How Harris Cole Is Breaking Into The NFT Space [Interview]
As we’re closing in at one full year after NFTs truly received mainstream attention, it’s becoming more and more apparent that artists and musicians around the world are finding new ways to monetize their music while providing value to their audience, without relying solely on ever-decreasing royalty rates and other forms of centralized monetization.
Though still unexplored by many artists, the world of NFTs is arguably a place of incredible opportunity. Whether that’s through general-purpose platforms like OpenSea, Rarible or Foundation, or more niche, music-focused marketplaces like Catalog or Zora, musicians are finding ways to repurpose old songs, mint exclusive, never-before-heard pieces, as well as bundle in limited physical products; a combination of which has led to Harris Cole’s unprecedented success within the NFT space.
Having made his first steps within music almost a decade ago, Harris Cole’s style of ambient and laid-back instrumental music has been widely celebrated over the past years, while his digital streams amount to well over 100 million just on Spotify. Within a little more than a month, the US-based musician has made a more than impressive entrance within the NFT space, moving a total of almost 10 ETH with his tokenized sales at the time of writing. These included never-before-heard pieces like “inside,” as well as tracks off his 2016 debut album Pause, the title track of which just sold for 3.33 ETH, or a little over $11k at the time of the sale.
Even though more and more collectors are getting their eyes on him right now, it took some time before Harris Cole would see success on web3. As he explains, he was one of the first artists onboarded to music-focused, NFT marketplace Catalog about a year ago, where he initially listed an unreleased, ambient track called “inside,” followed by a couple of other songs, without making any sales. What unexpectedly kickstarted everything, was his decision to bundle in rare cassettes he had made for Pause, and he quickly made his first two sales, the second of which, his song “Goodbye,” went for 0.95 ETH.
“After that second sale, I officially kind of had some eyes on me,” Harris tells us. “The way it seems to work in web3, is that everyone's trying to sell NFTs, so there's no reason to take anyone seriously until they start making sales. Right away, collectors, creators and bystanders alike take notice, because there’s not a ton of people who can sell NFTs for 1 ETH or more. I had a lot of people following me for the first time on Twitter for example, and messaging me like ‘yo, I've been such a big fan of your music for six years now, I’m so glad to see you getting into web3. If you ever mint this song, let me know, I want to buy it.’ So I was like, ‘holy shit, this is crazy. There's a world of people waiting to support me who have cryptocurrency, and might not even have that much US dollars to support me in the traditional like, web2 format, you know?”
Artists oftentimes preach about how much more frictionless, direct and easier it is to receive value from their supporters on web3 in comparison to web2, and how their art has the potential to be truly valued on the blockchain, as opposed to the limitations and centralization of the traditional frameworks that we’re used to up until this point.
2022 has been off to the most incredible start, i really have no words. kind of expecting something terrible to happen now though, a piano is going to fall out of the sky and crush me at some point
— harriscole.eth (@_harriscole) January 13, 2022
“It's just been crazy. It doesn't feel real, it’s too good to be true,” says Harris, who is starstruck by the web3’s potential in allowing artists to monetize their creations. “I mean, it's not too good to be true, because it's actually true. But I wouldn’t be able to do this if I didn't have people that actually valued my work like that. And that brings us to what's really fucking cool about web3: it’s that people are able to value your work directly and pay you directly. And some people would make the argument of like, “why do you need web3 to do that? Why can't people just support you in the traditional web2 framework?” And the answer that is like, are they though?“
“You’ll see people tweet like ‘oh, why do you need NFTs to support artists? Can’t you just commission them, or can’t you buy their stuff?’ It’s like, yeah, you don’t need NFTs to support artists, but people just aren’t supporting artists, that’s the thing. Artists are fucking struggling across the board, even artists that sign a $10 million deal with a major label have to go and buy their own health care, you know, the label isn’t going to give them health care. So across the board, we as artists are getting fucked. And NFTs and web3, in general, have allowed us to bypass the middlemen and allow our supporters to value our art on our own terms because there are people that have money and do want to support the artists that they fuck with. They just haven’t had a chance to do it in this direct kind of way until now. Right now the best way to support artists outside of web3 are platforms like Bandcamp or Gumroad/Patreon or Sellfy where you’re coming about as close as possible to the fan direct to artist model, but even then we’re giving up a percentage of our sales, and the money is sent to PayPal where they are free to freeze our assets at any time, for any reason and for as long as they’d like. This is not really ideal.”
Something that strikes a lot of skeptics as odd is how ownership works, and if artists are relinquishing copyright by selling NFTs. It makes sense that in the traditional economy that we’ve known until now, you’d have to give up part of your art to receive compensation, for example sacrificing a percentage of your royalties to a label in exchange for marketing resources. With NFTs however, the only thing that’s being sold is the ownership of the actual token on the blockchain, and any other extra perks the artist decides to throw in, while they retain 100% of their art’s rights.
There’s no doubt that bundling in the exclusive cassettes has made a big impact on Harris Cole’s sales. What’s truly interesting, however, is how things have come full circle since 2016, when he found it difficult to sell them for $30 per piece. As he explains, even back then he didn’t see them as just actual cassettes, but more so a rare collector’s item, something that was supposed to be valued as memorabilia.
“Initially, I actually had 50 black & white cassettes made, and I sold those publicly for $30 on Bandcamp, so anyone could have bought them. I was running ads on Facebook for them, and I was getting a lot of cassette purists that didn't know me, who were super pissed at me, like “$30 for a cassette are you crazy? These shouldn't cost more than 15!” And so, I actually struggled to sell the cassettes initially because of the price, which, to me, wasn't that crazy. It wasn't as much about the fact that it was a cassette, but more so about the fact that it was a rare collectible. And I thought that for any people that were fans of me as an artist it would have been cool, that $30 would be negligible. But I was wrong, so after all, I ended up lowering the price, I think to $15. And eventually I sold out, but it took a long time to sell all 50 of them.“
It wasn’t until NFTs came around that things connected in a way that would allow Harris to truly reap the value of his art, as well as the rare memorabilia that his biggest supporters wanted to get their hands on. Something that Harris stressed time and time again during our conversation, however, is how privileged he is to be able to mint and sell these NFTs, since - especially on the Ethereum network - there is a huge barrier to entry. As he explained, his 11k sale for “pause” cost him around $700 just to mint, set a reserve price and settle the auction, while he has had to pay more than $6k in gas fees for all NFTs he has minted and auctioned to date.
“If we look at how much it costs to mint NFTs, on the low low side, you're going to spend $150, just to actually mint the NFT. On the high side, I've seen it go as high as $400 or more. And that’s just to mint the NFT, if you want to set a reserve price, that's a whole separate ETH transaction that costs precisely the same amount. So right out the door, if you want to mint and set a reserve price, you're spending at the absolute minimum maybe like $300, but realistically $400 to $500.”
“This is all to say that participating in this ecosystem is not accessible right now, as far as Ethereum mainnet goes. You have to be privileged, like I am, to have disposable income so you can afford to spend fucking 1000s of dollars and not limit your ability to pay rent, eat food or get like medical care. Most people know that artists are constantly exploited and don't have a good time making money, and it’s not realistic for most artists right now.”
“That being said, there is some exciting shit like Solana and Tezos. These are other networks and coins that have their own ecosystems for NFTs with practically no fees. On the other hand, the price floor is lower on these marketplaces, because part of the reason you're able to sell for a lot on ETH is like: if it costs $500 just to mint and set reserved price, that's the least that you are going to sell it for, which is like a pro and a con. You can kind of suck up how much money it costs knowing that there's more money to make, but that also means that you might be spending a lot of money on an NFT that you might never sell.”
“It's like buying a cryptocurrency that literally only you can buy. Once you buy it, you've set the price, and in order for you to sell it and make a profit, someone else has to agree and want to have it. It’s very fucking messy.”
Even though - as Harris explains - selling NFTs on the Ethereum mainnet can be very expensive and risky, especially for people with less financial stability, there are many other platforms and networks that make things easier. Mint Songs, a marketplace Harris hasn’t personally used yet, which allows you to “turn your songs into eco-friendly NFTs with us for $0 minting fees,” and features NFTs by the likes of Capshun, Rohaan, Elevate, X&G and many more. Additionally, NFT minting on the Tezos and Solana blockchains requires minimal fees; this community-created site links to some of the biggest Tezos NFT marketplaces, while Solsea, Solanart and DigitalEyes are some of the best places to sell on the Solana network.
Frankly, we’re still in the very early stages of web3, and there are surely so many more developments to come in the space of music NFTs, and music’s intersection with web3 in general. However, beyond the endless research and reasonable doubts lies a truly exciting world, that is and will be there for any artist to explore and build communities around.