Music NFTs must be big business. Look, the Wall Street Journal is writing about them! And it’s a good summary of the current activity (and hype) around non-fungible tokens in the music space. That includes stats: journalist Cherie Hu’s calculation that since June last year around 29,800 NFTs involving artists have generated $42.5m in primary sales. But also a sense of how this revenue is being split between musicians, visual artists and rightsholders (where music is involved).
“A 50/50 split is becoming the norm between the musician and visual artist, say artists, executives and lawyers,” reported the WSJ, adding one attorney’s assessment that where rightsholders are also involved, he’s trying to split the 50% rev-share in half again: so 25% of the overall transaction for the artist and 25% for the rightsholders.
There are still plenty of sceptics about the NFTs model though. Artist Mint Royale published a spikily entertaining breakdown of his acquisition of “one of the first music copyright NFTs”, and the lack of information about how it will actually work. “Overall, it’s been a really great consumer experience and I received a video message from the artist which has certainly made up for the fact it has cost £125 to buy $100 worth of nothing. It’s the future guys!”
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