Blog: cryptocurrency

Read our latest daily deep dives, hot takes, and exciting updates about the entertainment world. Check out the latest insight from your favourite analyst, or search by coverage areas - music, entertainment and fandom, creator economy and social.

Reflections on the music industry at NFT.NYC

Tatiana Cirisano

23 Jun 2022

cryptocurrency

NFT

Record labels

At the fourth annual NFT.NYC conference in New York, the sentiment fell somewhere between faint excitement and “so this is still a thing, right?” Unlike this time last year, when the music industry was hooked on crypto, this year’s event arrives at a time when the crypto market, like much of the economy, is in decline.

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If Web3 is so forward-thinking, why is it so male dominated?

Tatiana Cirisano

28 Feb 2022

diversity

women in music

gender equality

Strike up a five-minute conversation with someone in the Web3 space, and any combination of the words “forward-thinking”, “revolutionary”, and “equitable” is bound to come up. Many proponents of NFTs, DAOs, the metaverse, and other Web3 concepts seek to use decentralisation to dismantle old systems and bring power to the people — and their intentions are, for the most part, good.

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Unpacking music royalty investment NFTs

Tatiana Cirisano

26 Jan 2022

Streaming Music

cryptocurrency

NFTs

Last Thursday, a Royal NFT drop allowing fans to purchase a share in the streaming royalties of two Nas songs sold out within minutes. The drop was delayed by a week after high demand crashed Royal’s site, signaling potential for the concept of fans and artists co-owning music rights.

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Why the NFT hype will inevitably reach a (painful) normalisation point

Hanna Kahlert

17 Dec 2021

NFT

cryptocurrency

bitcoin

Few conversations are safe from the inevitable NFT mention these days, with everything from complimentary digital badges from events , to art sale authentication , to the whopping $25 million in music industry revenue that was generated in March 2021 during the early stages of the hype.

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Why Bored Ape and other NFTs need music (not just the other way around)

Tatiana Cirisano

17 Nov 2021

NFT

cryptocurrency

Universal Music Group

The popular NFT collection-turned-collective Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) entered the music industry this week, as Universal Music Group (UMG) and Timbaland both announced plans to turn the brand’s trendy cartoon apes into virtual music artists.

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Can music rights expand to drive the new music creator economy?

Kriss Thakrar

11 Nov 2021

rights acquisition

Music publishing

music catalogue M+A

The investment that is pouring into music rights has exploded in recent years, hitting $10 billion at the time of writing and set to increase much further. Many rights acquisitions deals have been based on the catalogues of the traditional music industry (writer/publishing and master rights).

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Libra: A Reckoning for Crypto… or for Facebook?

Hanna Kahlert

25 Jun 2019

calibra

cryptocurrency

emerging markets

Last week Facebook and its network of partners, including Spotify, MasterCard and Uber, announced the development of a new cryptocurrency, Libra , planned to go live next year. As the first tech major backed and (ideally) stable cryptocurrency, the implications are as numerous as they are extensive – should, of course, the latest in a long line of SomethingCoins manage to be meaningfully adopted at all.

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