New Muse Record Is First NFT Album to Reach Number 1
Muse’s latest record, Will of the People has been sold as an NFT album, and is the first of its kind to reach number 1 in the UK album charts.
The Devon rock group released their ninth album last week, with 51,500 copies being sold in its first week. The group released Will of the People as an NFT album, alongside traditional formats like vinyl, CD, and digital download.
Far from the first music group to release work as an NFT, Muse join the likes of Kings of Leon and Gorillaz in getting involved in the new technology.
However, this is the first NFT album to nab the top spot in the charts. Only a limited number were released as a “digital pressing” – specifically, just 1000 NFT copies were made available worldwide. Although only a small fraction of sales were NFTs, the band sold more than the other top 10 charting albums combined.
Released a week prior, Aitch’s debut Close to Home was released as an NFT album. The Manchester rapper managed to reach number 2 in the charts with it.
Eco-Friendly NFT Album
Muse worked with Warner Music and Serenade, a web3 music marketplace, to produce an eco-friendly NFT. Boasting themselves as the home of eco-friendly digital collectibles, Serenade operates on Polygon, a layer 2 Ethereum blockchain. Whereas Ethereum uses the energy hungry Proof of Work consensus mechanism, Polygon uses a greener Proof of Stake protocol.
Serenade explains that you would have to mint 197,000 Serenade NFTs to create a carbon footprint equal to one physical vinyl. Recognising that buying an album isn’t just about the music, but the artwork that goes with it, Muse made some extras available. As well as the digital NFT album, a downloadable alternative artwork was made available. The artwork had also been digitally signed by the band’s members.
Music NFTs
If you’re not too sure what an NFT is, it stands for “non-fungible token”. It’s essentially a unique token that cannot simply be swapped, like currency. Existing on the blockchain, the token represents authentication of ownership of an asset. In this case, it’s a limited “digital pressing” of Muse’s new record.
You can learn more about NFTs in our helpful article!
Besides NFT albums, there are other types of music NFTs. At Fractis, we’re all about fractional music streaming royalties. We think this is something to get excited about, since Fractis NFTs are linked to productive assets, which serve both artists and fans.
Learn more about what we do and how it works here.
Other types of music NFTs can include album artwork, other types of royalties, lyrics, pretty much anything related to music. Last year, musician Grimes made $6million after auctioning off digital artwork as well as a video to set to music.
As the appetite for valuable NFTs grows, we’re here to make sure everybody can get involved. Fractis is a music marketplace built on the Solana blockchain. This means that it’s accessible (thanks to low transaction fees), as well as totally global.
By the way, Solana is one of the greenest blockchains out there, so Fractis NFTs are eco-friendly, just like Muse’s NFT album.
Sign up to Fractis today, and be one of the first to get involved in the royalties revolution!