Given, then, that I believe NFTs are worth exploring further:
How might a musician make money and/or build a community with them?
There are a number of resources to help musicians to get started with NFTs.
I talk about OpenSea, which describes itself as “the world’s first and largest NFT marketplace” in this post.
And below on this page I discuss two others:
- Shopify
- MetaMask
I also explain the nature wallets in this post, while you will also need to understand how to go about creating
Shopify
Let’s have a look at Shopify, which you may have heard of.
In simple terms, Shopify describes itself as:
Subscription-based software that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products.
Shopify store owners can also sell in physical locations using Shopify POS, our point-of-sale app and accompanying hardware.
If you’re a Shopify merchant with both an online and physical presence, your inventory and stock get synced so you can manage your store(s) from one account, on any device.
But how or where does Shopify become relevant to NFTs?
Firstly, users are able to mint and sell their own branded NFTs with Shopify and Shopify payments.
The NFT space is rapidly growing, so using an opportunity like this can be a game-changer. Shopify will bring NFTs more and more to the mainstream.
Secondly, Shopify Plus, an exclusive beta programme and the higher-tier Shopify plan, is aimed at well-established brands and merchants. It costs about $2,000 a month and provides a great opportunity for such brands to not only create revenue but also to build prodigious communities around their brand.
Now I’ve explained our first resource, let’s move on to the next:
MetaMask
Before explaining MetaMask, we need to understand wallets and how they work.
It’s compulsory to own a wallet in order to participate in this emerging space. Wallets are a physical or digital repository that store sets of private and public keys. They are used to communicate with the blockchain. Keys allow you to access a certain location in the blockchain where your assets are stored.
Many people are confused by this.
Many people believe cryptocurrency and NFTs are actually stored in wallets but this is not the case. A wallet is used to access digital assets, not hold them. The assets themselves are always located on and managed by the blockchain.
This means a wallet is used to track ownership, so whoever owns the keys, controls the assets. Without keys, you don’t have access.
MetaMask, the most popular NFT wallet, is used to communicate with the Ethereum blockchain for minting and trading. Without a wallet, you’re unable to use this application.
MetaMask is a browser extension designed to make accessing the Ethereum platform easier. It also serves as a wallet for holding Ethereum and Ethereum-based tokens (such as ERC-20).
MetaMask allows users to access decentralised applications, websites and other protocols built on cryptocurrency blockchains.
Before MetaMask was around, you had to provide the private keys to your crypto wallet to interact with dapps (decentralised applications), which isn’t very safe. MetaMask makes it possible for these dapps to ask for permission to access your fund’s wallet without giving them your private key. It’s also a shield to help protect users against hackers and data collectors trying to steal data and valuables.
What do these resources have in common? Community.
With community access, brands selling art can build fan relationships, and with strong relationships comes the opportunity to generate more revenue because it’s easier to sell more to the same people than it is to sell new things to new people (which is why email has thrived as an internet marketing tool for decades).
An NFT community offering many benefits is Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). Through hosted events, BAYC also offers artists real-world access to the community. Owning a Bored Ape NFT is almost like having an all-access pass to a wide range of features.
“Bored Ape owners,” writes Manas Sen Gupta, “including celebrities, become members and get special privileges such as access to an exclusive Discord server and ‘The Bathroom’, a digital area acting as a collaborative graffiti board.
“Club members are also rewarded with free NFTs from the same stables, which can be resold. So, it is like a gated online community of ape owners with special rights. You can even call them members of an exclusive art appreciation society.”
The BAYC community holds a collection of 10,000 unique ape NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.