Identify Your Needs
Embarking on the NFT journey starts with a clear understanding of what you’re looking for in a marketplace. Consider the following:
Audience Reach & Community Engagement
Do you aim for a global audience or a specific niche? Is a vibrant community essential for your growth?
Ease-of-Use
Are you looking for a platform with a straightforward, user-friendly interface that simplifies the creation and sale of NFTs? A user-friendly platform can significantly enhance the way your fans interact with and purchase your NFTs (e.g. debit/credit card payment possible).
Expected Revenue & Collaboration:
How high are your chances to sell on the platform? Do other creators have sales on the platform? How high are platform fees and royalties on secondary sales? Can you split revenues with other creators when collaborating?
Control
How much autonomy do you want over pricing, minting, and distribution of your NFTs? Does the platform have robust security measures to protect your creations?
Marketing Support
Is the marketplace supporting the artists to get more visibility and reach a wider audience?
Looking into the marketplaces and defining your priorities across the above dimensions will lead you to a marketplace that resonates with your artistic and financial aspirations. Obviously, understanding which marketplace would be the best fit for you, would demand much research and therefore much of your time. That’s why we give you our top music NFT marketplaces in short and why you might want to try them out.
Popular Music NFT Marketplaces
Several platforms stand out with their features and services tailored to artists:
Sound.xyz
Sound.xyz is known for its artist-friendly ecosystem and works entirely without cryptocurrencies if you want to create your first NFTs. Sound.xyz emphasizes artist engagement and community building, ideal for those seeking close fan interaction. It is a music-only NFT Marketplace and open to everyone. Sound.xyz is very easy-to-use and backed by known investors. Sound is also holding twitter spaces for artists to present their work, which might be an opportunity for you to jump on. Pieces are offered for smaller prices so don’t expect huge returns but definitely some first collectors of your music.
Gala Music
A decentralized, music-only platform that promotes artist autonomy and fan engagement through a variety of features and its own cryptocurrency. To get on the platforms, you must first apply. Gala works with major artists such as Snoop Dogg, which expresses its credibility in the NFT space.
Zora
A permissionless NFT marketplace, offering artists full control over their sales and distribution. Primarily focused on visual art, it also hosts music NFTs. Zora is ideal for artists seeking flexibility and autonomy. While its UI is less intuitive and lacks visibility for artists, it embodies the spirit of Web3 by granting complete content control. Zora also supports video content with a high upload limit of 5 GB.
Foundation
Foundation offers many options for creating NFTs and is very well known in the NFT sector. On Foundation, you will mainly find more exclusive art, i.e. smaller editions at higher prices, which is also due to the fact that a large proportion is still minted on the costly Ethereum blockchain. Both Zora and Foundation are primarily good platforms for art, animations and videos.
Exchange Art
Exchange Art is an NFT platform that specializes primarily in high-quality art NFTs, but music NFTs can also be created on it. Similar to Zora and Foundation, as a musician, selling cover artwork or audio-visual animations as NFTs on Exchange Art is a great option. However, we would use the Solana blockchain here, as the Solana community on Exchange Art seems to be stronger than its Ethereum counterpart. In addition, there are fewer transaction costs on the Solana blockchain.
OBJKT
OBJKT operates on the Tezos blockchain and is a very good alternative to the more common marketplaces on Ethereum as it provides the artists with an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution. It gives them control over their content and the chance to find potential buyers to build up a first community. OBJKT is probably not the best tool to make a lot of money in a short time, but certainly to get some first collectors in the Web3 space. The big plus about OBJKT is its vibrant community that still seems very active despite the market crash. The downside is that you have to use the Tezos network and its currency, which is not the most common one in the space.
As you can see, there are a lot of different options out there. For now, we recommend our artists to use Sound.xyz when creating their first Music NFT as it is the most straightforward and easy.to-use solution. Sound.xyz will give you a good chance to get some first collectors without the need of owning cryptocurrencies in the beginning.
Once you’ve created your NFTs, you can embed them anywhere on the web to reach potential collectors. Use both traditional tools like your website or social media channels, but also venture into new territories and connect with curators on NFT platforms or spotlight your NFTs in virtual galleries in the Metaverse.
Join CWXP and Sell your own Music NFTs
CWXP is a project co-funded by the European Union (Creative Europe), led by gigmit in partnership with Plus Render and Kontentwerk. As a gigmit artist, we give you the opportunity to sell your music NFTs in a metaverse we designed for creators: cwxp.io.
Sign up as an Artist on gigmit (it’s free!) and apply to the following calls (all artists have a chance to get booked):
Sounds interesting? Check out our latest blogs and workshops:
Blogs:
- An Essential Guide to Creating Music NFTs
- What is the Metaverse & Why Join as a Musician?
- 3 First Names Announced for CWXP Metaverse Events
- Navigating the CWXP Metaverse Space: A Guide for Artists
Workshop(s):
