The Ledger is a weekly newsletter about the economics of the music business sent to Billboard Pro subscribers. An abbreviated version of the newsletter is published online. It seems everybody is getting — or wants to get — in on the NFT business. It’s reminiscent of the late ’90s when companies rushed to launch websites because, well, there was money to be made and everybody else was doing it. Many companies stumbled out of the gate, but the internet turned out to be a pretty good business opportunity. The jury is still out on NFTs but there’s obvious potential. It’s no surprise that people spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on digital tokens that confer rights to anything from digital art to fan club-like perks. Some fans spend dearly to support their favorite artists. And with NFTs, ...
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HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Jerritt Clark / Getty This is definitely one thing Soulja Boy won’t boast about being the first to do if this news turns out to be true. Spotted on Complex, per Classaction.org, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, and Jake Paul are being sued for allegedly being involved in a pump and dump cryptocurrency scheme meant to fatten the pockets of SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony and other top-level executives. According to the lawsuit, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty, Paul, Nick Carter, and YouTuber, Ben Phillips were used by the company to help promote SafeMoon and increase the number of investors for tokens. Their cosigns helped increase the value of the tokens, with misleading statements promising investors giving them the impression that better things were on the horizon. The s...
After sparking music industry outrage over a plan to auction an NFT for every song in the world — without first securing rights holders’ permission — NFT platform HitPiece now reaching out to artists’ teams in hopes of forging official partnerships. Co-founder Rory Felton also tells Billboard the company has hired Gary Greenstein of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati “to represent the company in discussions with rights owners and to advise HitPiece on legal matters.” After HitPiece’s beta launch in caught the industry’s attention in February for pulling artwork and other information off of Spotify without artists’ permission, the backlash caused Felton’s company to pull its site offline. Days later, the RIAA — on behalf of the major labels — threatened a lawsuit against HitPiece and...