After vinyl, cassette, CD and MP3, is the music industry about to see the arrival of a new distribution format? This Friday, British rock band Muse will release their ninth album will of the people and for the occasion, 1000 copies of the project will be sold in NFT – digital tokens based on the same technology as cryptocurrencies.
This unreleased album, which includes ten songs plus the digital signatures of the band members, will be available for purchase in FLAC format -similar to the famous MP3 but of better quality- on the Serenade platform for 20 pounds, about 23 euros. .
Unlike classic NFT sales, here you won’t need to own a cryptocurrency wallet to buy the disc. This portfolio will be automatically created at the time of sale and the album will be added to it. Those who already own cryptocurrency wallets, such as Bitcoin, will still be able to use them to purchase the drive.
According to Max Shand, founder of Serenade, Muse’s album will be a “game changer” and will democratize this digital format that simplifies transactions.
Listed in the UK and Australia
But the specificity of the Muse album doesn’t stop at its format. For the first time in music history, dematerialized sales of the album on the Serenade platform will be counted in the UK and Australian charts.
Since 2015, with the arrival of streaming, no new music format had been taken into account by the rankings.
“We are proud to achieve the first ever chart-eligible musical NFT featuring global superstars Muse. This is the latest format to be added to the official UK charts since streaming was added seven years ago,” Warner Records reacted. on Twitter at first. of August.
The inclusion of albums on NFT in the UK charts was formalized in April 2022 by the Official Charts Company (the English equivalent of SNEP) on the occasion of the album’s release. How will I know if heaven will find me? of the Amazons.
The rock group was then the first to put on sale a digital box that included NFT. In the case of Muse, this is the first time an album will be released only on NFT.
Not taken into account in all countries
However, sales of will of the people in NFT will not be taken into account in some other countries. In the United States, for example, Luminate and Billboard told the US media variety that, unlike their European counterparts, they were not yet ready to include this type of format in the calculation of their rankings.
“We are looking at the growth and evolution of this new format and how it could potentially fit into our current rankings or contribute to new rankings where NFT sales activity would be more relevant,” Luminate said. variety.
This is not the first time that the Muse group has taken an interest in NFTs. In 2020, Matthew Bellamy, Dominic Howard, and Christopher Wolstenholme worked with the CryptoKitties blockchain platform to develop their own collectible cat avatars.
Source: BFM TV
