Monstercat CEO Mike Darlington and Metalink founder Jake Udell discussed with NFT Steez the future of Web3 and music NFTs.
According to the CEO of Monstercat, an electronic music platform, and the founder of the social NFT platform Metalink, bear markets are a time to imagine and build new products. During this week’s episode of NFT Steez, a bi-weekly Twitter Space accommodated by Cointelegraph analysts, both Darlington and Udell approved that the future will be bright for crypto and especially for music NFTs.
During the interview, Darlington and Udell described the importance of researching projects with “sustainable teams” that continue to build in spite of the current market conditions and they stimulated investors to learn from the possibilities created at the height of the bull market.
Darlington claimed, that music NFTs haven’t essentially made it as a “trend” yet, but he is hoping that they strengthen their space in the next bull cycle. Reasonably, profile pictures (PFP) NFTs are a “monster of their own,” but music NFTs can see similar success to that of photography or art NFTs.
For creators looking into experimenting with music NFTs, Darlington proposed that it is first important to discover and understand “why do you want to interact and why do you want to get involved?”
Darlington said some creators have come to “recognize how broken the music industry is for artists” and music NFTs presents an opportunity that can provide more sustainability for artists and musicians.
While it’s uncertain how sustainable the new landscape will be for artists, the one “resounding truth” and commonality is that creators are not “content with the current model,” there is a will to be open to change the status quo but this depends on the “format and the shape that music NFTs will arrive in,” explains Darlington.
Metalink founder, Jake Udell mentioned how levels of engagement differ between free and pay-to-use platforms with users opting to engage more in platforms they have a stake in. Creators and users who feel they have invested in the product are more likely to “play around with the product more and be more likely to make something of it,” says Udell.
Interestingly, this contrast where users are invested and in turn authorized to experiment opens up for a more active relationship between the listener and the artist instead of listening to music as a “passive” amusement. Whether or not users care about ownership or truly have it matters less in relation to the culture and community created toward the increased value units are now placing on digital goods.
According to Udell, the amount of attention the NFT space received in the last year alone led the way for a “cult-like phenomenon.” Groups are brought together by the common thread of Web3 and while Udell does not have faith in that “Web3 is necessarily a genre,“ it is another path for artists to tap into and successfully grow their audience.
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