Can Live Music NFTs Revive ‘Cassette Culture’ and Boost Indie Bands?

Crypto advocates see NFTs as a approach to revitalize music possession within the streaming period, and startup Vault is taking a very distinctive strategy: utilizing restricted version stay live performance recordings to revive the traditional idea of “cassette tradition,” and doubtlessly profit indie artists within the course of.

Starting this week, Vault’s “Cassette Tradition 3.0” initiative is providing weekly drops of stay recordings from underground and impartial bands by way of its Solana-based NFT music platform. It’s designed to recall the strategy by bands to create and distribute beginner recordings by way of cassette tapes to assist construct a following.

Because it stands, 10 stay recordings from bands acting at iconic New York venues together with Child’s All Proper, Bowery Electrical, and The Brooklyn Monarch can be found to buy as music NFT albums, with over 30 extra artists already confirmed. Artists like Sid Simons, Sum Solar, and Charlotte Rose Benjamin are a part of the preliminary lineup.

Right this moment, we’re launching Cassette Tradition 3.0, with unique stay live performance performances we recorded of up-and-coming musicians and bands throughout New York Metropolis’s most iconic venues, together with Bowery Electrical, The Bitter Finish, Child’s All Proper, Mercury Lounge, and lots of extra. 🗽 pic.twitter.com/2Lbvc4yGt1

— Vault Music (@vaultmusichq) August 2, 2023

Homeowners can take heed to the stay albums by way of a devoted cellular app. Sometimes, Vault sells every stay album for between $5 and $10, with simply 100 or 150 editions obtainable for every drop up to now. Followers can buy them utilizing crypto or bank card, and also will get entry to different options together with efficiency movies and behind-the-scenes content material.

Artists will obtain 70% of the proceeds from every sale, with Vault masking minting prices, storage, and bank card charges. Vault additionally handles the precise recording and mixing of the stay efficiency. This system will subsequent broaden into Nashville, and the corporate can also be in talks with venues in London and Amsterdam too.

“There’s an actual urge for food from music followers to seek out out extra about these grassroots scenes,” Vault CEO Nigel Eccles informed Decrypt. “With a number of these bands, they’re coming at it from a unique path [than] a number of TikTok artists. They do not have many followers on Spotify or Instagram, however they will promote tickets in New York. Spotify doesn’t service these bands or actions, however we are able to.”

It comes as a brand new wave of bands are specializing in increase a stay repute earlier than formally releasing music on streaming platforms. The London-based act The Final Dinner Celebration, for instance, racked up tens of 1000’s of YouTube views on live performance movies shot by followers, whereas stay classes filmed by Audiotree and NPR usually attain 1000’s of individuals.

Brooklyn-based indie pop band Center Half had a latest gig at Bowery Ballroom recorded by Vault for an upcoming Cassette Tradition 3.0 launch.

“The primary factor I’m hoping for is that followers will get to gather a second in time for Center Half,” the band’s singer Andrew Selkōw informed Decrypt. “I’m pumped to offer followers an opportunity to expertise our music exterior of our studio recordings, digitally.”

Whereas some distinguished artists promoting music NFTs by way of different platforms or strategies—together with Snoop Dogg, Justin “3LAU” Blau, and André “RAC” Anjos—are vocal advocates of crypto and blockchain tech, that’s not the case for Selkōw. He’s simply enthusiastic about one other alternative to get Center Half’s music on the market.

Sound Raises $20 Million, Opens Music NFT Platform to All Artists

“I personally don’t care about NFTs or the cash, however I do respect what Vault is doing,” he added. “Illuminating a scene, with a chance to achieve some capital and doing every part freed from cost, is de facto massive for an indie scene that’s in any other case fairly broadly ignored.”

Elsewhere, the continued vinyl resurgence has proven Vault that followers care about music possession, regardless of the abundance of content material offered by streaming subscription giants like Spotify and Apple Music.

Blockchain builders see NFTs as a approach to current true digital possession for followers and collectors, fueling curiosity in rising platforms—together with Sound, an Ethereum-centric music NFT platform that not too long ago raised $20 million.

“The primary factor followers need from a band is entry to music,” mentioned Vault’s Eccles. “These distinctive recordings gained’t be obtainable anyplace else, and followers will personal them eternally.”

Vault has beforehand labored with high-profile artists like Fletcher on NFTs round her “Lady Of My Goals” tour, however Cassette Tradition 3.0 focuses on impartial and underground artists. Many lesser-known artists make a pittance on streaming royalties, and usually depend on stay reveals to make a residing—a framework not too long ago threatened amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“That’s key for us,” defined Eccles of this system’s indie-centric strategy. “They’re the artists who want this essentially the most. Twenty years in the past with CDs, much more artists may have a full-time profession simply from promoting music. That is simply not true as we speak, as a result of streaming kinda sucks for them. It solely actually works for the superstars.”

“We wished to concentrate on the impartial and underground artists as a result of that’s who we are able to impression essentially the most,” he continued. “It’d solely be a couple of thousand {dollars}, however truly—for lots of those artists—that’s greater than they’ve ever constructed from streaming.”

Cassette Tradition 3.0 takes affect from the worldwide music scene that flourished from the late Seventies to the early Nineteen Nineties, which noticed DIY musicians create tapes of residence recordings to fund their profession. That ethos continued by way of on-line platforms like SoundCloud and MySpace within the 2000s, however artists weren’t in a position to simply monetize their residence recordings in the identical means.

For the venture, Vault has curated a spread of bands that it believes represents simply how thrilling grassroots music scenes are, however bands also can put themselves ahead for the venture. Eccles hopes to include extra genres over time too, and sees the venture as a approach to doubtlessly assist artists get away and maintain themselves.

“This gained’t exchange streaming, however we need to complement it,” mentioned Eccles. “We need to provide followers the chance to gather distinctive items, and we wish artists to have the ability to make a residing by means of their music.”