UMEK Drops The First Ever Live Gig NFT On The Blockparty Marketplace
Over the last year, the music and art world has been buzzing about NFTs. Non Fungible Tokens are digital assets that are stored on the Ethereum blockchain. What makes them different from other crypto is that they aren’t mutually interchangeable. When you trade one ETH for one ETH, you've traded something identical. NFT’s are unique and cannot be replicated.
Musicians and visual artists have turned to NFTs in the wake of the pandemic to provide a more reliable way to generate income. Dance music, in particular, has been quick to adopt the model with notable NFT drops from 3LAU, Steve Aoki, Don Diablo, and Gareth Emery generating massive gains in revenue. And for the holder of the NFT, they have an exclusive piece of fandom.
Slovenian techno DJ and producer UMEK has spent the last few years entrenched in the crypto world. In 2017 He co-founded Viberate, a music research and analytics platform powered by blockchain technology. When he first heard chatter about NFT’s he knew he needed to learn more.
“As soon as the headlines discussing NFTs started popping up a couple of months ago, I went to check out some of the digital art projects, and it just clicked immediately. It’s one of those things you understand as an electronic producer. You’re in the studio all day, experimenting with software, gadgets, and ideas, so you get how NFTs are a way of creating art. Maybe that’s why Electronic artists are the frontrunners of the current NFT space. The entire concept of digital art is completely natural to us. And I love how flexible digital art is. It takes up way less physical space than 'classical' art, so it’s also quite handy if you’re a collector."
A self-professed tech-nerd UMEK wants to push the envelope on NFTs beyond collectibles. He told us, “I want to do something that’s never been done before. I want to give my fans and the fans of electronic music worldwide something that will stop them in their tracks, excite them, and hopefully make their jaws drop.”
On April 29, 2021, he intends to test this concept by dropping the first-ever live event NFT. The bidding will be open for 24 hours on the Blockparty marketplace. There will be five NFTs available. Two will be live experiences. An exclusive live stream event, and an exclusive live show. This is the first time any artist has used an NFT as a way to book a performance.
The remaining three NFTs are for exclusive remixes of UMEK’s breakthrough 1999 hit “Lanicor.” It’s a song that’s close to his heart, as it was the one that introduced many in dance music to his trademark sound. He says, “It’s a track that helped my career get to where it’s at today, so with NFTs I finally had the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to it, and create a true collectible.”
As for his future plans with NFTs, he said, “My team and I are using the April 29 drop as a proof of concept. If it works, and the industry shows interest, Viberate will start working on ways to provide the option of gig token minting. We’ll offer that to nearly half a million music artists in Viberate’s database, along with minting artist ID NFTs through a secure verification process, and combining them with powerful data analytics for better insights.”