British rock band Muse will release their ninth studio album, ‘Will of the People’, as a non-fungible token. The band will use a new format, digital pressing. The new digital format will make it the first chart-eligible NFT album, which is a world first for the music industry.
The Muse NFT album sale
The band made the new album a limited edition of 1000 NFTs. The sale will take place on Friday the 26th of August on the NFT platform Serenade.
The price for the Muse NFTs is $24-25. Lucky owners of the digital asset will receive high-resolution Flac files, which they can download, plus an alternative album cover that the members of Muse digitally sign.
The drop caters to fans that are into collecting band memorabilia. The scarcity also adds to the value of the music NFT in the secondary market. However, we should point out that 15% of secondary sales go to the artists.
You should note that subsequent sales of the NFT albums on secondary markets will not be counted towards its chart position.
UK Chart eligible format
The UK’s Official Charts Company (OCC) will, for the first time since 2015 when album streams were added to the count, allow a new format to be counted towards a band’s chart position. The company used a new digital pressing format to make the NFTs countable towards chart position in April 2022. Muse’s NFTs are the first to reach entry requirements. The NFTs will count in both the UK and Australian charts.
Digital pressing uses blockchain with Web3 capabilities. It allows for proof of ownership and gives lifetime royalties to musicians, artists, and copyrighters.
Martin Talbot, chief executive at OCC, speaking about digital pressing, stated:
“Just as vinyl, 8-track, cassette tapes, CDs and even MiniDisc, DCC and DAT have been welcomed into the charts, we will also welcome Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) – and we will be delighted when the first album delivered as an NFT contributes to the chart, with Serenade and Muse leading the way this summer.”
Max Shand founder of Serenade, whom we interviewed previously, said:
“As a simple, standardised and chart-eligible format, Digital Pressings will be a game changer on the global stage, and we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this without the support of the visionary teams at Warner Records and the Official Charts Company, who all want to give artists every opportunity to bring creativity and innovation into their campaigns.”
Serenade NFT platform
Warner Brothers, Muse’s record company, partnered with Serenade to launch the NFTs. Serenade, on the Polygon blockchain, is an eco-friendly NFT marketplace that enables musical artists to generate new, sustainable revenue streams from their music.
Sebastian Simone, Vice President, Audience & Strategy of Warner Records UK, told the Guardian, “We’re thrilled to be partnering with Serenade and the OCC on the first chart accredited NFT album format.”
Afterthoughts
The new exciting format of Muse’s new album will help shape the future of the music industry and cement music NFTs’ place in it. The year’s second half will see a lot more news around the NFT music scene. You can keep up to date with all the latest NFT news on our homepage.
