Current Trends in Web3 Music

“Overpriced JPEGs” has become a popular meme that has been leveraged extensively to help NFTs capture more mindshare. Using this tongue-in-cheek term to abstract away the complexities of NFTs has demystified their unique value proposition, but at the same time, it has oversimplified their versatility by narrowing down the plethora of potential use cases to the area of art. Financial applications, physical-backed tokens, and decentralized naming systems have all arisen from the unique characteristics of NFTs.

By the same token, the music industry has been a poster child for frequent technological disruption. Being notorious for its colossal army of middlemen, it theoretically constitutes an ideal target for NFT-based solutions that re-empower creators. To get a sense of the current state of music NFTs, this research piece provides an overview of nascent protocols in this vertical and examines their adoption.