Music NFTs is a brand new way to promote your music across the web, making crazy profits. Let’s learn more about this innovation on the crossroads of crypto and the music industry.
Explaining music NFTs
Music NFTs are unique, digital representations of songs on the blockchain. They allow artists and producers to create limited runs of verifiably rare tracks and releases. Music NFTs can’t be illegally copied or duplicated, nor altered.
Also, music NFTs can contain bonus content, fan experiences, concert tickets, and rare merchandise ownership rights.
Early adopters
The popularity of NFTs amongst musicians has been brought to attention thanks to some of the early adopters. Among them — Steve Aoki, 3LAU, Dillon Francis and Illmind. They have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars selling music NFTs.
How to create a music NFT?
Let’s learn how to mint your first music NFT on an Ethereum blockchain. We are choosing Ethereum because it hosts many of the most well-known NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea, so it will be easier to upload your assets when you decide to sell them.
What you will need:
- a piece of music — any audio file;
- artworks for visual design;
- an Ethereum wallet, e.g. MetaMask;
- some ETH to pay gas.
The easiest way to mint your NFT is to make it automatically with OpenSea. Create a new account, or enter the existing one if you already have. Make sure you’ve connected your Ethereum wallet and allowed OpenSea to access it.
Click the ‘Create’ button in the upper right corner of the OpenSea website. Follow the instructions on-screen and create a “new item” by uploading an audio file. You can also add multiple files as part of a collection, and even include bonus non-audio content.
Done? Then give your music NFT a name, provide it with a URL, a description, and create a collection for your NFT. Select the number of assets in your future collection. Finish the process by clicking ‘Create’. Your collection will be listed.
OpenSea offers creators so-called ‘lazy minting’. It means that you will pay the gas fee only when someone buys your NFT. Crypto will be charged from your wallet to confirm the transaction.
In this example, we’ll be creating an NFT using an audio file. However, you could include artwork, visuals, and many other additional features. When we have our original piece of music ready to go, we will also need something called an “Ethereum wallet”. A crypto wallet is what we use to store our crypto and send it to other wallets.
Is it worth it?
Definitely! Making your music into NFT opens much wider possibilities for young artists than releasing tracks on traditional music platforms, such as Soundcloud, etc.
They are:
- copyright protection
- fast monetization
- growth of your music in price over time
- tracking of the number of copies sold
- promotion within crypto community and beyond it
- keeping up to date with trends
Hope you already feel confident enough to make your first music NFTs. Good luck in new beginnings!