Artists are selling their music as NFTs – and they’re making millions?

[TAE]

What is an NFTs? Welcome to the new digital economic world of creationist marketing.
NFTs – Non-Fungible Tokens – are commonly likened to digital pieces of art. In short, an NFT can represent the ownership of an original copy of a song, album, merch, or any unique item. The NFT is held in the blockchain, where it cannot be copied or deleted. The buyer owns this digital piece of art, which can change in value depending on popularity, and if they want to sell it, they can. An NFT can currently be purchased with Ethereum and Polkadot cryptocurrencies.

Here's the link to the full article...crazy cool...I don't need no stinkin copyright! I live in a digital world that protects me much better than ASCAP, BMI or the U.S. Copyright office...

 

[VomitHatSteve]

It's probably worth noting that NFTs are only a proof of the ownership chain of something. They don't imply or protect copyright in any meaningful way.
Heck, they don't meaningfully contain or even reference the work in question. The data stored in an NFT is usually just a hotlink to a website hosting the work Meaning anyone could download it if they had the link, and if the website goes down for any reason, so does your artwork. (Oh, and that since it's just a URL, the work itself can be altered at will by whoever controls the server)

Plus, the environmental impacts of processing blockchains are absolutely untenable.

Honestly, the values are totally artifically-inflated. Artists who are already millionaires (or billionaires) using technology that almost nobody involved in the process understands to complete million-dollar deals doesn't mean anything to us non-millionaire artists, either financially or artistically.

If you want to have the idea of artificial scarcity in the era of digital art, just do what Wu Tang did: only make one copy and sell it for more money.

 

[rob aylestone]

with all these things, it relies on having something, that has a value to somebody else. If you are the Kings of Leon - maybe it would work, but I can't see the average consumer interested in this like they're not interested in bitcoin. Even worse, when people do make money from royalties without being famous, it's a happy accident - and only the foolish plan for it!

 

[Manslick]

People just like to say the word fungible

 

[TalismanRich]

People do and spend crazy money on stuff just to say they have it. If you have enough money to pay $1,000,000 to "own" a digital song, great. A $12 CD is plenty for me.

 

[TAE]

Plus, the environmental impacts of processing blockchains are absolutely untenable.

Absolutely! I feel dirty for sure putting your music or music video up for auction as a NFTs is not at all like a copyright and you have no power to sue... however for schmucks like us who are not established , famous artist, it surely increases the odds of making any money off of our stuff to put it up for auction and maybe getting lucky with some crazy cat wanting to "own" the art than just publishing out on distrokid...where it will become a single drop in the Atlantic ocean of aspiring artist hoping their song goes viral....AND you can still copyright and publish and sell royalties if I understand how this works correctly...which I have to admit this blockchain thing at least for me is still kind of weird to understand clearly.

 

[rob aylestone]

Naybody who saw the movie marry poppins gets educated than banking is not about money, it's about trust. Most of the banking disasters in history are about trust breaking down. We have a Dollar or a pound as a piece of paper. It's worthess, what really matters is that we trust the Government to really have a Dollar or Pound's worth of gold in Fort Knox or the Bank of England to make it worth something. This is where Bitcoin and the other 'unreal' currencies differ. If you accept the notion that there is a chunk of gold somewhere to make the note in your pocket have value, then we don'really need to have that gold, just trust it is there. We build complex chains of computers to convince us that bitcoing really exists. The idea it's there and has a value more than anything real - so it's down to trust again. Being told your computer cannot get a virus is a promise people like AVG make, but we all know it's not a promise, just a string hope. A few people keep real gold because they don't trust the people who run banks. It's a Clint Eastwood moment - "Do you feel lucky?" Fungibility is the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Great definition, but we all know that if we have a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul it's fungibility against a Chinese copy is poor. So, it's down to trust again!

 

[DM60]

I heard about this type of thing with Kodak working with Blockchain to encode images. The owner of the image (with their ID embedded in the image) could scan the Internet and look for people using their images and either have them take down the images or pay for the use. I would assume this is what is being thought about with music or any other digital works.

I find Blockchain in this regards to be possibly a good technology and this type of use is what interested me. I am not so sure about the cryptocurrency stuff. Cryptocurrency while it sounds good, it goes back to some of the above comments, it is about trust. Not just my trust, but people accepting the cryptocurrency for exchange.

 

[TAE]

Naybody who saw the movie marry poppins gets educated than banking is not about money, it's about trust. Most of the banking disasters in history are about trust breaking down. We have a Dollar or a pound as a piece of paper. It's worthess, what really matters is that we trust the Government to really have a Dollar or Pound's worth of gold in Fort Knox or the Bank of England to make it worth something. This is where Bitcoin and the other 'unreal' currencies differ. If you accept the notion that there is a chunk of gold somewhere to make the note in your pocket have value, then we don'really need to have that gold, just trust it is there. We build complex chains of computers to convince us that bitcoing really exists. The idea it's there and has a value more than anything real - so it's down to trust again. Being told your computer cannot get a virus is a promise people like AVG make, but we all know it's not a promise, just a string hope. A few people keep real gold because they don't trust the people who run banks. It's a Clint Eastwood moment - "Do you feel lucky?" Fungibility is the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Great definition, but we all know that if we have a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul it's fungibility against a Chinese copy is poor. So, it's down to trust again!

Well I gotta say I TOTALLY trust the powers that be (not so much) I dabble in the stock market...do your due diligence and roll the dice...not trust...but hope n faith and listening to your gut. I've won big, I've lost big ( Lost more than I have won) Safer than Vegas but always a risk. Bitcoin conversely has out performed the stock market by incredibly huge margins. copy and pasted below from the google..

In the 13 years since its inception, it has climbed exponentially from US$0.08 to US$48,200. Gold, the closest comparable asset to cryptocurrencies, has risen just 627 percent over the last 100 years (US$283 in January 1921 to US$2,060 in August 2020.)[quote/]
Bitcoin 600,000 % up in 13 years ..Had I invested $1 in 2008 when the financial world hit the fan it would be worth $600K...

So back to the original subject of trying to sell your work as a NFTs...firstly of the 1000's of members here at HR.com recording original music 1/10 of 1% might possibly make some real money above a few thousand on it as a sellable item. I have no idea what the odds are trying to sell it as a NFTs but I assume it has to be at least as good or better as the plethora of ways that have popped up in the last 10 years... so what have I got to lose.... I've made about $20 on my music in the last 10 years ...woo hoo! I'm going to Vegas!

 

[VomitHatSteve]

I heard about this type of thing with Kodak working with Blockchain to encode images. The owner of the image (with their ID embedded in the image) could scan the Internet and look for people using their images and either have them take down the images or pay for the use. I would assume this is what is being thought about with music or any other digital works.

Once again, NFTs carry no copyright implications. All they are is a complex, public receipt of who "owns" a url.

It would be like if a private landowner decided to open a park and sold celebrity-sponsored bricks on the walkway and had a 3rd party lock all the ownership certificates away in a vault they couldn't access. Sure you "own" that brick, but the company who owns the park controls the brick. They can replace it at will. They can restrict access to the brick. They can demolish the park entirely. Nothing prevents anyone else from using an identical brick in their own project. Nothing allows the company to make it so that only the "owner" of a brick is able to walk on it. (Oh, and for whatever reason, the certificates of ownership have to be printed on leather made from an endangered animal)

From a technical perspective, there are far better ways to detect your IP being used. Anyone who wanted to infringe would just strip the token from the metadata. And there are a ton of tools already for detecting reuse of IP in digital media

 

[DM60]

Once again, NFTs carry no copyright implications. All they are is a complex, public receipt of who "owns" a url.

It would be like if a private landowner decided to open a park and sold celebrity-sponsored bricks on the walkway and had a 3rd party lock all the ownership certificates away in a vault they couldn't access. Sure you "own" that brick, but the company who owns the park controls the brick. They can replace it at will. They can restrict access to the brick. They can demolish the park entirely. Nothing prevents anyone else from using an identical brick in their own project. Nothing allows the company to make it so that only the "owner" of a brick is able to walk on it. (Oh, and for whatever reason, the certificates of ownership have to be printed on leather made from an endangered animal)

From a technical perspective, there are far better ways to detect your IP being used. Anyone who wanted to infringe would just strip the token from the metadata. And there are a ton of tools already for detecting reuse of IP in digital media

Well, all I can say is, Kodak was trying to figure out how to use blockchain technology for digital ownership. I didn't go into the details, but they were exploring this for digital imaging ownership. How they are used now and how the technology can be developed for future use, well, that is how millions are created with new software functionality. https://www.kodak.com/en/company/press-release/blockchain-initiative

 

[VomitHatSteve]

You can use it for tracking ownership of any piece of data. But for the web-crawling, detecting unlicensed usage, etc. they'll be using different technologies.

I would suspect this is just Kodak trying to jump onto the next tech trend. (The same way that everything is driven by "AI" the last few years and everyone had to have an "app" a decade ago)

 

[DM60]

You can use it for tracking ownership of any piece of data. But for the web-crawling, detecting unlicensed usage, etc. they'll be using different technologies.

I would suspect this is just Kodak trying to jump onto the next tech trend. (The same way that everything is driven by "AI" the last few years and everyone had to have an "app" a decade ago)

Well, IoT is a good example of what you are talking about. But on the surface, it seems like it would be really good idea for digital creators.

 

[VomitHatSteve]

Oof IoT: for when you want to make sure that some random maldovian kid can break your fridge!