Grimes Has Made More Money From NFTs Than From Her Music: Wired

Grimes, the techno artist and one time partner of Elon Musk says she made more money from NFTS than she has from her entire musical career. That's according to a new report from Wire where they sat down with grimes. She's also a huge fan of A I Web Three and anything to do with the internet. So this isn't entirely surprising. Think it sort of shows you the depths of what the NFT market were during the height and glory days of the 2021 bull market. Grimes apparently made about $6 million in revenue just from one of her NFT project launches. She's looking forward to a future where NPS are back in the spotlight saying, quote, I'm sad about what happened nfps in Crypto because it got polluted fast with people trying to make as much money as possible. But I do want to think about compensating artists, especially digital artist. And I hope when Agro Niche dies down, we can come back, I hope we can all come back, Wendy. This feels like a story for you so I can toss it your way. This makes me so happy that she's profited using NFTS. Because I have been bullish on NFTS since I found out that they were for people to have ownership, especially real creatives. I'm not really a real creative. I'm more like an entertainer because I'm just an idiot on the internet. But I'm talking about musicians. I'm talking about writers. I'm talking about people that pour their heart and souls. Well, I guess I kind of pour my heart and souls into my con my content, but that's neither here nor there. Um But I've just known so many musicians throughout my entire life that have gone absolutely screwed by the music industry because there's so many different aspects of the royalties and the licensing and everything gets pieced out with all the different songs. So with NFTS, it actually allows these real artists, these real creatives to make a living and to actually have ownership and to sell them for what they want and to be able to determine how much, you know, what percentage of this license or what percentage of this royalty they're gonna make or give to their fans. And I think it's just an absolutely amazing thing and it makes me so happy to see artists actually be able to utilize this NFT technology. And it's kind of similar to Bitcoin. Bitcoin allows you to own your own money and NFTS allow you to own your own work. I think it's amazing. I'm super happy for her and I'm very excited for the music men in the future when it comes to NFTS, that's good stuff. Now, that's a good take. I think the creator economy use case for NFTS is still very relevant and I hope this sort of article helps people sort of uh open their eyes again to the promise of what some of this stuff can be. Right? Uh As Wendy mentioned is about direct relationships with your fan base, direct ownership of that relationship and cool and engaging ways to interact with that fan base that you can't really do with existing bus, uh music business models. So I think grimes again, very, she's a futurist at heart, right? She's always sort of thinking on the cutting edge of technology as seen in her embrace of A I and other things. So the fact that she was able to jump on this early and really use it in a way that was true to her brand, I think ultimately sort of is why, why it was likely successful, right? You saw a lot of people, I think at the height of NFT mania rushing in, it didn't feel right. It, it felt clunky, it was kind of a ham fisted attempt to get in on this new cash grab. But for people like grimes where I think the artist was in line with the technology and what this technology enabled, um, it is cool to see that there was actual, uh gains that quote, you know, changed her life, right. So um to see this play out, I think should open again. Uh People's eyes to the case for a web three power creator economy, whether that's music, Nfts, whether that's uh fan engagement, you name it. Um I think there is a lot of there there that unfortunately got sort of subsumed by the hype and left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouth. So the idea that a is out here talking about this, I think again, suggests that maybe there's some better version of what we saw last time where this clicks at a bigger scale. I just have to chime in really quick and say like this is a, this is an evolving technology like NFTS are still very much in beta. And again, Bitcoin is still very much in beta. In my personal opinion. I feel like it's gonna take a lot of work probably the next 10 years, next 5 to 10 years, we'll see a lot of progress with NFTS. But again, like we're, we're merging over from this world where people relied on um record labels and, and managers and all these things to do things for them. And now we have this amazing tool called social media, where people can actually promote themselves and connect with their audience themselves. And now we have nfts that kind of bring in the aspect of, you know, not needing a manager, not needing a record label going viral on the internet and then actually being able to own your content, being able to piece that piece it out and sell it however you seem or however you think or you're comfortable with. So, again, we're still super early, I think that we will make it happen. But all these 10,000 generative, um, profile pictures, all this crap, it's just a bunch of crap. That's what it is. And it's very similar to, um, meme coins and all that stuff. But again, we're operating in a true decentralized economy and pretty much anything goes. I love it, Wendy, you said exactly what I was gonna say way more in a much more articulate way. I think NFTS are the, are part of the natural evolution of the creator economy. And I love that grimes is out here talking about this, especially as we have writers and actors who are out protesting these business models that have kind of preyed on creators for so long. And so I think that this is awesome and I think that despite trading volumes being low, there are people who are building things that are gonna make this really easy for creators, for musicians, for artists to build projects that are going to allow them to own their content and they're gonna allow them to build businesses and market that uh market the those NF DS and that content. And so I think it's cool and I can't wait for the next bull cycle because I think some of those projects are gonna come to life and we're gonna see some really cool stuff happen.