NFT
Originally posted on March 11, 2021.
The other day, I minted my first NFT on zora.co. It’s a short piece of music that I made by taking the numbers and letters in my Ethereum wallet address and using them to generate the rhythm, bass line and melody. You can listen to it, and bid to own it, here.
It was a fun process and reminded me of when I used to upload works-in-progress to Soundcloud. My plan is to keep uploading more things over time – maybe some older live recordings and unreleased demos too – to form a sort of scrapbook. Thanks to the functionality of NFTs, it would all be totally free to listen to, but anyone interested could also bid to own the “original” – a piece of digital memorabilia. If this sounds interesting, or confusing, or even stupid, please read on!
I first stumbled upon NFTs on a tangent from reading about Bitcoin a few months ago, and have been exploring the space and learning from different people about its potential for musicians since. If you haven’t come across the term “NFT” before, these articles are great:
If you’ve followed me for a while you’ll probably know I love all things DIY. I’ve always self-funded, self-produced and self-released, and I’ve always been interested in circumventing the ugly aspects of the music industry that traditionally prevent musicians from having creative and financial freedom. Since music became digital (and especially now, with live music off the table for a while), many musicians have found it hard to generate an income solely from music, but the persistent and inventive ones have made it work by doing things like selling t-shirts, doing Skype lessons, running a Patreon, etc. For example, I digitised my music collection the instant I found some CD-ripping software as a kid, so it took me a while to come around to the idea of selling vinyl, but after making sure it satisfied my most important creative principle (“make cool shit with cool people”), I’m glad I did it, because it was a huge help with affording to go on tour.
My interest in NFTs is the same as my interest in any new technology or idea – how can it contribute to providing artists with more resources (i.e. time and money) to make more art? The answer in this case is pretty simple – NFTs are a way for artists to re-monetise the digital content they were making all along. It’s very early days, but I really like the idea of traditional music memorabilia (rare songs, demos, videos, artworks, etc) going digital, especially in a time where most of it is digital in the first place. Reliance on social media has distracted many of us into becoming content creators – maybe NFTs will help us get back to making art!
Edit: here’s a reasonable explanation of the environmental impact of (some of) this technology.
Edit 2: for further reading on the use cases for crypto in music generally, this is amazing.