NFTs
Patrick Moxey’s New Helix Records to Onboard Entire Roster to Web3
Patrick Moxey is bringing the entire roster of Helix Records, the EDM label he launched last year after selling his stake in Ultra Records, into the world of Web3 — starting with an NFT membership pass. Starting in February, the Helix Records Genesis Pass will act as a digital passport to the Helix ecosystem and grant holders a free music NFT from one of the roster’s flagship artists, which includes electronic duo Snakehips and house DJ Marshall Jefferson. Later in 2023, NFT holders will get the chance to access VIP tickets, backstage passes and submit music directly to the label for feedback. One holder will win a 1:1 conversation with Moxey. Moxey — who played a key role in the success of Avicii, Kygo, deadmau5 and David Guetta through Ultra Records — aims to make Web3 and NFTs a foundat...
Bluechip NFT project Moonbirds signs with Hollywood talent agents UTA
The NFT-focused company was founded by early-stage Facebook and Twitter investor Kevin Rose, and designer Justin Mezzell in February 2022. The company also has the Proof Collective and Oddities NFT collections in its catalog. Announcing the move via Twitter on Jan. 6, Rose suggested that the goal of the deal is to get the Moonbirds brand known on a “global” mainstream scale, as opposed to just being recognized as a big hitter in the Web3 space. “What does UTA bring to the table? They are 1,400 people strong, with divisions in film, television, music, video games, sports, books, branding and licensing, speaking, marketing, fine arts, broadcast, and more,” he said. PROOF, the company behind the top-tier NFT project Moonbirds, has signed a representation deal with major Hollywood talent agent...
Here Are the Biggest Music NFTs in December as Year Ends 95% Down From January
NFTs had a wild 2022. January began with euphoric highs and a record $4.8 billion traded on OpenSea. By contrast, December ended the year with a hangover — volumes down by 95% with just $283 million traded in the month. Still, the crypto winter hasn’t deterred musicians from embracing Web3. December saw an uptick in music NFT activity thanks to legacy artists Armin van Buuren and Styles P, as well as high-profile drops from crypto-native musicians like 3LAU and Daniel Allan. The first “billion club” NFT was released, unlocking streaming royalties in a track with more than a billion Spotify plays. Meanwhile, the independent scene continued to flourish with a seventh-straight month of rising volume on Sound.xyz – the largest platform for independent musicians. Across the 10 biggest music NFT...
China’s first national NFT marketplace to launch next week: Report
According to a report published by local news outlet Sina News on Dec 28, China will launch its first regulated platform for nonfungible tokens (NFT) trading on Jan 1, 2023. The entity, which acts as a secondary market for the exchange of NFTs, was created by the state-owned Chinese Technology Exchange, the state-owned Art Exhibitions China, and Huban Digital Copyrights Ltd, a private corporate entity. In addition to NFTs, the platform will also facilitate the trading of copyrights related to digital assets. The project aims to “regulate and avoid the excessive speculation in secondary [NFT] markets,” as told by a person familiar with the matter. In an interview, Yu Jianing, a leading expert on digital assets and metaverse developments in China, commented: “In terms...
Is Web3’s Promise of Creator Royalties Broken?
While the downfall of FTX and the Crypto Winter that saw NFT sales drop 90% dominated Web3 headlines this year, for many creators there was a bigger issue at play. Their royalties have been under attack, undermining a central promise of Web3 as a sustainable model for musicians. Creator royalties on NFTs ensure that artists get paid a cut of revenue every time their work is sold on a secondary market. As the music NFT market has matured since multi-million dollar sales attracted widespread attention, these royalties have been a central part of the Web3 proposition — presenting musicians with a possible alternative to the major label system and allowing them to generate meaningful revenue over the long term. Only now, that promise is being pulled from under them as several new NFT platforms...
Justin Bieber and The Weeknd Sued Over Alleged Bored Ape NFT Scheme: ‘Drastically Inflated Prices’
Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd and dozens of other celebrities are facing a new class action alleging they were secretly paid to “misleadingly” promote NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, leaving investors with “staggering losses.” In a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles federal court, attorneys for a pair of consumers claimed that Bored Ape parent company Yuga Labs Inc. perpetrated a “vast scheme” in which they “discreetly” paid “highly influential celebrities” to pump up the value of the NFTs (non-fungible tokens). “Defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales,” the lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. “The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions … were able to artificially increase the interes...
Warner Records’ Web3 Label Sold 5,555 NFTs in 7 Minutes. Now It Wants to Share IP Rights With Fans
What happens when you let 5,555 music fans make decisions at a major label? Warner Records is about to find out through its new Web3 imprint Probably a Label. After selling out a collection of NFT access-passes, the holders will now gather in a Discord server to help develop artists together, share the credits of any future awards such as a Grammy, and ultimately offer intellectual property rights in some of the projects to NFT holders. The experiment is a collaboration between Warner Records UK and Web3 brand Probably Nothing, whose debut NFT collection fetched $500k in seven minutes in October. Each NFT comes with different rarity and label roles (4,000 scouts, 1,500 managers and 55 label heads), allowing holders to vote on certain decisions. The rarest — and most expensive, currently at...
ApeCoin geo-blocks US stakers, two Apes sell for $1M each, marketplace launched
United States-based ApeCoin (APE) holders could miss out on staking rewards after the U.S. was added to a list of regions geo-blocked from using an upcoming APE staking service. Blockchain infrastructure company Horizen Labs, which is building the site on behalf of the ApeCoin decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), revealed the news in a Nov. 24 update regarding ApeStake.io on Twitter, saying “unfortunately, in today’s regulatory environment, we had no good alternative.” Ape Staking Update: Big thanks to the talented community devs for their helpful improvements. Bug Bounty AIP delayed us a bit, so we shortened the pre-deposit period by a week to keep our original 12/12 go-live. Alternate front-end sites going live. See card. pic.twitter.com/mgmP7X3SwQ — Horizen Labs (@HorizenLabs) N...
Royal Launches Marketplace to Buy and Sell Music Rights
Imagine a platform where fans can buy and sell streaming rights from the music they love, as easily as buying a stock on an investing site like Robinhood. This is the vision of Web3 music platform Royal, which today announces a music rights marketplace. Founded by DJ and producer Justin Blau, Royal launched in January 2022 with high-profile NFT drops from Nas, Diplo and The Chainsmokers. The platform allows fans and investors to earn a percentage of streaming royalties alongside the artists. Thus far, the platform says it has paid out $100,000 to holders. After proving the concept works, Blau says Royal is growing into its bigger vision. “The drops were very much a beta,” he tells Billboard. “We needed to show that you could actually pay out royalties in an efficient manner on chain … The ...
Nifty News: GameStop NFT market goes live, Hong Kong’s NFT concept and more
The nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace for American video game retailer GameStop has officially gone live on Ethereum layer-2 blockchain ImmutableX, all part of the latest Web3 push from the gaming retailer. The pair first partnered in February to build the marketplace offering a $100 million grant for NFT content creators and tech developers before a public beta of the NFT marketplace debuted in July. With the Oct. 31 announcement of the full launch, GameStop’s market will allow for popular Web3 games on ImmutableX such as the role-playing game Illuvium and Gods Unchained to be accessed by users. GameStop has worked to launch a series of Web3-powered products over the past year, with a beta self-custody crypto wallet released in May that integrates with its NFT marketplace. In Marc...
An introduction to decentralized NFT catalogs
Over the last year, venture capitalists poured more than $4.6 billion into infrastructure and projects related to nonfungible tokens (NFTs). This infrastructure now needs users. They will come when people understand that they can apply these NFTs not just for speculative purposes but to design and structure their everyday activities. For these, they don’t need NFTs — they need to sort their lives out. And, decentralized catalogs are there to help them do it. We can think about an NFT as a book someone owns, and this ownership is recorded on the blockchain. But what we’re actually missing is the library. Not just a flower, but a garden Multiple NFTs making up a collection form a system. This system has a structure through the standards it uses. If you’ve ever visited CryptoKitties, you...
TV streaming providers should start relying on NFTs
Subscription-based services have become so ubiquitous it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t the norm. Streaming companies have sought to take advantage of that norm by fleecing consumers for everything they’re worth — just look at Netflix’s decision to start running advertisements. Another benefit of leveraging NFT technology is that streaming services can increasingly be used to create communities. As with all consumer culture in the digital world, we are what we consume. NFTs, however, have the potential to make the relationship between the consumer and what is consumed far more profound. There is a solution to streaming “churn” A decade ago, who would have thought digital communities based on families of JPEGs would become billion-dollar enterprises? From Bored Apes to Pa...
