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Music NFTs — A Revolution in the Streaming Industry
It’s hard to look anywhere online without hearing some chatter about NFTs. There seems to be equal discourse given to NFTs being the next big thing in, well, everything, to NFTs being nothing but a scam ready to fall apart at the seams. Regardless of which side of the fence one falls, one thing is clear; NFTs are here, and they are having an impact.
But what are NFTs, exactly? How are they changing the digital art landscape? And how might they be used to disrupt the music industry?
Let’s take a look.
What Are NFTs?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token — a digital token that cannot be interchanged for another. It can be bought, sold, traded, modified, but it will always remain unique. Compare that to a 5-dollar bill, which can be replaced by any other 5-dollar bill — or five ones, or 25 quarters, etc. — and still hold the same function and value.
A “token” in the crypto sense is a piece of data stored on a blockchain. Every token is encrypted with a unique ID that cannot be changed, and is permanently registered into the blockchain. When the token moves, its unique ID moves with it. Since no two tokens can share the same ID, the tokens are non-fungible — truly irreplaceable.
Tokens move between digital “wallets” that hold crypto assets. Each wallet, like each token, is truly unique. A token can only exist once, in one wallet. Whoever owns the wallet holding the token, owns the token. It’s a powerful method of asserting ownership of an item.
How Do You Sell Art as NFTs?
To turn a work of art — an image, a music track, a video — into an NFT, it must be “minted”. Minting is the act of registering the artwork’s metadata on the blockchain — for digital art, this might be the URL of the image, or if the image is small enough, minting the data of the image itself.
The NFT can then be bought and sold on the blockchain as described above. Owning the NFT gives you ownership of the metadata stored within, certifying your ownership of the asset.
While commonly used as a means of selling purely digital artworks, it’s possible to mint an NFT for a physical object and use the NFT as the method of…
