Who would have ever guessed that music and the blockchain could go so well together? Warner Music Group, the company behind major music stars like Cardi B and Ed Sheeran, has invested more than $11 million in Dapper Labs.
Warner Music and Dapper Labs: A Perfect Match?
Warner Music first became interested in the company following its introduction of Crypto Kitties in 2017, a popular cryptocurrency-based game that allows players to “breed” digital cats. Warner senior vice president Jeff Bronikowski believes that the same technology behind Crypto Kitties can be put to good use when it comes to building merchandise for many of the world’s biggest singing stars.
Both ventures are now working to build a different kind of blockchain called Flow, which will allegedly be able to handle tens of thousands more transactions than even Ethereum, a blockchain that has allegedly become saturated and unscalable in recent months. Bronikowski comments:
The main goal is to create new avenues where the fans of our artists can explore their fandom and engage with the artists in new and different ways that they haven’t done before.
The vice president says that things are very different from when he was young when it comes to how people express their love of music and certain musicians. He says:
When I was in college, you’d walk into someone’s room and you’d see 200 CDs and you would say, ‘That guy’s a big music fan.’ And now you just see somebody with a music subscription service and some playlists. We think that as people spend more time crafting their persona in the digital realm, digital goods and collectibles is a great way to express that fandom.
Aside from Flow, the company is also exploring new ways in which the blockchain can be utilized so that fans can tip their favorite artists. Warner is also testing two separate blockchain platforms designed to allow singers and musicians to connect with their fans without intermediary distributors. Once again, blockchain technology is exploring the destruction of the “middle-man” industry and connecting two parties without the need of a third party.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, Dapper Labs initially started out as a means of testing the benefits of non-fungible tokens, which executives claim can be utilized to represent a “wide range of assets.”
Exploring New Blockchain Uses
NonFungible.com president Daniel Kelly was complimentary towards Dapper Labs’ goals, and believes non-fungible tokens represent several new waves of asset building in the coming future. He comments:
Non-fungible tokens will become the underpinnings for provenance of several real-world assets. For example, artwork copyright, the deed to your home, the certificate of authenticity for your wedding rings or your university diploma would all be prime candidates of non-fungible tokenization.
