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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)

The post Music x NFTs: Marketplaces and the Artists Charting the Path appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.

If you're looking to get into the NFT game, you should be aware of the best NFT marketplaces.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are hogging the spotlight while altering how we look at assets, investments, artwork and rare collectibles. People can shop for these unique digital creations at dedicated NFT marketplaces.

Built on digital blockchain technology, NFTs are irreplaceable and unchangeable digital tokens in the form of images, audios, GIFs, 3D models, videos and much more. Additionally, NFTs can also be etched in a Metaverse, which is a self-sustaining digital universe that can house many characters and worlds.

NFT transactions are generally done in cryptocurrencies and have even got several A-list celebrities hooked. While Eminem, Amitabh Bachchan and Justin Bieber have launched their NFTs recently, luxury fashion houses like Gucci, Balenciaga and Louis Vuitton have joined the hype around their digital art projects. Even auction houses like London-based Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York have sold NFT artworks by digital creators and artists like Beeple, who made a fortune out of it.

Having said that, numerous NFTs are being sold at virtual marketplaces. These are websites that allow trading as well as NFT minting and are mostly based on the Ethereum blockchain.

Explaining the concept of NFT marketplaces, DappRadar says, “These websites facilitate a location where trade takes place and often take a percentage from the transaction for their services. Every blockchain has its NFT marketplace. Some specialise in a certain niche, others embrace every type of NFT on the market. Interacting with an NFT marketplace requires a Web3 wallet while buying (and sometimes listing) an NFT requires the base currency of the blockchain you’re working on.”

Read on to know about some of the best NFT marketplaces out there

OpenSea

OpenSea is one of the leading NFT marketplaces that provides a platform for creators to list their NFTs for sale and buyers or collectors to choose from its unfathomable collection.

Based on the Ethereum blockchain, OpenSea is an NFT platform that offers a simple and secured trading experience. So much so that its success made its co-founders, Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, the first NFT billionaires in early January 2022. To date, the marketplace boasts over 80 million NFTs.

Anyone who wants to mint their own NFTs can do so as the marketplace offers huge support by accepting over 150 different payment tokens, though Ethereum (ETH) remains the main one. Wiping out most of its competitors, OpenSea has a massive market advantage for its sheer trading volume and collection. It alone recorded mammoth trading of USD 10 billion since its launch in 2017. With huge fundings, celebrity clientele and numerous NFTs to choose from, a collector might feel like a child lost in a candy store.

The official OpenSea website reads, “A core part of our vision is that open protocols like Ethereum and interoperable standards like ERC-721 and ERC-1155 will enable vibrant new economies. We're building tools that allow consumers to trade their items freely, creators to launch new digital works, and developers to build rich, integrated marketplaces for their digital items.”

Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is another most sought-after NFT marketplace in the gaming arena. A dedicated space for gamers of the video game by the same name, it allows players to create, buy and sell axies — game characters and other digital collectibles.

The marketplace has created a base for the gaming world through its creative and user-friendly domain. One of the top and most expensive NFT markets, its market cap goes into billions. Axie Infinity has attracted gaming and crypto-enthusiasts for its futuristic assets.

Such is its wide fanbase and dealings that the Axie marketplace also has a platform where players can interact, develop NFTs and compete with others to earn points and other collectibles, which can also be sold as NFTs.

Rarible

Rarible is one of the oldest among NFT marketplaces and continues to influence the crypto space. Giving users easy minting and trading opportunities, it has an array of NFTs to buy and sell. Rarible is also known for its user-friendly interface, which is used to create NFT art.

Like OpenSea, it is also based on the Ethereum blockchain technology, but the major difference between the two is that to carry out transactions here, one has to use its own token called the RARI token.

While focusing on creating a smooth and secured crypto investment and transaction experience, Rarible has also partnered with a number of leading brands that have launched their NFTs in this marketplace. These include Taco Bell and Cloud software giant Adobe, who teamed up with Rarible to protect the works of NFT artists and creators.

Recently, the marketplace closed funding of over USD 14 million.

Nifty Gateway

A marketplace for the elites, most of the NFT transactions grab instant spotlight as they begin to trend in the crypto market. Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Nifty Gateway is an art curation platform that has been instrumental in selling NFT artworks of world-famous artists like Beeple and Grimes.

Nifty Gateway is managed by the parent company and crypto exchange, Gemini, and is controlled by the Winklevoss Twins.

As per their official website, their mission is “to make NFTs accessible to everyone.” One can buy and sell NFTs on the platform as well as list and curate NFT collections. Other than this, the NFTs purchased via this marketplace are also hosted here, which means they are stored in the user’s Nifty account instead of their digital wallet.

Nifty Gateway partners with global names like artist Michael Kagan and is one platform that allows transactions in fiat currency USD.

Decentraland

What was initially criticised for being quite far-fetched and based on metaverse can now safely be called the game changer in the crypto world. The official website says, “Decentraland is a decentralised virtual reality platform.”

In Decentraland, a 3D traversable measurable universe called LAND, the space and all its contents are divided into parcels that are “identified by cartesian coordinates (x,y).” These parcels are permanently owned by community members and transactions can take place using MANA, Decentraland’s crypto token.

The official website of Decentraland further says, “This gives users full control over the environments and applications that they create, which can range from anything like static 3D scenes to more interactive applications or games.”

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decentraland’s marketplace gives a completely new experience as compared to other NFT trading platforms, as it bridges the gap between real and virtual worlds. Users can buy lands, houses and pretty much all other digital assets that one purchases in real life.

With USD 114,695,018 market cap according to CoinMarketCap as on 25 January 2022, the Decentraland marketplace is graduating to become a big name in the metaverse and revolutionising digital assets.

SuperRare

SuperRare owes its popularity because of its simplistic approach and extremely user-friendly interface. The marketplace is a seamless platform — like an Instagram in the NFT world — where digital artists and consumers can directly interact.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, all transactions are done through ETH, and the marketplace charges a base fee of 3 percent of the transaction.

The official website assures the digital art exhibited on SuperRare is “authentically created by an artist in the network, and tokenized as a crypto-collectible digital item that you can own and trade.”

According to CoinMarketCap, SuperRare has a market capital of USD 45,320,906, at the time of writing this article.

BakerySwap

BakerySwap is a prominent NFT marketplace, which is also the first automated market maker (AMM) +NFT Exchange on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Transactions are done with its own crypto coin called Bakery token or BAKE which was launched in September 2020.

The BAKE token is a native BEP-20 governance token on the platform. According to a CoinMarketCap report, “Users have the ability to earn BAKE tokens by providing liquidity on BakerySwap, and BAKE holders can use their tokens for governance voting and to receive transaction fee dividends. The BAKE rewards are offered in several liquidity pools, initially including BTC, ETH, DOT, LINK, BUSD and BAKE versus BNB.”

BakerySwap boasts a high market cap of USD 114,169,466 according to CoinMarketCap, as of 25 January 2022.

Foundation

Foundation’s official website says it is a “platform that aims to build a new creative economy—a world where creators can use the Ethereum blockchain to value their work in entirely new ways and build stronger connections with their supporters.”

It allows creators to list their artworks and auction them to collectors who can bid on them in ETH. This enables the platform to enlist all kinds of NFTs that are supported by Ethereum.

A simple, open and hassle-free NFT marketplace, Foundation has already sold NFTs worth 50,239 ETH, which translates to over USD 121, 897, 125.27 since its inception in February 2021, as of 25 January 2022.

Hero and feature image credit: OpenSea/ @opensea/ Twitter

This article first appeared on Lifestyle Asia India. 

The post These Are the Top NFT Marketplaces You Should Know About appeared first on Prestige Online - Hong Kong.