gm music fans,
Another week, another crypto ponzi game! We spent the last few days trading shares in our friends and colleagues on a new social app called Friend.tech.
It unlocks the (dystopian?) possibility of trading your social status on a large scale… and speculating on the price of musicians, bands and celebrities.
For example, you can currently buy a “key” in DJ duo Disclosure for 0.27 ETH (about $450) and get access to a direct chat with them.
NFTs have already unlocked a free market for music, but trading artists themselves is a whole different thing. The future of music is going to get very weird if this trend catches on. We’re watching closely. (Read more).
Listen to all your music NFTs in one place. Spinamp pulls music from lots of different platforms to give you a simple experience for listening and playlisting music.
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Headline stories 🗞️
Earl Sweatshirt drops new album exclusively in Web3
Legendary rapper Earl Sweatshirt has announced his long-awaited album with Alchemist exclusively through Web3 music platform Gala Music. (Read more).
OpenSea kills creator royalties 💀
OpenSea announced they will revert to zero royalties on all collections from February.
Point blank this sucks for music and artists.
The ability to earn a cut of revenue every time an NFT is sold on secondary markets was one of the true breakthroughs of this technology. Web3 really does fix this!
Artists, musicians and even OpenSea’s own investors came out against the decision.
Platforms that do still honour royalties: Sound and Zora (for music). Rarible, SuperRare, Foundation and ArtBlocks more generally.
Platforms that don’t honour royalties: OpenSea, Blur, LooksRare, Magic Eden.
Web3 Music Roundup 🎧
Anotherblock pays out $14k in streaming royalties to NFT holders - The Swedish platform famous for selling streaming royalties in Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money” has published their latest round of payouts to NFT holders, amounting to $14,000. (Read more)
World’s rarest CryptoPunk drops a music single - Seedphrase is an NFT collector and owner of the “Mona Lisa'“ of CryptoPunks — so called because it’s the only one with 7 different traits. He released his first single using the Crypto Punk as the avatar and face of the project. (Read more).
NoiseDAO announces compilation album Volume II - NoiseDAO is the leading DAO in the music space, deploying millions into artists and projects since launch. They recently wrapped up their first compilation album featuring leading Web3 artists and they’re now planning the second. (Read more).
Spinamp gets personal - Music playlisting tool Spinamp just launched a new personal feed. Connect your wallet and it’ll show you the latest releases from all the artists you collect from. (Read more)
Bello adds wallet messaging - Bello is our favorite tool for analysing collector data. They just added the capability to send onchain messages direct to wallets. So if you’re planning a new drop you can send a message to all your existing collectors. Game changer! (Read more)
Bonfire adds support for Zora - Web3 website builder Bonfire now allows you to embed drops from Zora. So you can mint on Zora but still send fans to a custom homepage to collect. (Read more)
Music in the metaverse? Bored Ape rockstar Shilly has launched a live music event in the Spatial metaverse. (Read more). While DJ Agoria launched a new collection of avatars for the Sandbox metaverse. (Read more)
Zooming out: Web3 news we’re watching 👀
Friend.tech takes Web3 by storm - A new crypto app had us all trading shares of our friends this week. It was the first breakout crypto product in a while reaching more than 100k people in less than a week. (Read more)
Former OpenSea exec gets 3 months for insider trading - Nate Chastain was caught profiting from insider trades in 2021 when he was found purchasing NFTs before spotlighting them on the OpenSea homepage, then selling for a higher price. (Read more)
Solana Pay integrates with Shopify - Solana is quietly recovering from the FTX fallout last year and pushing ahead with major partnerships. (Read more)
Mainstream NFT platform down - The NFT platform behind mainstream projects including the Nickelodeon collection shuts down despite a recent $50m raise. (Read more).
Adidas NFT sneakers - Adidas launched a limited edition sneaker collection that comes with a “digital twin.” (Read more).
Music drops of the week 🎧
San Holo - No Place Is Too Far
DJ and producer San Holo is one of the few (almost) mainstream artists that consistently shows up in Web3. He’s now rolling out several tracks from his new album including this stunning track “No Place Is Too Far.” (Get it here)
Domino - The Stardom Collection
Hip hop artist Domino launched a clothing line this week, coupled with a trailer on Zora. (Get it here)
LNRZ - ??
The music collective founded by rapper Reo Cragun teased a new drop on BASE as part of Onchain Summer. The track will feature Marian Hill. (Read more)
TK - Origins
After a successful album drop last month, TK is back with a free mint for the project’s trailer on HypeShot. (Get it here)
Stats 🧮
NFT holders are diamond-handing through the selloff
Despite NFT prices collapsing over the last few months, most people are holding on. This chart from Punk9059 shows that 75% of NFTs from major collections haven’t moved this year.
Some music NFT hopium?
This week I was checking the OpenSea volume charts and noticed that they went from $250k in early 2019 (when hardly anybody knew about NFTs) to $5 billion at the peak. Crazy growth.
Current music NFT volume is in a similar place to OpenSea in those early days (around ~$200k monthly). I’m definitely not suggesting that Web3 music will fly to $5bn any time soon! But it’s a good reminder of how fast things can change.
Thanks for reading!
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Ziggy Ziggy Music Season 2 is supported by Spinamp and Lens Protocol.
Disclaimers: We may own NFTs mentioned in this article, have previous or current contracts with companies mentioned and may earn referral income from links to music NFTs. This newsletter is purely informational and should not be considered financial advice. Nothing in this content should be considered a recommendation to buy a particular NFT, only an expression of our opinion.