The billion-dollar music industry is undergoing a major transition as artists begin to understand the potential of owning their work through nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Ashanti, the multi-platinum-selling singer, actress and co-founder of EQ Exchange — a women-led Web3 platform — recently shed light on this during a Cotton Candy Records meetup that took place on June 20 in New York.
Speaking on a panel alongside Janice Taylor, founder and CEO of EQ Exchange, Ashanti went into detail about how important ownership is for creators today. Drawing from personal experience, Ashanti said:
“It is incredibly important to continue the narrative that owning is the way to go. Who wants to wake up and pour their heart, blood, sweat and tears into a project and have someone else next to you reap all the benefits while you do all the work? That was the way my contract was set up years ago, but now I have the right 20 years later to go in and re-record and own new masters of my first album.”
Why owning is important for creators
Ashanti told Cointelegraph that the process of creating an album prior to Web3 and the launch of music NFTs was very “disheartening,” noting that an artist would sign a record deal and create an album that would then sell for about $15. “Out of that amount, an artist would only receive about $0.38, which was on the high-end,” the R&B legend said. Once Ashanti began to realize that this was a common process, she started looking into alternative ways to own her intellectual property.
On March 25, 2022, almost 20 years after her debut album was released, Ashanti formed a partnership with EQ Exchange, making her the first Black female artist to co-found a Web3 company. Following this, Ashanti released an NFT collection with EQ Exchange on April 6, 2022, which launched on the artist’s 20-year anniversary of her first album titled Ashanti. According to Taylor, Ashanti sold her first five NFTs in minutes. While impressive, Ashanti noted that the underlying message behind music NFTs is “that owning your work is so important.”
In addition to ownership, Ashanti explained that her NFT collection is meant to benefit her fans in a number of ways. “Fans will receive exclusive rights to hear my music first, meaning they get to own the music as well. They will also…
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