How can I make money with NFT as a Musician?

It's no doubt that the pandemic makes it hard for musicians and creative individuals who work in the event industry to earn a living.

In this blog post, we want to share our tips and tricks to help musicians like yourself to earn money with NFT. This post is part of complete series of "How to diversify our event vendors' income channels on Venopi?" 

Let's start!

 

Get your creative juice rolling

Whatever you work with, your product quality matters. We all can agree that great music sells, but how do we measure "great music"? Well, it's not a straightforward answer. It's magic between reaction and emotion, between the singer, musicians, producers, and anyone involved during the recording process. 

Don't believe me? Listen to these two tracks and you will understand what I meant. Only one of them won three Grammy Awards and was ultimately inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame:

Bucks Fizz version

 

The majestic Tina Turner version!

 

So, if you read or listen somewhere about "How to earn millions by minting 10.000 tracks?" - don't.

Just laser focus on what you do best and produce the greatest track every time you release a track, the rest will follow. 

 

NFT-ify your music tracks

You have poured your heart and soul and are ready to create your first NFT!

Before we go deeper into NFT, it's worth understanding that NFT is just a way to tokenise your music tracks. See it as one of many ways to share to the world that your music tracks exist and that you are the owner of them.  

Traditionally, musicians would register a copyright for each of their songs to prohibit others from making copies, taking elements from your music, selling copies, performing your music, etc without your permission. This process cost some amount of money and also will expire 50 - 70 years after you die. The cost and expiration depend on the country and the form of media.

When it gets complicated, sometimes musicians hire an Intellectual Property lawyer to help them to register their copyright. 

What if someone buys your music? you will go through the process all over again but with a different purpose (transferring ownership instead of registering). Usually, you do this with a lawyer because it gets kinda complicated. 

NFT is like registering your copyright, the minting cost is the registration fee and the royalty is.. well, royalty. 

The differences between NFT and traditional copyright method:

• NFT takes minutes, traditionally takes days to months
• NFT ownership will last for as long as you keep the ownership
• NFT costs are for gas fees (minting), traditionally for government fees, lawyers.
• NFT is still very new, the law may not be catching up (in case you need to sue someone)

Learn how to mint your first NFT here.

 

Earning from selling your NFT

And yes, you get it right! Once you have minted your NFT and put them on a marketplace, you will earn money when someone buys your NFT. You can set a fixed price, bidding, or auction.

 

Earning from royalty from your NFT

NFT royalties gave a creator a percentage of the sale each time their NFT creation is sold on a marketplace. You can decide the royalty percentage yourself, 5 to 10% is considered a standard royalty. NFT royalty payments are executed by smart contracts and are perpetual. 

How does this work in practice? 

Say you mint your track and put a price of 1ETH and 10% royalty.

Collector A buys your track and you receive 1ETH.

Months later, your reputation has grown and Collector B buys your track from Collector A for 10ETH. When this happens, you make 1ETH from the sale.

The new owner might sell it at an even higher price and you get a 10% out of the new sale price again. In a nutshell, you earn royalty from every sale of your work for as long as it keeps selling.

But, I don't wanna sell my music. Should I still tokenise it? 

Yes! Minting your tracks doesn't always mean that you wanna sell your music. ABBA didn't register the copyright for "Dancing Queen" for the purpose of selling it. You can see it as a fun way for you to tell the world that your music track is owned by you and that it's secured on a blockchain, with a timestamp and it's perpetual.

You should try it.. It's fun! If someone tells you that the gas fee is too expensive, they most probably referring to Ethereum gas fee, but you can pick other blockchain platforms, such as: Polkadot, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, Tron, Tezos, Flow, Cosmos, etc. 

 

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