The famous rock-R&B-pop music band, Maroon 5, has entered into a partnership with YellowHeart, the marketplace of ticketing and music, to launch the Decentralized Autonomous Organization for the community of Maroon 5 fans. Soon after the launch, the fans of Maroon 5 shall be able to get their hand on the limited edition animated artwork of the newly released album Jordi and receive invitations to the premier event of the band’s performance of unreleased tracks by the purchase of NFTs of Maroon 5.
The launch of the NFT sale by Maroon 5 in partnership with YellowHeart is significant for the cryptocurrency industry. The beginning of the year 2021 witnessed a huge surge in the NFT sale. According to the reports of NonFungible.Com, there has been an NFT sale of more than $2 billion at the start of this year. This figure does not consider the NFT sale of more than $69 million by Beeple’s Christie and the NFT sale of $400 million raked in from the video highlights of NBA Top Shots.
The sale of NFTs has a higher margin and is more directly accessible to the fans, thereby helping artists capitalize on their artworks and collectibles. However, there is a dark side to the launch of the NFT sale in the music industry. Anyone can make a sound recording or take a picture of the NFT’s contents to pirate the artwork. Besides, there is no guaranteed way of assessing and comparing the value of different NFTs as there are several similar and different types of NFTs being sold at the same time and the same price by the same vendors. What’s more important is that owning an NFT of one’s favorite musician does not make the owner a bigger fan than one who cannot afford to own NFTs. This practice of elitism of affording NFTs is very pretentious as it does nothing but mindless spending spur and groundless speculation by the fans of musicians in the music industry.
