See Crypto Lawyers NFTs as a way to reinvigorate music ownership in the streaming age, and start-up Vault is taking a particularly unique approach: using limited edition live concert recordings to recreate the classic concept of “cassette culture”, and potentially benefiting indie artists in the process.
Starting this week, Vault’s “Cassette Culture 3.0” initiative will offer weekly drops of live recordings from underground and independent bands via the Solana-based NFT music platform. It was designed to recall bands’ approach to amateur recording and distribution via cassette tapes to build a following.
As it stands, 10 live recordings from bands performing at iconic New York venues including Baby’s All Right, Bowery Electric and The Brooklyn Monarch are available to purchase as NFT music albums, with over 30 other artists already featured. are confirmed. Artists such as Sid Simons, Sum Sun and Charlotte Rose Benjamin are part of the first line-up.
Today we launch Cassette Culture 3.0, featuring exclusive live concert performances we’ve recorded from emerging musicians and bands in New York City’s most iconic venues, including Bowery Electric, The Bitter End, Baby’s All Right, Mercury Lounge and many more.
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— Vault Music (@vaultmusichq) August 2, 2023
Owners can listen to the live albums through a dedicated mobile app. Typically, Vault sells each live album for between $5 and $10, with only 100 or 150 editions available for each drop so far. Fans can purchase them with crypto or credit card, as well as access other features including performance videos and behind-the-scenes content.
Artists receive 70% of the proceeds from each sale, with Vault covering coin costs, storage, and credit card fees. Vault also takes care of the actual recording and mixing of the live performance. The program will then be expanded to Nashville and the company is also in talks with locations in London and Amsterdam.
“There is a great appetite among music fans to learn more about these grassroots scenes,” said Nigel Eccles, CEO of Vault. Decrypt. “Many of these bands approach it from a different angle [than] many TikTok artists. They don’t have many followers on Spotify or Instagram, but they can sell tickets in New York. Spotify doesn’t serve these bands or movements, but we do.”
It comes as a new wave of bands focusing on building a live reputation before formally releasing music on streaming platforms. The London-based act The last dinnerfor example, garnered tens of thousands of YouTube views on concert videos created by fans, while live sessions filmed by Audiotree and NPR regularly reached thousands of people.
Indie pop band from Brooklyn Middle piece had a recent performance at Bowery Ballroom recorded by Vault for an upcoming Cassette Culture 3.0 release.
“The main thing I hope for is that fans can gather a moment in time for Middle Part,” said the band’s vocalist Andrew Selkōw. Decrypt. “I’m excited to give fans the opportunity to experience our music digitally beyond our studio recordings.”
While some prominent artists sell music NFTs through other platforms or methods including Snoop Dogg, Justin “3LAU” BlueAnd André “RAC” Anjos– are vocal proponents of crypto and blockchain technology, that is not the case for Selkōw. He’s just excited about another chance to get Middle Part’s music out there.
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“Personally, I don’t care about NFTs or the money, but I appreciate what Vault does,” he added. “Lighting up a scene, with the ability to raise some capital and do it all for free, is really big for an indie scene that’s otherwise pretty widely ignored.”
Elsewhere, the continued vinyl Vault resurgence has shown that fans care about music ownership, despite the plethora of content provided by streaming subscription giants like Spotify and Apple Music.
Blockchain builders see NFTs as a way to showcase true digital property for fans and collectors, fueling interest in emerging platforms, including Sound, an Ethereum-focused NFT music platform that recently raised $20 million.
“The number one thing fans want from a band is access to music,” says Vault’s Eccles. “These unique recordings will not be available anywhere else and fans will own them forever.”
Vault has previously worked with high-profile artists such as Fletcher on NFTs around her “Girl Of My Dreams” tour, but Cassette Culture 3.0 focuses on independent and underground artists. Many lesser-known artists make a pittance from streaming royalties and typically rely on live shows to make a living – a situation that was recently threatened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That’s key for us,” Eccles explains of the program’s indie-centric approach. “They are the artists who need it the most. Twenty years ago with CDs, many more artists could have full-time careers just selling music. That’s just not true today because streaming kind of sucks to them. It only really works for the superstars.”
“We wanted to focus on the independent and underground artists because that’s who we can influence the most,” he continued. “It may only be a few thousand dollars, but actually — for many of these artists — that’s more than they’ve ever made from streaming.”
Cassette Culture 3.0 is influenced by the international music scene that flourished from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, where DIY musicians created tapes of home recordings to fund their careers. That ethos continued through online platforms like SoundCloud and MySpace into the 2000s, but artists couldn’t easily monetize their home recordings in the same way.
For the project, Vault has put together a lineup of bands that Vault believes are representative of just how exciting grassroots music scenes are, but bands can also apply for the project. Eccles also hopes to include more genres over time and sees the project as a way to potentially help artists break through and sustain themselves.
“This will not replace streaming, but we want to complement it,” said Eccles. “We want to give fans the opportunity to collect unique pieces, and we want artists to be able to live off their music.”
