How NFTs can kickstart new artist’s careers
It is common for artists just starting out to have a second job to remain financially stable until their music career can support them full-time. The issue is that with a second job, they are not able to dedicate much time towards their music and thus takes longer to put out content and advance their career. NFTs provide a new answer to this issue of financial stability and helping artists take their careers full-time.
Meet creatorpass.net , a consulting business that works with artists to launch NFT collections for their fanbase. These NFTs act as keys for fans to unlock exclusive sections of the artist’s website and access special products and services offered by the artist. Fans who really enjoy an artist’s work can purchase their NFT pass to gain access and purchase these products, all of which helps support the artist’s career. This NFT collection boosts an artist’s brand profitability in three ways. First, a majority of the NFT’s initial offering profits go to the artist. Second, 100% of profits from the products and services offered by the artist on the NFT accessible section of their site go directly to the artist. Finally, our smart contract(code) collects a small percentage of all NFT pass resells from fan to fan on OpenSea which artists collect passively.
From this, artists have more freedom to do the work they love and reward those who support them most by providing them with special experiences that create a strong bond between an artist and their fans. For example, if a fan owns an NFT pass and purchases some merch, the artist can invite them to an exclusive online concert party as a reward for supporting their career. The fan has received a cool and unique experience as a reward for monetarily supporting the artist’s career.
Any comments or questions are greatly appreciated and I’ll do my best to respond to all of them!
If CreatorPass is something that is interesting to you, please consider joining our discord to ask questions and follow updates. https://discord.gg/YMN75z4bju
For business inquiries please email me at: [email protected]
Hey Phillip, thanks for sharing, this is really interesting and I'm keen to know more. But there's still something I don't quite understand: how would this give artists greater financial stability? Wouldn't they need to market their NFTs and spend considerable time in building a community of people willing to invest in them, just as they would without using NFTs? Why would the fact their work is accessible through NFTs make it more likely that people would pay for it?
Awesome question! I’m glad that you asked and I will do my best to clear up any confusion. Financially, a new revenue stream is created for artists through the initial sale and aftermarket sale of the NFTs. Selling any NFTs as well as the sale of any NFTs from one fan to another, is money going to the artist that they wouldn’t have had without the NFT. As an artist continues to grow, more money would be generated through their aftermarket sales as demand for the NFTs increases. To answer your question about marketing, we anticipate that the artists would make the NFT launch known to their fans, but wouldn’t be doing extra marketing for the NFTs themselves, rather continuing normal marketing for their brand and music career. People that buy the NFTs are likely purchasing for two reasons. Firstly, a person who has listened to the artist for a long time and enjoys the music they create wants to support their career can be rewarded with a unique experience for the money they are spending on the artist. Similar to Twitch’s subscriber model, fans spend money to gain access to perks and products offered by the streamer. It is important to note that our NFTs can be resold whenever a fan feels like it, and recoup most of the money they paid for it depending on supply and demand, but a twitch sub is money you cannot get back. Secondly, we anticipate there are people who see an artist’s potential and will purchase the NFT as a form of investment with the goal of reselling it at a profit down the line after an artist’s career has grown. The artist just needs to focus on making the music that they love and people will invest because they see potential in the music or in the work ethic of the artist. To directly answer your question, artists won’t spend much time trying to convince people to buy the NFTs, rather continuing to make music and do the work they love and letting it speak for itself and people seeing value in that. To answer your final question, the NFTs are not meant to gatekeep their content or music. As an example, artists could offer special merch, vinyls, birthday songs or beats, concert tickets, and such. To clarify, we don’t want to restrict products and services offered by the artist prior to the NFT collection, but just add new special stuff on top of the old stuff that is accessible only to NFT holders. There are fans of artists who spend lots of money on their products already just because they like the artist and want to support them. The NFTs mean that they can be rewarded for doing so, whereas before they got nothing in return for that money spent. I hope this helps and I know its a lot to digest so let me know if I can further clarify anything or help at all. Thanks for taking the time to read our article and for being interesting in what we are building!
Sincerely,
Phillip
As both an artist, as well as running an art platform and teaching in the art space, I can say with confidence that artists are by far more negatively impacted by NFTs than not.
Artists are not making money with NFTs, they are having their artwork stolen and minted without their permission and have to spend more time protecting their work. It also turns their work into a speculative asset instead of art, which kinda sucks. They are harassed by crypto bros to wild lengths. It's quite disgusting.
This goes to the extent that artists are starting to boycott companies that consider implementing NFTs in any form. And I support that. NFTs are a scam and an environmental tragedy. Many people have already lost their life savings to the extent that certain subreddits have pinned suicide prevention helpline numbers to the tops.
For anyone who wants to learn about the reality of NFTs, this is a pretty good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
Thank you for your comment, I am really glad that someone with relations into the art world was able to provide some feedback and is asking the tough questions. To say that artists as a whole are not making money with NFTs is largely untrue. There are many artists gaining recognition and making leaps and bounds in their career through NFT projects they’ve worked on or pieces they’ve published themselves. Individuals such as Beeple and Seneca are great examples of artists who’ve been able to make huge names for themselves through NFTs. Prior to NFTs artists still had to fear their work being copied or stolen so this is not a problem originating from NFTs. Physical and tangible art also have a speculative asset aspect in the sense that many people purchase works with the hopes of it appreciating. This is not to say that no art is purchased for enjoyment, but the same case can be made for NFTs. If someone generally enjoys the art or likes what the project is striving to do then the art being a speculative asset is no different than physical art currently. Hate, negativity, and harrasment towards artists has been an issue long before NFTs. I would like to clarify that we do not condone any of those behaviors and are trying to provide a service that can BENEFIT artists. Although it was unclear in the article above, we plan to work with music artists as our starting niche. CreatorPass is a company that we are looking to expand to include creators of all types, but choosing a more specific niche to begin with and expand out.
Generalizing that all NFTs are a scam is largely untrue. To say that scams don’t exist in NFTs would also be an untrue statement, but it is important to acknowledge that there are scams in all walks of life. Technological innovation means there are new opportunities for people to trying and run scams, but that doesn’t mean the innovation is bad or negative. Any form of investing presents an opportunity for people to make or lose money. Much like the stock market, it is recommended to do research and never invest more than you can afford to lose, and it is advisable to do the same with NFTs. I hope this answers some of your questions and can provide a little insight as to some of the good NFTs can do for people.
Sincerely,
Phillip
I'm sorry but I do not have this experience. I sold my artwork as NFTs, bought NFTs from other artists, and have spent a lot of time in this space. It's just another way to monetize art and I think it's the best way.
The harassment of artists selling NFTs mostly comes from critics that don't like NFTs. Most of those people probably would not support the artist anyway. Just like you said the companies getting boycotted, well that's happening to artists as well.
A good example is this artist (NFT bid for 19 ETH rn): https://twitter.com/jmw327/status/1526611810262163457
They apparently were making 10K a year and decided to try something new.
It's easy to always look at the bad side of some innovation. In the case of crypto, it's most of it. But it does not help anyone if you ignore all the good aspects.
If the intention is to support the artist you can already buy their artwork as prints/digital downloads/etc as well as support them on Patreon or even PayPal.
NFTs are a speculative asset. People don't buy them cause they like the art, they buy them hoping they will be worth more later. Essentially they're the new crypto kitty and are inevitably going in the same direction as people realise they aren't actually assets.
"People don't buy them cause they like the art, they buy them hoping they will be worth more later."
This observation is mostly true but it's only a valid criticism of the current market, not the concept of an NFT. I've seen many people (myself included) buy NFTs the same way they support someone on Patreon but the artist does not have to produce extra content on top of marketing.
An NFT is simply a way to track "ownership" of some metadata and is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Digital art will always have value and this is just one way to capture it.
Btw. check out hicetnunc if you want to see what I am advocating for in the NFT space.
There are a couple reasons why our NFT model is different and possibly more beneficial compared to Patreon. Firstly, the NFT provides a new revenue stream at mint as well as aftermarket trading that the artist wasn’t receiving before. The NFT provides a certificate attached to your crypto wallet meaning you can’t share accounts as easily as an email and password account. For the artist, this means a group of people can’t use a shared account and access the artist’s goods without paying. Secondly, let’s say a fan is no longer interested in an artist’s products. With Patreon, the fan would simply stop purchasing the artist’s products and that would be the end of it. With CreatorPass, a fan would sell his pass and recoup some if not all of the money that they paid for it and the artist get a royalty on that sale meaning that benefit as well. Finally, an artist has to spend time to market they Patreon page as it is a large part of their revenue. Time spent on marketing their Patreon is time taken away from doing the work they love. With the NFT model, fans would purchase the NFT are incentivised to spread the artist around and show off their works. For a fan, marketing their artist who’s NFT you just bought could mean that your NFT increases in value. The time that they would have spent marketing their Patreon, they can engaging with their fans or putting out more work with that time saved. I hope this is helpful!
Sincerely,
Phillip
Hmm interesting, I'm sure there are many creatives that could benefit from this. Although I guess they could also join a platform like Patreon or others to get people to support their work.
I'm currently building an NFT Marketplace for 1/1 Art and I'm interested in how you are marketing the project. Not sure how I am going to reach artists interested in selling NFTs, especially ones that have never done so before.
That sounds interesting, a project I’d be interested in following as you build it. As for marketing, we have decided indie artists are a nice niche to begin with. Eventually, after a fair amount of good launches artists will approach us, but the question is getting there. We have been reaching out to smaller artists and looking for connections to them. Cold emailing can get you a response here and there, but sending a creative cold email boosts your chances significantly. I like to make my pitches into a video format that we put into an email. This catches the attention of the person and means they don’t have to read and rather just listen to me speak. Oftentimes a long email with just words is not appealing or intriguing at all. Keep your messages short and direct and be friendly and genuine. For creative marketing techniques, I’ve watched many videos on YouTube and tiktok. Posting questions on other founders posts is a great way as well and I hope this helps!
Is it more for popular big stars? Just wondering in this NFT world, at what price does the dancing start)?
Price is something that we would have to determine based on audience size and current fan spending. It’s not a set price for all creators, we work to provide good custom solutions that best fit an artists criteria and needs. Passes can even be minted for free if an artist so chooses and thinks is a good way to engage the audience. Larger stars are more likely to sell out bigger collections due to having larger fanbases. For example, Taylor Swift is likely to have more fans willing to spend some money to purchase something like these NFTs as opposed to an artist a little earlier on in their career. This doesn’t mean there aren’t NFT applications for both artists, just that larger artists may have more popular and larger collections.