First of all, let me start by saying that I’m not a “Journalist.” I’m a Blockchain Evangelical. And I’m here for my people and our culture. Idgaf who you are or what you’re promising on the back end, we kick the tires and check under the hood of every project. Calling balls and strikes and keeping it a buck with the NFT/Crypto community. Now that we’ve got that out of the way let’s talk about the elephant in the room.
Tory Lanez is suspected of going platinum in 57 seconds.
Uhm yeah, that’s it, that’s all I can say for sure about this drop. They say he sold x amount of tokens which grant access to some kind of blockchain Spotify/YouTube type platform where you can stream this music exclusively. I have so many problems with this drop, and I’m not getting paid enough to do this to list every single issue I had. Still, I will say that not being able to get a straight answer on how many unique wallet addresses were used in the sale and the total lack of transparency in the way the platform moves have dashed almost all of the hopes I had for it when I initially heard about the release. After spending 2-3 hours grilling a high up from the platform who will remain nameless, the conclusion I came to was that there’s just nothing here to be excited about from an independent artist’s perspective or as an NFT artist.
Ok, cool, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’d like to say that Tory Lanez and everyone involved should take a bow. Because he’s probably done more to onboard people that look like him into the crypto-NFT space than anyone, period. Kudos to you bro, get ya bag; I ain’t mad.
What I will say is the drop is more significant than the dropper. It’s not about Tory anymore; it’s about NFT’s. The nature of this drop only concerns those of us native to the NFT community. On Reddit, the usual wishful thinking and speculative analysis are going on. IRL, more and more people are researching NFT’s every day, discovering not only this drop but how hot the market is overall. And for the layperson just finding out about NFTs, it’s a cool and innovative product from a familiar face. Whether or not cancel culture and a backlash to it played a part in the success of this NFT is not only impossible to quantify, it’s irrelevant.
Nobody cares. All they care about is the bag. That million dollars he keeps telling them they get to make something off of. Cool, I appreciate you spotlighting elements of Decentralized Finance and screaming from the rooftops that the NFTs are the future. I can’t knock it since It’s my calling in life. But like I’ve said before and I will say again: the ethos of this community is grounded in transparency and immutability. And this ain’t that.
Now whatever this is will shake itself out in the secondary market- which is set to open up on the 24th of August, if the demand is there and the tech is sound we will come back here to the blockchain pulpit and sing their praises till the cows come home. But if they think that we’re gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe again, guess who’s got another thing coming. Either way, I’ll be back with a follow-up to this story in a few days.
“The NFT World takes all of the knowledge, information, and experiences we have from every industry and flips it on its head by adding layers of true transparency while providing an opportunity of maintaining anonymity.
While this poses great problems and solutions, in the case of Tory’s Album, it’s a problem — because there’s no proof or receipts. Not to mention being hosted on a standalone, seemingly fly-by-night platform that any middle schooler who knows even basic web design, HTML, and/or CSS could produce.
There’s no mnemonic code to keep your wallet safe and secure; you don’t own the actual copyright to the music. The list goes on and on. Having worked in the music industry for a decade-plus. I’ve seen my fair share of lipstick on a pig, smoke in mirror rollouts alongside labels & individuals buying their own records to inflate the image and perpetuate the lie of popularity/interest in a specific project, brand, or product. This is no different, and I feel like watching how the money moves would show us how fugazi this whole drop was.
If you want a Case Study of What Not To Do in the NFT space,
this is your poster child.” — Eric Spivak / Motivate
