What Are Music NFTs?

is there going to be like a game to play where like I think this song is really good therefore I'm going to buy this nft is that going to be a new corner of the internet that's my entire investment thesis yeah welcome bank with nation to this exploration into what is a music nft today on the show we're going to find out we're going to talk to Mr music nft himself Mr Cooper turly who is I believe the first person to ever raise money to invest in the world of Music nfts the intersection of the music industry and we three music and nfts the Cooper has

been meing music nfts into existence for months now uh and so I want to just really get down into the details of what the hell is a music nft because a lot of people in the crypto world are skeptical if there's even a there there but Kerper Tuli has a ton of conviction that there's definitely a world of Music nfts in the future and he himself is pioneering that world the world of music nfts and we're going to go and explore and see what he's seen so without further Ado let's go into the conversation with Cooper turle about what the hell is a music nft Cooper what's a music nft a music nft is a

tokenized song this is a limited quantity of collectible songs okay what does it mean to put a song into a token it means to have a limited quantity of them in a digital form so in the same way you have CDs or vinyls in the physical world you have music nfts in the digital world so I have a couple vinyls over there I don't really play them but they do give me some access right I can actually play the song like there's there's some art my wall what does a music nft do for me uh you can listen to it and have a relationship with it I can listen to my music nft correct how do I listen to a music nft usually through apps like spin apppp or

future tape but you can play it directly on openc or directly on the platform that you bought it from like sound so sound I can like buy a music nft and I can hear it can other people hear my music nft absolutely yeah most of the songs that are music nfts are available on Spotify as well so it's not like it's exclusively only as a music nft it's just the only way to collect a limited digital version of it is buying it as a music nft there a very strong correlation between songs that perform well on platforms like Spotify and the performance of music nfts you know right now most of the artists that are doing well with it are independent emerging

artists so these are people that don't have a big folling on a platform like Spotify but the bet for most music nft collectors is that if an artist becomes big in five years from now and they have 25 copies available as an nft today theoretically those early nfts should be more valuable because there's more people that like that song and want to collect it in the future is there a financial upside to owning this nft like where's the money come from uh basically the ability to resell it on a secondary market and so all of these nfts have a primary price when they're put on sale usually this is anywhere from 0.3 to 0.5

eth so let call it 50 to 100 bucks but um there's always a secondary Market which means that you can resell that nft to someone else on a platform like openc but I would say broadly that there are ways to make music nfts more valuable I.E giving them a percentage of Rights ownership so if a song is streaming on Spotify you can assign royalty points to an NF which means outside of the ability to buy it and resell on a secondary Market there are dividends that are issued to it from the per performance of that song on Spotify if we opened up the opened up the doors and saw just on the shelves all of the things that a music

nft could be like let's go through what what can a music nft be if there's like a list of things yeah I'd say the base component is a collectible version of a song so it's a limited copy of a small portion of digital items when you start to layer on other benefits you could have royalties like I just mentioned so masters from it streaming on Spotify publishing which is when it gets placed on the radio or in a commercial tickets which means that the NF could be used as VIP tickets to a show access which is having a relationship directly with the Creator or some form of pre-sale Grant

which says hey when I release my next music nft if you own the first one you're going to be able to buy one sooner than everyone else what does this tool enable for artists or just the music industry at large what does it enable artists to do it enables artists to see who wants to actually buy and support their music you know most artists when they put a song on Spotify they have no clue who's listened to it how many times they've played it where they live but with music nfts you can see very clearly this person was willing to spend money on my music this is their address and this is how I can have a relationship with them and so you can create things like token G channels

where only people who hold that music nft can come into a chat group and for these artists that have a very strong demographic of collectors they can start to have more intimate conversations with them because they know they were willing to put up the financing to actually buy the nft and then also take the time to jump through the hoop of coming into the token gated chat room to have a further conversation around their project okay so it allows for artists and I guess this extends beyond music artists can be any artist at Large really allows them to discover who really cares about them uh judged by who spent money on one of their music nfts so if somebody like

spends A1 $2 $50 on a music nft that's for a specific artist that artist has like okay like you're clearly somebody who's about me uh why why can't we do this without music nfts or why can't we do this with something like Spotify or apple music or YouTube or whatever you could do it with credentialing but it's just a lot harder because there's no like asset that you're collecting under the hood there like you're Spotify wrapped you can see who listened to your songs the most over a given year you can see who your favorite top artists were but there's not really communication channels to have with that artist you know like if an artist wants to reach all of their followers on Instagram they

have to pay to run an ad campaign with web 3 you're just selling collectible assets someone's buying that and then they can resell it if they want and so it's a very different relationship where it's less about data consumption it's more about having an investment relationship with an artist so if I want to go deeper than just like listening to a song adding it to a playlist I can collect a music nft have deeper access to the artist itself and then optimistically if that asset performs well I can sell that and make a return and I think for many collectors like myself who have been curators of music for a very long time you know I found artists well before they ever got

popular there's never been a way for me to have like a claim or a stake in that artist success but with music nfts there are now assets that represent exposure directly to an artist song specifically or their artist career and that's the exact category I think that collectors like myself are excited about so we have a some of this problem I guess on Bank list on on this like YouTube channel where we also put out our podcasts on like Spotify and you know normal RSS feeds Apple podcasts they tell us like how many listens we got uh and it it knows who listened to what but they don't pass along that information to us so like yeah we got like you know

100,000 listens but we didn't get like an email list associated with that how would a artist actually connect with somebody who owns one of their music nfts how is that actually uh channel of communication established uh it's not perfect by any means but typically how it works is on a platform like sound when you buy music nft your pfp shows up in the audience tab an artist can go and click on your avatar and then based on your profile they can find either your Twitter or your wallet they can go and DM you directly or they can put out a blast that says hey if you've collected one of my music nfts join this token gated chat group and then it's really up to the collector to opt in or respond to

that message but it's much easier to find a direct onetoone relationship because all that information is available at the click of a button so there are new platforms out there that are like an NF like music nft enabled to actually establish this connection yeah I would say it's more just token gated platforms at large so things like Guild XYZ CL laand Etc these aren't new Tools in web 3 but a lot of artists are using these as ways to engage their music nft collectors and set up a private telegram group that has 30 to 50 people that are collecting all of their assets and having much deeper conversations with them what are the like numbers of people

that are buying music nfts for a specific artist so I don't know how many like downloads it takes on on Spotify to have like a living wage as an artist but like can we compare what it takes to have a living wage with how many people you need to buy music nft sure so um a million streams on Spotify is roughly $4,000 um selling 25 music streams on Spotify it's $4,000 that's correct yeah and roughly 25 music nfts sold at 0.1 eth is also $4,000 so you can either get 25 people to spend 0.1 eth or you can get a million people to play your record

and I think a lot more people are likely to get 25 people to spend 0.1 eth than they are to get a million people to play their record on Spotify I think one critique of music nfts that we've heard that I've heard before is that like what like people are just buying these like nfts for no reason they don't really unlock any just like a memorabilia it's like a ticket stub you're just paying for it for like whatever reason only crazy people would do that so that that's not sustainable like you need a million downloads on Spotify to be sustainable but I think the counter argument for what you're saying is like it just takes 25 people who want to like feel good about owning this nft because

they connect with their favorite musician for that to actually be competitive with a million downloads on Spotify yeah and these aren't mutually exclusive so I encourage everyone releasing music nfts to also put their track on Spotify I encourage you to try and get as many streams as possible but recognize that your music and ft collectors are a very different demographic and so right now in music we treat every fan exactly the same we say hey they're probably just going to go listen to it on their phone on Spotify or on the radio if they like it maybe they'll buy a ticket to my show but what music and FTS are doing is creating a different pocket for people that want to go deeper with the music and have a

relationship with that artist to spend more money on getting deeper access and that stream has not really been available at scale and furthermore there hasn't been markets for music and so if I'm someone who is really good about picking songs that are going to do well in the the future I can't really invest in that relationship I can kind of get some clout if I'm like right about that if I make a playlist and whatnot but you know being able to have a market around both songs and artists is a really net new opportunity and I think that music n ft is are the first form factor that introduces this new equation onto the table what's an nft that you own that

you think is like a good example of what a good NF music nft is uh Daniel Allen's first sound release it was a one of 25 it was for a song called too close the mint price for that was 0.1 and there's currently none of them listed for sale and the last sale was at 4 eth and before that the last sale was 2 eth wait so you you Meed there's 25 of them they you bought one for 0.1 eth the last one that was sold was sold for four eth and there are zero on the market that's correct so we don't really know what this price what you could get on the secondary Market but like technically

the price is infinity right now since there are no sellers yeah I would say realistically probably anywhere from 3 to 5 eth um the second project that he released on sound was called over stimulated this was a pretty Hallmark EP for for him again mint price was 0.1 there's 100 of them available the current floor price on them is two e and there's been at least 10 to 15 of them that have been purchased for one ether more so are are these people that are buying these nfts as like here I am first or are these people that are buying these nfts because they think the song is dope and they're they're like bullish on the song I don't think that

it's one or the other I think it's a mix of both tight is there going to be like a game to play where like I think this song is really good therefore I'm going to buy this nft going is going be a new corner of the internet that's entire investment thesis yeah how much money have you made doing this I've never sold a single music nft uh okay so you're up on paper are you up are you up or down on paper possible to tell I think trying to get like an agate market value for my collection would be very hard but I do believe that my collection has some of the rarest music nfts that are out there today what's the future of Music nfts where does this go

from here I think that every artist has a demographic of 52,000 super fans who own some form of their songs and then eventually we have Creator stock markets where you can buy $5 worth worth of your favorite crater at scale or you can buy the individual units that make up that crater which is their individual songs it's song stock markets so okay some people are going to be like that's just like adding financial markets and God damn it you crypto Bros you're just adding like finance and money into like all these previously innocent Industries what are you doing what do you say to that I would say that there is a huge

market for rights catalog and music today so multi-billion dollar industry and the only people participating in it is hedge fund and private investors and I think that everyone who's a fan of Music should be able to buy it themselves huh that's a pretty good pitch uh what what what what have I not asked you about music nfts what's left music nfts are for emerging artist you know I would say that there's a big Camp of people that think that everyone in the world is going to be buying a music nft but it takes a very specific type of collector to get involved and I think that music nfts will not be successful when Drake Drops music nfts that I think will be when the next Drake is created using

music nfts so I would say for people that are looking to start collecting focus on emerging artists there's a very new wave of culture that's being created right now there's a new wave of artists that are succeeding collectors and sounds and I would say the best way to get involved is to find two to three artists that you know and love you know find a way to collect one of their works and join one of those token gated chat rooms and feel the magic for yourself say I'm an artist and I think my music's pretty good and I'm getting frustrated with how to monetize my work and now I'm peaked about music nfts what are my first steps where do I go next Twitter I would say follow 5 10 of the leading

voices in the space get a general understanding for the culture and sort of the voice behind the movement you know get to understand platforms like Catt sound zorao Royal get a really aay of the land before you try and sell anything really just educate yourself on why different artists are doing well you know make sure that you're showing up in ways that do things outside of your own personal success and once you feel like you've established a network for yourself start in very small batches put out 25 music nfts on Zora for free get people to come and all just collect those and have a relationship with it you know prove to these Curative platforms that you can get people to

show up and then over time slowly start to increase those bounds so you can start to make a return off of selling your own music nfts are there some big dos and don'ts that either artists or collectors should know about the music industry or nft music industry just try it I guess would be like my only big suggestion I would say that there's not really any uh don'ts right now um I would say don't over complicate it you know at the end of the day I just want to collect a song I don't really care about the utility associated with it I don't care about it all being unique and generative you know if you can put out one song that has 25 copies available of

it even if they're all exactly the same and the only difference is that number one is number one and number 25 is number 25 that's all that collectors are looking for so I'd say the biggest do is try it and experiment and the biggest don't is don't over complicate it and block yourself before you get started Cooper you just raised $10 million to start the world's first ever music nft fund can you shed a little light on that like what does that mean sure group records is a $10 million fund investing in the next generation of Music we're investing in companies artists and nfts

that are shaping the next wave of music what this looks like is web 3 companies Building Products around around Music nft Creation and web 3 music more broadly this is artists that are looking for new capital formation events so instead of going to a label for a record deal you come to Coupe records to incorporate your company and sell a percentage of your equity and then on the nft side we're looking to buy historical nfts that are going to have future value long beyond the next one to two years so it's both investing in music nft infrastructure and also collecting the gold vinyls of the music

nft industry that's exactly right cool people want to learn more or connect in any particular way where should they go uh best place to stay involved is on Twitter at Koopa trupa I write a Weekly Newsletter called this week in music nfts and if you want to follow coup records you can find us at C records. XYZ Cooper thank you so much thanks for having me

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