Artists now have the unprecedented opportunity to directly connect with their audience and monetize their work in innovative ways, free from the constraints of traditional intermediaries.
This Ultimate Guide is designed to empower musicians with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate the burgeoning realm of NFTs, enabling them to sell their music online without incurring hefty fees.
From understanding the fundamentals of NFTs to practical steps for creating and marketing music NFTs, this comprehensive guide aims to demystify the process and unlock new avenues for artists to thrive in the digital landscape.
Whether you’re a seasoned musician or an aspiring talent, join us on this journey to harness the power of NFTs and revolutionize the way you share and monetize your musical creations.
Recommended Reading: Make Money By Buying And Selling NFTs {Mint+Buy+Sell} [NFT Trading]
Why Can’t You Sell Music On iTunes?
Table Of Contents
- Why Can’t You Sell Music On iTunes?
- How Digital Music Platforms Exploiting Artists?
- What Are Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)?
- What Is Ujo Music Doing To Change The Way We Buy And Sell Music?
- Why Does This Matter For Independent Artists Like me?
- Blockchain Applications
- Open-sea Music NFT
- My Personal Favourite Top 3 Best Music NFT Platform
Though iTunes may be a convenient way to buy your favorite music, artists are making very little in return. Downloading a song is incredibly cheap and services like iTunes skim off so much that artists only see a small percentage of their profits.
So how can you sell music on iTunes without losing all your profits to fees? If you’re using blockchain technology, there’s no reason not to.
The basic problem here is that iTunes doesn’t give artists any more control over their content than they have now. If you’re using blockchain technology, though, there’s no reason not to start making more money right away.
Thanks to smart contracts and decentralized networks, artists can run their own record labels without giving up control of their music or paying out huge fees just to get it online.
The blockchain also allows for microtransactions so listeners can support your work even if they only have a small amount to spare.
Recommended Reading: Selling NFTs On Your Own Website {Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide}
How Digital Music Platforms Exploiting Artists?
There is a lot of friction in distributing music that comes from financial issues. Artists have to pay to distribute their music, and in turn, they lose money from every sale on these platforms because they don’t share in revenue, either.
A blockchain-based platform for selling music would be a dream come true for independent artists who want to protect their copyrights and earn money from sales directly.
Unfortunately, no such platform exists yet; however, there are several platforms for selling digital goods as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). If you can convert your music into NFTs or get it distributed on an existing NFT platform, you can then sell it as an NFT. Here’s how
The most popular NFT platform is Ethereum, which is an open-source blockchain that can be used to issue tokens.
Ethereum itself doesn’t have any functions beyond issuing digital assets—these assets are commonly referred to as ERC-20-compliant tokens because they use a special protocol called ERC-20.
Another popular NFT platform is NEO, a Chinese blockchain platform that works similarly to Ethereum; however, it has some advantages like built-in support for smart contracts and possibly better performance.
What Are Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)?
One of Ujo’s ultimate goals is to change how we buy and sell music forever, eliminating many of today’s red tape processes.
By making it easy for artists to accept cryptocurrencies and smart contracts as payments, instead of relying on banking fees and paper check deposits, they’re able to offer instantaneous transfers of value at little to no cost.
This also helps reduce risk; their platform protects them from chargebacks or other scenarios that arise when using a bank account or credit card.
They can even let listeners pay per play if they choose (for example, 0.5 cents every time someone listens through Spotify). Meanwhile, revenue is tracked transparently so everyone knows where the money goes.
Recommended Reading: 3 Easy Ways To Sell Your NFT Art For Free (Ultimate Guide) {Experts Choice}
What Is Ujo Music Doing To Change The Way We Buy And Sell Music?
Ujo aims to establish a sustainable model for compensating artists and service providers while making it easier than ever before for fans to enjoy and interact with music.
Ujo is creating an open-source system that will allow musicians and other rights holders to connect directly with their audience and get paid instantly without any third party taking a cut.
And they’re doing it using blockchain technology, which has become synonymous with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. But what exactly is blockchain technology?
Why Does This Matter For Independent Artists Like me?
As a musician, it can be hard to make money from your music. Streaming services and record labels take most of it, leaving musicians (and their families) with just pennies for each stream or download of their song.
What makes blockchain technology different is that every stream or download generates money for an artist—not a label or streaming service.
When you sell music as a non-fungible token (NFT), no one else has access to that same song. This not only means more revenue for you but also new listeners who can buy your music without seeing ads first!
There are currently a few projects like Fluence and Mycelia that let you sell your music as NFTs. To generate a non-fungible token, you’ll need to upload each song and add unique attributes for every track.
There are also some existing blockchain platforms—like Ethereum—that will allow you to create a smart contract without having to create your own blockchain platform.
However, it’s important to note that these services charge transaction fees and require payment in their native token. This means they aren’t really any cheaper than selling your music on streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music.
Blockchain Applications
As a blockchain application designer and developer, I’m most intrigued by solutions that deliver decentralized trust models to disrupt industries where there are centralized trust models today.
I’m interested in using blockchain tech to help solve problems that do not have any analogs within distributed databases, identity systems, and consensus protocols. These use cases often require complex designs and imaginative new thinking.
Examples of these include identity/access management solutions for online games, digital collectibles exchanges (like crypto-kitties), or high-stakes environments (such as elections).
All of these applications represent opportunities for blockchain developers to create novel decentralized solutions on top of existing public chains. My focus is on helping design those solutions!
Recommended Reading: 11+ Platforms To Buy And Sell Your NFTs Online (Mint+Buy+Sell)
Open-sea Music NFT
A new music platform called Open-sea aims to tokenize and sell music as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In short, that means selling each track as a unique digital asset.
So when you buy a song, you’re buying ownership of that particular song—that single copy—and it’s completely yours.
If someone else has purchased the same version of that song from another person or from another site, you own different copies.
So if you have five copies of Adele’s Rolling in The Deep, for example, only one is truly unique and different from all other copies.
All of the open sea’s NFTs are ERC-721 tokens on top of Ethereum. This allows all music sold on the open sea to be owned and controlled by anyone, so it can’t be removed from your ownership or tampered with.
And if you find that a certain track wasn’t exactly what you expected, because it was poorly tagged or digitally manipulated, you can create a dispute and receive a refund.
This means that every time you purchase a song through open-sea, you have confidence in what you’re getting and peace of mind if anything goes wrong.
My Personal Favourite Top 3 Best Music NFT Platform
Blockai
Blockai provides an integrated wallet and marketplace to simplify the management of your assets by reducing friction.
The marketplace enables content creators to market their work and provide smart contracts for songs, graphics, videos, photographs, and other digital goods.
Ujo
Ujo’s CEO, Jesse Grushack has more than 20 years of experience in music as a songwriter and producer; as head of the strategy at Paramount Pictures’ Artist Group International; and as managing director at Google Play Music.
He is joined by co-founder Phil Barry, who also served as VP of business development at Topspin Media.
Opus
Opus is a next-generation decentralized music-sharing platform that uses IPFS and Ethereum to make sharing audio faster, cheaper, and censorship-resistant while providing artists with greater control over how they share their creations.
Each track on Opus can be sold using smart contracts allowing artists to set their own price per stream or download without any third party taking a cut (or requiring users to sign up for accounts).
If you decide not to sell your tracks using Opus then there are no restrictions on what you do with them once uploaded. As long as it isn’t illegal!
Recommended Reading: 3 Easy Ways To Sell Your NFT Art For Free (Ultimate Guide) {Experts Choice}
FAQs | Sell Music NFT Online
How to release music as NFT?
First, you have to create your catalog through an online portal at the platforms mentioned in our article.
The platform converts your music into NFT Which is subsequently sold via bidding.
How to sell music NFT?
As mentioned earlier make your catalog on the platforms that seal with the music NFTs. You can sell your NFTs here via bidding.
Best place to sell music NFT?
Opensea, Raribleand, and Foundation are the platforms that are best known for selling your NFTs.
How to create music NFT?
You don’t need to put your effort into creating music NFTs. There is no rocket science to create such NFTs. You just log in to any platform dealing with music NFT.
Submit the music there that you want to sell as NFT. Then the platform automatically creates and sells your music NFTs via proper bidding which you can accept or decline.
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