The NFT market is growing with several companies filing trademark filings to enter the NFT space. The latest commercial giant to file a trademark application is Sony Music Entertainment.
The trademark application was deposit with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on August 30. Additionally, the app mentions a suite of products it intends to authenticate using NFTs under the Columbia Records logo.
Albums, videos and more
The application covers a wide range of aspects, such as music promotion, artist advertising and audio/video recordings. It also includes illustrations related to live musical performances that are authenticated by NFTs.
This may be the first NFT project directly tied to Sony Music, but the music giant has been on other similar projects as well. In August 2021, Sony Music backed the NFT MakersPlace marketplace and raised $30 million from investors, such as Pantera Capital and Coinbase.
In March 2022, Sony Music partnered with Solana Snowcrash-based NFT Marketplace and fellow music label Universal Music Group. The result of this partnership was the Release from an NFT collection featuring Bob Dylan and Miles Davis.
Web3 and the music industry
Earlier this year, Universal Music Group dropped a subtle hint of its Web3 ambitions when it purchased Bored Ape #5537 for $360,817.
The monkey was acquired to lead a digital band called Kingship which was founded by Universal’s 10:22PM label. The label added that the digital group will produce music and offer virtual performances in the metaverse.
Additionally, popular hip-hop artists and BAYC holders Eminem and Snoop Dogg performed at the MTV Video Music Awards in August 2022. Interestingly, this performance featured the artists performing as their NFT alter egos in the metaverse.
The event also featured other virtual performances. The fact that MTV has introduced a brand new award category, Best Metaverse Performance, shows the influence of Web3 on the music industry.
Earlier this week, the Web3 Yellowheart music market announcement the first NFT music streaming player. Yellowheart also released the first ever album NFT in collaboration with Kings of Leon. The music market has also worked with popular artists such as ZHU and Maroon 5.
Bringing art to life with NFTs
Another use case the industry has pioneered is grants to classical artists. Living Opera is a web3 group that harnesses the power of blockchain to provide short-term revenue and liquidity to artists by issuing genre-related NFTs.
Given the declining interest in opera, Living Opera COO Christos Makridis hopes to bring attention to the art using NFTs. All this, while connecting philanthropists to artists.
