, as industry heavyweights expressed interest in nonfungible token use cases.
Tia Smith, a Grammy governor and co-chair of the Music Video Committee, Washington, DC Chapter, as well as the owner/executive producer and director of talentedSOL productions, told Cointelegraph she is intrigued by NFTs and what they mean for the creative industry as a whole:
“NFTs seem like a very viable form of expression and commerce. There have been so many different industries adopting NFTs, and I’m very interested in creating content and forming partnerships to create NFT artwork as an extension of music, television, and film.”
While it’s worth mentioning that NFTs were addressed at this year’s Grammy Awards, the first NFT use cases were produced in 2017. As a consequence, people may wonder why it took so long for nonfungible tokens to acquire traction.
According to Josh Katz, CEO of YellowHeart, a marketplace for music nonfungible tokens and nonfungible token tickets for live events, no one in the music industry knew what nonfungible tokens were a year ago. Katz thinks things changed in March 2021, when American rock band Kings of Leon released YellowHeart, one of the industry’s first NFT albums. “Following this album, everyone in the music and entertainment industry started paying attention to NFTs. The more creative artists jumped in first, then everyone else started to poke around,” Katz said.
