If you don’t know by now what an NFT is, you shouldn’t worry. After all, many of those who spend money on these virtual tokens don’t know it either. NFT Music Stream is proof of this: a service that I didn’t even sell Really NFTs, nor did it fulfill the main promise of the platform. According to its creators, this business came to impart justice within the music industry. However, the thing has remained in a shabby scam for both customers and artists.
The music industry is unfair. NFTs are NOT going to fix it
We know. The music industry it is tremendously unfair to artists. The platforms are usurers and the producers are abusive. Of all the cake, your favorite creators usually taste the crumbs. And there are not a few artists who have tried to deal with industry without much success. There must be a reason.
And this is where our friends the NFTs come in. In addition to photos of monkeys, Cryptopunks and Golems by WillyRex, non-fungible tokens have also come to save music. Yes, in its own way. The two most notorious cases of NFT and music are already officially cataloged as scams.
Two cases, two puffs
The first case occurred earlier this month. The RIIA (the American SGAE, so that we understand each other), sent a cease and desist letter to HitPiece.com. The site was dedicated to sell NFT products associated with artists. According to the RIIA, it was all a lie. It was about a fraudulent business where fake products were being sold to unsuspecting poor people who thought to make easy money by reselling and speculating with NFTs.
But the thing does not stop there. Shortly after, the service NFT Music Stream has surpassed that case. Officially, it was an efficient, transparent and committed platform with artists, distributors and record companies to create a fairer business model. The artists would receive in cryptocurrencies the money from the subscriptions of the clients who would interact through Streamer.fm. The goal of NFT Music Stream? Cut out the middle man.
Everything sounds great until the composer Kerry Muzzey discovered that his plays They were uploads to the platform without your permission. Going to the company’s Twitter account and complaining, Kerry was blocked. He himself, along with several colleagues, drafted a cease and desist letter. They also discovered that the NFT Music Stream White Paper was barely six pages long.
— Kerry Muzzey (@kerrymuzzey) February 9, 2022
NFT Music Stream steals content from YouTube Music
After intensive investigation, they concluded that NFT Music Stream did not contain music. The songs and illustrations that they were providing to their clients actually come from YouTube Music. That is, NFT Music Stream was paying a monthly membership to Google and streaming the content to its customers. No trace of the payments to the artists that they bragged about so much, nor of the NFTs, which, in this case, the term has only served to capture some other clueless by the network.
Even so, NFT Music Stream has responded by playing the victim. They believe that the current model makes them lose money, and they continue to try to mislead the public by saying that their goal is to remunerate artists with 98% of subscriptions. However, this has not softened David C Lowery, composer and activist for the rights of musicians. The Georgian is organizing a class action lawsuit against NFT Music Stream, as his works have also been uploaded to Streamer.fm without his permission.
What conclusions do we draw from all this?
The future of video games, the future of music, the future of graphic artists… NFTs are the future of everything, but every day are used precisely to destroy the work of artists. We have no doubt that sensible and well-intentioned NFT projects exist. But unfortunately, the ones that come to light simply use the acronym ‘NFT’ to organize scams.
Still, in this case, the alleged scam could be seen coming. just watching the land page of the service, which uses only photos of female DJs, reading the road map and the promises, it was already more than enough to suspect that he smelled singe.
