Celebrity Life

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) existed long before they started making headlines every other day starting early 2021. The sudden boom in their popularity was credited to a single sale in March last year. A magnificent collage, known as Everydays: the First 5000 Days by American artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, was sold at Christie’s auction as an NFT for USD 69 million.

Since then, the deluge of NFT artworks and their demand have grown exponentially. In 2021, NFT sales volume recorded a total of USD 25 billion compared to USD 95 million in the previous year.

In fact, the world’s 10 highest-selling NFT artworks were sold in 2021. Several prominent personalities, including Lionel Messi, Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg, have launched their own NFT collections. These developments speak volumes about how NFTs have taken centre stage among collectables.

Music x NFTs and their future

Despite emerging early last year, music NFTs, in the form of songs or instrumentals, are yet to become as mainstream as other NFT-based artworks, such as Beeple’s paintings or the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) characters.

Nevertheless, this form of NFTs is growing, thanks to an increased interest among collectors and the opportunity it gives to non-mainstream musicians to showcase their work and make money from its sales.

Merck Mercuriadis, who formerly managed Elton John, Beyoncé and Guns N’ Roses, said in December 2021 that NFTs are the future of music.

“Someone like Nile Rodgers, whose songs have done incredibly well for 40 years…every six months, (he’ll) get a statement from Sony that’s 10,000-pages long and has billions of microtransactions on it,” Mercuriadis said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference. “In the future, with NFT and blockchain, those billions of transactions will be able to come back to you in real-time.”

Mercuriadis appears to be right. In February 2022, music icon John Legend launched an NFT platform named OurSong with Our Happy Company. OurSong is described as a “social commerce platform” which will help musicians create exclusive digital covers and get access to unique audio clips.

Marketplaces featuring music-based NFTs

OpenSea

One of the biggest marketplaces for NFTs is OpenSea. Nearly all the biggest collections are traded on the platform, including BAYC and CryptoPunks — two of the world’s most famous NFT as well as expensive collections to date.

Among the other collections on OpenSea is the Lostboy NFT. It is known for a collectible which combines art with music to create unique tokens and trade them on the platform for Wrapped Ether (WETH). There are a total of 10,000 pieces in the Lostboy NFT collection, and it emphasises mental health.

Like many other famous avatar-based NFTs, Lostboy NFT tokens feature a singular mannequin-like character — the titular Lostboy — with hands in his pockets or behind the back. Each NFT has unique characteristics such as shirts, beards and caps.

The tokens listed on Lostboy NFT combine image, animation and music to create an NFT piece, where the music is an original Lostboy song.

Nifty Gateway

The other major market for music NFTs is Nifty Gateway, the same place where Grimes sold her work. According to estimates, it is behind half of all music-based NFT sales.

Gramatik, whose real name is Denis Jašarević, has been one of the most frequent collaborators on Nifty Gateway. The musician has released collections such as CINEMATIK COLLECTION‘ and The G Drops Collection! on the marketplace other than five full-length tokenised songs.

Origin Protocol

As early as February 2021, musician 3LAU launched his Ultraviolet album as an NFT on the platform. According to Origin Protocol, the album was the first to be sold as an NFT. The Ultraviolet collection, featuring 33 different NFTs, was sold for USD 11.7 million over a period of three days in March.

DJ KSHMR also launched his first NFT collection, the Harmonica Andromeda, on Origin protocol. The collection, named after his debut album, was released in June 2021.

SuperRare

SuperRare has been drawing attention towards music-based NFTs since 2020.

In October 2020, it featured an interview with 3LAU in which the artist spoke at length about music in the form of digital art and how it was changing the landscape for artists.

Today, it is one of the best marketplaces for music-based NFTs. Among the more recent ones is The Winner Is…, a musical work paired with animation, which was released as an interactive NFT by artist @balkanbump.

The description of the work says that it features musical instruments such as trumpet, euphonium, piano, clarinet and percussion.

Some notable music NFT sales

Before the record-breaking Beeple sale, singer-songwriter Grimes created a buzz in the world of NFTs when a series of 10 pieces by her were sold on Nifty Gateway for USD 6 million.

Among them was a video titled Death of the Old, which fetched the highest price of USD 389,000. The video showed a strange panoply of things, including a cross and a sword, and was set to an original song by Grimes. In a way, Death of the Old was a music-based NFT.

In March 2021, the band Kings of Leon released their album — When You See Yourself — in the form of three types of tokens under a series named NFT Yourself.

According to Rolling Stone, Kings of Leon is the first band to have ever released an album as NFT. The collection was sold for over USD 2 million. The three tokens were: a special album package, an opportunity for fans to get front-row seats for life and an exclusive audiovisual artwork.

Less than 1 hour until Kings of Leon: NFT Yourself Auction goes live for 6 Golden Tickets. #yellowheart #kingsofleon #nft @opensea @JoshkatzYh @KingsOfLeon
Info at:https://t.co/Gq1Mey9mfs pic.twitter.com/eZudw3Ge43

— YellowHeart (@YellowHeartNFT) March 5, 2021

In May 2021, Verdigris Ensemble, a Dallas-based choral group, sold their 21-minute-long song Betty’s Notebook on digital art auction blockchain platform Async Art for USD 375,000. The song, which was recorded in January, was the first piece of classical music to have been sold as an NFT.

The same month, BT, who is famous for trance music, sold Genesis.json for USD 212,000. Genesis.json is a software that contains over 15,000 hand-sequenced audio and visual moments. It has been created in such a way that the “piece of software” would play for 24 hours and repeat daily, and it has been designed to continue doing so until the internet exists.

One of the biggest music-based NFT sales happened on 13 December when a rare Whitney Houston demo recording went for USD 999,999. Titled OneOf One, the NFT of the never-heard-before recording, was paired with a digital video of artist Diana Sinclair and was sold on the OneOf NFT marketplace.

The Whitney Houston OneOf One NFT, a never-before-heard demo track from Houston at age 17, SOLD for $999,999! Thank you to all who made this incredible moment in music and NFT history possible! 🙏 @dianaesinclair #BeOneOf #whitneyhouston #NFTnews #WomeninNFTs pic.twitter.com/cmdSuyfOBH

— OneOf (@OneOfNFT) December 15, 2021

Not just sales, major music companies are increasingly looking into the NFT world with greater enthusiasm. In November, Universal Music joined hands with BAYC to create a virtual band of Bored Apes known as Kingship.

There is also a downside to music-based NFT platforms. Like in all other cases, collectors have to be careful before investing in these NFTs, too.

In February 2022, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sent a legal letter to HitPiece, a music NFT platform. It was shut down after numerous artists, including Mammoth WVH bandleader Wolf Van Halen, sounded the alarm when the platform tried to sell music NFTs using names of artists and album art without authorisation.

(Main and Featured images: Aditya Chinchure/@adityachinchure/Unsplash)

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An NFT museum has opened in Seattle to explore the future of art.

Futuristic and digital museums are mind-boggling enough to keep visitors engaged with exhibits that come to life. This is exactly what one might find at the world’s first museum dedicated to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which was opened in Seattle, US, on 14 January.

The Seattle NFT Museum is a classic example of the incredible hype and craze that blockchain-based digital artworks have created across the world.

What we know about the Seattle NFT Museum

What does the NFT museum feature?

Though its contents might be in digital form and are traded using cryptocurrencies, the massive approximately 278.7-square-metre museum is very much a physical entity. It showcases original NFT artworks, which detail the technology used to create them. Each exhibit is meticulously linked to its metadata and artist that gives holistic information about the creation to visitors.

Describing the idea behind the museum, its official website states, “Viewing digital art in a physical space helps to ground the NFT experience, unlocking our imaginations for what is to come. Seattle NFT Museum creators saw an opportunity to bring the digital art and NFT community together while providing exposure and education.”

“Art on exhibit at the Seattle NFT Museum lives on the blockchain and is displayed on loan from artists, creators, galleries, and collectors. You can expect our exhibition calendar to be packed full of influential works from around the world and local to Seattle,” it further states.

Museum experience and exhibitions

Aimed at making NFTs accessible and easier to understand, the Seattle NFT Museum has exhibits from across the globe as well as local artists, creating a never-seen-before experience for visitors.

The featured artworks are displayed in vivid colours and ultra-high-definition walls, transcending boundaries of physical space. The animated NFTs are in ceaseless motion, giving onlookers an experience of stepping into the NFT world.

With over 30 such high-tech screens displaying digital artworks, the website also states, “From 85” to 32”, across portrait and landscape orientations. The quality of these displays is the foundation of this immersive gallery.[sic.]”

The founders and featured artists

The museum is the brainchild of art lovers and entrepreneurs Jennifer Wong and Peter Hamilton who are focused on building a community.

Wong says, “The imagination of NFT artists and creators is thrilling. We wanted to create a space to serve the NFT community while helping put Seattle on the map as a hub for NFT and blockchain innovation. We’re not experts, and we’re here to learn as much as anyone. That is why we are counting on the feedback and support of NFT enthusiasts to continue growing the vision.”

The exhibits consist of a number of NFT collections by noted artists like Blake Kathryn, Neon Saltwater, Charles Peterson and Robbie Trevino.

When to visit?

Established in 2021, the Seattle NFT Museum is located at 2125 1st Avenue, in the iconic Belltown neighbourhood.

You can visit the museum from Thursday to Sunday between 12 pm and 5 pm. Several events and talks are held at the museum for which you can buy tickets. Either walk-in or visit with an appointment — be sure to be greeted to a world that will alter your idea of artworks, assets and investments.

(Main and featured image credit: Seattle NFT Museum)

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As NFTs continue to take the world by storm, these 10 most expensive NFT artworks ever sold.

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have become the "it" thing of the moment ever since artist Beeple sold a sold a piece for a whopping US$69.3 million in 2021. NFT artworks share some attributes with physical artworks in terms of creativity and aesthetics. However, the key difference is that being NFTs, they are simply a code — digital art that exists only on the internet.

Certain works go beyond a simple piece of visual art, such as REPLICATOR, by Canadian artist Mad Dog Jones, a piece that replicates itself and produces a new NFT every 28 days.

According to its seller — auction house Phillips — it is an “NFT experience comprising seven unique generations of artworks". The work sold for US$4.1 million in April 2021, making Mad Dog Jones the most expensive living Canadian artist.

And since, the prices of NFT sales of artworks have skyrocketed. A quick look at the sales figures reveals that all the highest-priced NFT artworks were bought in 2021, even though some were created around four years ago.

It seems that the market for expensive NFT art has just started to flourish, leaving room to expect much more in the coming years.

The 10 most expensive NFT artworks ever sold

The Merge: US$91.8 million

The Merge is a unique digital artwork in the world of NFTs because, instead of being a single piece of work, The Merge is what can be called fragmented art.

Created by the renowned artist who goes by the pseudonym Pak, The Merge was sold on NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway between 2 and 4 December 2021. It fetched a record sum of US$91.8 million — the most expensive NFT ever sold that as an artwork.

Instead of a single owner, The Merge is held by 28,983 collectors. This is because the artwork was sold in units known as ‘mass’. Thus, the collectors together bought a total of 266,445 masses by the time the sale ended on 4 December.

Each ‘mass’ cost US$575 when the sale began, and the price of the tokens went up by US$25 every six hours.   

Everydays – The First 5000 Days: US$69.3 million

Acclaimed digital artist Mike Winklemann, better known as Beeple, created a record when his single piece artwork titled Everydays – The First 5000 Days sold for US$69.3 million at a Christie’s auction on 11 March 2021. Therefore, it is the most expensive NFT sale recorded for an artwork by Beeple.

The artwork is so named because it is a collage of 5,000 individual images made one per day over more than thirteen years from 2007 to 2020.

It was the first purely digital NFT-based artwork offered by a major auction house. Following the sale, Christie’s said Beeple now ranked among the “top three most valuable living artists.”

Its buyer, MetaKovan, later revealed as crypto investor Vignesh Sundaresan, called it “a steal” while talking to The New York Times.

The costliest single-piece NFT artwork, Everydays – The First 5000 Days, is credited by many as the sale that started the NFT boom through 2021. It also catapulted Beeple and his works into an even bigger league, with collaborations with Nike and Katy Perry.

Human One: US$28.9 million

On 9 November 2021, Beeple had his second-most successful NFT artwork sale. At an auction hosted by Christie’s, the American artist’s creation, Human One, went under the hammer for US$28.9 million. The buyer was Swiss entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ryan Zurrer.

Human One is remarkably different from Everydays: The First 5,000 Days — the former is a hybrid digital and physical artwork, whereas the latter does not physically exist.

Beeple created a futuristic human-like sculpture, which was seven feet tall and appears to be perpetually walking across ever-changing landscapes. The 3D movement is presented through four video screens of 16K resolution, which come together to form a 4x4-feet box.

According to Christie’s, the kinetic video sculpture came with dual media servers and had a polished aluminium metal, mahogany wood frame.

Speaking to Christie’s head of digital sales Noah Davis, Beeple said, “We had a bunch of TVs on rollers in our studio and were rolling them around in different shapes and patterns. Then I was like: ‘We should roll them into a little box unit.’…We immediately realised that this configuration of screens was a powerful canvas — anything we put on it looked awesome.”

Human One was sold with a corresponding dynamic NFT, which was minted on 28 October 2021. The unique feature of the work is that Beeple will continue to have remote access and creative control over it. This means that the artist can change the creative elements, such as the landscape, as long as he is alive.

“The Physical Element is designed to continuously display the Artwork. Beeple will maintain remote access to the Physical Element to ensure proper functionality and/or enhance the displayed Artwork. Beeple warrants that the Physical Element does not contain any features designed to impair the continuous display of the Artwork,” Christie’s said in its description of Human One.

CryptoPunk #7523: US$11.75 million

CryptoPunks have long been one of the most sought-after tokens in the NFT space. One of the earliest NFT projects, CryptoPunks, was launched in 2017. A creation of Larva Labs, the acclaimed studio founded by Canadian developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson.

CryptoPunks is essentially a collection of 10,000 tokens called ‘punks’ by their creators and collectors. Often considered the OG NFT collection, each is a collectible character — much like a trading card. No two ‘punks’ are the same, which makes each CryptoPunk an exclusive item.

On 10 June 2021, CryptoPunk #7523 was sold for US$11.75 million at a Sotheby’s auction, making it the most expensive ‘punk’ of all the collections. #7523 is one of the nine in the Alien series of the collection.

The bluish-green-skinned character wears a knitted cap and earrings, too. It is also the only Alien character and one of the 175 in the collection with a medical mask.

According to Reuters, Sotheby’s revealed the token was bought by Israeli entrepreneur Shalom Meckenzie — the largest shareholder of digital sports company DraftKings.

CryptoPunk #3100: US$7.58 million

On the same day Beeple created history, a crypto art, known as CryptoPunk #3100, was sold for US$7.58 million. Like #7523, the #3100 is also one of the nine Alien ‘punks’. It has bluish-green skin and just one other feature — a white-and-blue headband. Only 406 out of 10,000 in the collection wear a headband and only 333 have just one attribute.

At the time of its sale, CryptoPunk #3100 was the highest-priced ‘punk’, beating the record set by #7804 a day before by just a whisker.

It has been in the news for some time because of its listed price. According to Larva Labs, it is currently up for sale for US$114.54. If realised, it would become the highest-priced NFT in history.

CryptoPunk #7804: US$7.57 million

The ‘punk’, which looks more like Sherlock Holmes with shades, is another of the nine Aliens among the 10,000. On 10 March 2021, it made news for fetching US$7.57 million for its seller, Figma CEO Dylan Field, who had dubbed it his “digital Mona Lisa.”

The pipe-smoking character wears small shades and is one of the 254 who wears their cap forward. Unlike #3100, the #7804 is not up for sale.

Right-click and Save As guy: US$7.09 million

Xcopy is the pseudonym of a London-based crypto artist whose works are one of the most in-demand across marketplaces. According to The Crypto Times, Xcopy, who is known for his dystopian- and death-themed works, has sold over 1,900 artworks.

The Right-click and Save As guy is the name of an NFT artwork created by the artist as a joke on those who think that NFTs are worthless because they can simply be right-clicked and downloaded.

The artwork shows a character wearing large shades and a hoodie. Its red-tinted lips are constantly moving, as if mumbling something.

Right-click and Save As guy was sold on the SuperRare marketplace for US$7.08 million in early December 2021. It was bought by the user known online as ‘Cozomo de Medici’, who has a vast storehouse of NFT digital collectibles.

Some speculate that ‘Cozomo de Medici’ is the alias of rapper Snoop Dogg. Even though the American celebrity admitted that he is the man behind the identity, it has not been independently verified.

Ringers #109: US$6.9 million

Ringers #109 is an artwork by Art Blocks, which is a project that creates loops around pegs using an algorithm. The artwork can be a 3D image, an interactive feature, or a static picture.

Ringers #109 is a static image of a series of loops around multiple pegs. The dominant colour is black on a white background. The balanced wrap orientation, the loop and the white background are three very rare attributes in Art Blocks’ creations. The rarest is, however, a red peg — the colour is present in just 0.3 percent of its tokens.

The NFT was sold for US$6.9 million in October 2021 — a record price for Art Blocks. It is not clear who bought the NFT but according to The Crypto Times, the seller was AKIRA, co-founder of NarcissusGLRY, who revealed the sale on Twitter.

According to AKIRA, the NFT was bought by them for US$550 in March 2021.

A Coin for the Ferryman: US$6.01 million

One of the earliest works by Xcopy, A Coin for the Ferryman was sold on SuperRare for US$6.01 million on 4 November 2021.

The artwork is a GIF, showing constantly changing expressions on a person’s face. It was minted by Xcopy on 20 April 2018.

At the time, it was bought by a user named @0xclipse for US$139. In 2019, it was transferred to a user named @electricmeat who eventually sold it on SuperRare to the current owner @jpeggy.

Ocean Front: US$6 million

Beeple’s Ocean Front is much more than one of the most expensive NFT artworks. It is a telling reminder to the world of the impending disaster that unchecked climate change is set to bring.

The artwork is part of Beeple’s “Everydays” series. It shows a series of trailers and containers stacked upon each other on a platform in the middle of an ocean. At the top of the dystopian man-made objects is a tree, underneath which mushrooms can be seen growing.

The artwork was bought on 23 March 2021 following intense bidding on Nifty Gateway by Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of the Tron Foundation, for US$6 million. Beeple himself announced the winner and the winning bid on Twitter.

Following the transaction, Sun tweeted that proceeds from the sale to Open Earth Foundation — an NGO working to tackle climate change.

(Main image: Pak / @muratpak / Twitter; (Featured image: SuperRare)

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