💰The $360,000 NFT Music Manager
Noët All, one of the infamous 10,000 Bored Ape NFT's, just became the manager of a virtual music band called 'KINGSHIP'
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Happy Friday everyone!
Twitter is often considered as the closest thing to global consciousness, with its 300M users sharing everything from cat pictures, threads on hardcore finance topics, partisan political commentary and the occasional meme or two 📲
It’s safe to consider that majority of the Internet culture originates from a few corners of the Internet, with Twitter being right up there on top.
Cryptocurrencies and NFT’s are one such sub-culture have become part of mainstream in these past two years, with jpeg files of monkeys trading for millions of dollars, whilst the world is emerging from a once-in-a-century pandemic, and pulling itself out of a recession.
While a lot of the apparent ‘weirdness’ is attributed to platforms like Twitter amplifying both the good and the bad around the world, a $360,000 NFT of a monkey becoming the manager of a virtual band called ‘KINGSHIP’ made me rub my eyes twice to confirm what I was reading 😳
What is it exactly?
Universal Music Group recently announced that the female digital character, named manager ‘Noët All’, will serve as the manager for their digital Record Label- 10:22PM’s virtual NFT band, KINGSHIP.
If the above phrase sounds like Greek and Latin to you, let me try and break it down simply 👇🏻
10.22pm is a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, that was set up with the initial intention of signing artists, social media influencers and digital media creators with a focus on creating multimedia content 🎬
UMG says that the label is now exclusively a ‘Web3 Label’, and while that doesn’t give much away, their first digital band'- ‘KINGSHIP’, consists of characters from the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection consisting of one Mutant Ape and three Bored Apes 🐵
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (here’s an NFT of a rock that sold for $1M!), you would have heard of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
An NFT collection built on the Ethereum blockchain by four friends in Miami with diverse backgrounds—Jewish, Cuban, Turkish, and Pakistani- BAYC was founded back in February 2021, and has blown up since then 🚀
Its parent company: ‘Yuga Labs’ announced a massive $450 Million seed round of funding, at a $4 Billion valuation earlier this week, and yet again Twitter could not help but be in awe of what’s actually happening 🤯
The collection went viral in January when Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon pulled out printouts of their Bored Apes on The Tonight Show 📸
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Celebrities like Serena Williams, Shaquille O’Neal, Post Malone, Snoop Dogg, Mark Cuban, Neymar, Justin Bieber, LaMelo Ball, and Stephen Curry have all spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase a “Bored Ape.”
Four of these ‘Apes’, now joined by their manager Noët All, form the ‘KINGSHIP’ band, which is apparently inspired by the Gorillaz, the iconic virtual band founded by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett.
Celine Joshua, a former Sony executive and founder of 10.22PM explains the concept further:
“We have been incredibly busy developing Kingship since our initial announcement and I’m so excited to introduce manager Noët All, one of many new characters that will be joining the Kingship universe.
As the manager of the group, Noët All will help drive the storyline and allow us to communicate with the community”
Our take on this?
While the website of KINGSHIP doesn’t give much away yet, a virtual character managing a virtual band of a Web 3 label, owned by one of the biggest music companies in the world, is exactly the kind of a headline that indicates how far West the entire music industry has come ⬅️
The BAYC community has obviously become a status symbol, and as buyers try to experiment the multiple use cases to actually find utility in these NFT’s, starting a band of these Bored Apes is way out there, even for all the weirdness that embodies the Web 3 space.
What kind of music will Kingship actually produce? I have no clue 🤷♂️
But it’s clear that Universal Music is going all in into the ‘Metaverse’ with this 👇🏻
“We hope to make the KINGSHIP universe as entertaining and immersive as possible, while simultaneously building value for holders.
“With the launch of KINGSHIP’s official Discord, the community will have a home where members can interact with one another and get all the latest updates on KINGSHIP’s journey, including how to access the allowlist.
Stay tuned, there’s so much to come.”
NFT’s have found multiple fascinating use-cases in the music industry, with artists completely skipping the traditional streaming route and monetising their music from their fans directly 💰
We’re building something on similar lines, and if you’re an artist/creator, or simply a music enthusiast, do DM us on Instagram or Twitter, and check out what’s brewing under the hood 👀
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