Photo Credit: UnsplashWarner Music Group (NASDAQ: WMG) has officially struck a partnership agreement with five-year-old “digital collectibles platform” Blockparty.
New York City-headquartered Warner Music announced the deal – which marks Los Angeles-based Blockparty’s “first major label partnership” – via a formal release this morning. As part of the newly finalized pact, WMG artists including David Guetta and Kenny Chesney will have “access to cutting-edge Web3 technology in the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs),” according to the involved companies.
Said access is specifically set to afford these WMG-signed acts the chance to utilize “Blockparty’s decentralized exchange (DEX), a community-focused trading platform that allows collectors to swap digital assets in a way that hasn’t existed until now,” the release continues.
“For the first time ever, with Blockparty’s DEX, artists and creators will have the opportunity to participate in NFT swaps,” the document elaborates. “Those using the DEX have the option to bundle-sell their NFTs, where they can combine existing NFTs to swap, trade, or sell. By cutting out the middleman, creators, artists, collectors, and fans alike can now connect directly like never before through this unique experience.”
Warner Music Finland’s Stig is poised to release “a series of NFTs” under the WMG-Blockparty union, focusing on tokens “that capture his iconic moustache and array of trendy 5 panel caps – a nod to wearables found in the metaverse and his ambitions to participate within it,” per the release.
Blockparty’s website further discloses that the company “has built multiple NFT platforms,” supports both credit-card and cryptocurrency payments on its marketplace, and is preparing to release “custom storefronts” later this year.
The WMG-Blockparty partnership represents the latest in a long line of music-industry efforts to cash in on NFTs.
Regarding the other major labels, Sony Music last month rolled out a collection of Baby Shark NFTs, while November saw Universal Music establish Kingship, a “band” consisting of four characters from the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project.
More broadly, the Big Three labels are far from the only companies that are moving to develop a presence in the NFT realm, for recent months have seen DistroKid, Primary Wave, BTS agency Hybe, Fox and The Masked Singer, and TikTok reveal non-fungible token plays.
Plus, NFTs have launched for artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Whitney Houston, and Jay-Z, with Quincy Jones-backed music-NFT platform OneOf having raised $63 million last May. And to kick off 2022, NFT marketplace OpenSea earlier this month raised $300 million at a staggering $13.3 billion valuation.
Notwithstanding this high transaction volume and the decidedly large funding rounds, some in the music industry remain skeptical of NFTs’ true value, with Brian Eno indicating of the space in a recent interview: “I mainly see hustlers looking for suckers.”
