How could RMRK NFTs disrupt the music industry?

6 min readOct 30, 2022

The current system of how the music industry works relies on trust and has many flaws. New and emerging artists struggle to get their fair share and proper credit.

This article focuses on the problems faced by emerging artists and how RMRK NFTs could potentially fix them.

Problem 1: Verifiable credits

Any artist’s contribution could be used (knowingly or unknowingly) by big production houses without giving credit. In this case, the only thing an artist could do is use social media to draw attention to the issue.

Another thing he could do is file a lawsuit, but again, this requires good capital, which an emerging artist might not have. It is also possible that they forgot to mention someone’s contribution.

Problem 2: Earnings and royalties

Another problem artists face is that their contributions are not rewarded fairly. Once the contract with a label has been signed, there is no way to get rewarded if his song gets a super hit or goes viral besides the initial payment.

And the money earned through the sales is not shared with the artists. There are times when artists have to perform for free for the sake of getting recognition. Kayne West recently exposed the dark side of the music industry that how signing a contract could mean signing away your rights.

Problem 3: Production and distribution

Emerging artists don’t have enough capital to produce their songs, so they approach labels for funding, but the contract can sometimes become a trap for the artists.

After the song or video is ready, it now has to be distributed in several media formats across several platforms. This requires huge capital and emerging artists many times are unable to bear the costs, forcing them to stick to fewer platforms.

Again, the platform could charge as much as a 30% commission on the revenue generated by the song. And to keep your song on the platform, you have to pay a recurring fee indefinitely.

The industry is corrupted so much that the real talent is struggling to thrive. A report by the musician union presents some shocking data:

65% of musicians are facing financial hardship
47% of musicians have taken jobs outside the industry
34% are considering leaving the industry
37% are not sure of their futures.

Lack of credit for their contributions and the struggle to receive their fair share are the major problems faced by all emerging artists today. There should be a robust system that fixes this major issue.

But hopefully, there is a robust solution to the problem-the RMRK NFT Standard.

RMRK overview

RMRK NFT standard is a set of six NFT legos, which when combined allow creators to build a system of infinite complexity. The NFT legos are standalone, meaning they can be used individually and, when combined, can create complex systems.

RMRK NFT standard was born in the Kusama blockchain but now with its substrate pallets and EVM contracts, it is branching out to other Substrate and EVM chains like Astar Network, Ethereum, and many more.

The NFT legos are as follows:

Nested NFTs: allow NFTs to be owned by other NFTs and not just wallet addresses
Multi-resource NFTs: allow NFTs to show different output based on where it is being loaded
Equippable NFTs: allow an NFT to equip the owned NFT to gain additional functionality
On-chain Emotes: allows you to send an emote to any RMRK NFT that will help in price discovery with on-chain reputation
NFTs as DAOs: allows NFTs to be governed as DAOs by fractionalizing them into fungible tokens
Conditional Rendering: allows NFTs the ability to change or render their client-side output based on certain on-chain or off-chain conditions.

More about the RMRK NFT standard is in this article. Alright, so this was an overview of the RMRK standard. Now let’s discuss how it could revolutionize the music industry and solve the serious problems outlined above.

Solution 1: Nested NFTs

NFTs ensure verifiable ownership. The artist’s song or video will be assigned a token id verifiable on the blockchain. Thus, if any label or organization uses the song, the ownership would be visible on a public ledger. This ensures proper credits are ensured.

RMRK takes it to the next level with “nested NFTs”. Imagine for a motivational song, Kanye wrote the lyrics, Snoop Dogg composed the music, and Gary Vee performed in the song video. We can have lyricNFT, musicNFT, and performanceNFT.

With the RMRK Nested NFT lego, the lyricNFT, musicNFT, and performanceNFT could be nested in the main songNFT. Thus, the main songNFT now contains multiple NFTs which showcase the contributions of all involved artists, and the contribution is verifiable on the blockchain.

Solution 2: Nested Royalties

Imagine a song with 4 verses, and each verse is composed by a different songwriter. Now, the single verseNFTs can be nested inside the main songNFT. And each time the songNFT is traded, all 4 songwriters get royalties for their contributions.

This concept is known as “nested royalties” and was recently implemented in the RMRK Singular Marketplace.

In the example given in solution 1, the lyricNFT, musicNFT, and performanceNFT could be nested into the parent songNFT. And every time this songNFT gets traded, all the respective creators get royalties.

This ensures all the contributors will receive their fair royalties in a trustless manner, and their work can be verified on the blockchain, which is immutable by nature.

Solution 3: Multi-resource NFTs

To raise funds, the artist can mint several NFTs. A portion of the revenue generated from the song will be distributed among the NFT holders. This eliminates the need for labels and directly connects the artists with their audience.

For distribution, we can utilize the RMRK Multi-resource NFT lego. The RMRK Multi-resource NFT lego allows NFTs to have multiple resources as a part of the main NFT. An NFT can be an image, video, audio, or a pdf, depending on the context it’s being loaded into.

The above songNFT will display a pdf file on Kindle, play the audio track on Spotify, and play the whole video song when loaded into a video player. Remember, all these resources are a part of the main NFT.

This way, the artist only needs to mint the multi-resource NFT once, and then it can be distributed or traded without additional expenditure. Additionally keep generating royalties.

Conclusion

The RMRK standard allows creators to build the most advanced NFTs, which can disrupt almost any industry. RMRK NFT legos allow builders to be very creative and solve the flaws of general erc721 and erc1155 NFTs.

This is how the RMRK standard fixes the potential problems of the music industry and ensures our talented artists are rewarded properly. And remember, we used just 2 of the 6 RMRK NFT legos. Imagine what we could achieve if we combined other legos as well.