Proponents of NFTs have been heralding them as an opportunity for artists to profit from the creation of digital media without the meddling of financial middlemen or requiring mass popularity to do so. This, on its face, seems like a very exciting opportunity, and already several musicians have been reaping the benefits of selling art on the blockchain. In a time marked by paltry streaming royalties, the inability to tour, and a music industry that was never especially artist-friendly, the ability to make the equivalent of several thousand dollars selling one piece of art is a huge difference maker for a lot of musicians. So, it’s not hard to see why many people want to get in on the action.
Of course, anybody who’s able to shell out the crypto equivalent of several thousands or even millions of dollars for a JPG or MP3, is somebody reaping the benefits of capitalism in a way most people, including most musicians, are not. I’m skeptical on the revolutionary power of a system predicated on individuals holding huge amounts of capital to then exchange for one piece of art. I’m not insinuating that the art isn’t worth that amount of money. If anything, it’s a refreshing alternative to the continuous devaluation of creative work. But to sell a piece of crypto art is to hope for the support of one cash-flush donor descending from the heavens, and as Arielle Gordon puts it:
“for a technology that promises to “disrupt” the world of digital art, it is tremendously efficient at replicating the most inaccessible paradigms of its physical predecessors. Despite the blockchain’s decentralized, supposedly more democratic nature, NFTs seemed to quickly re-concentrate art ownership in the hands of the extremely wealthy.”
Even if we don’t care about who owns the art, how radical is seeking the financial support of one entity? As is the case with a lot of tech-based solutionism, the purported novelty is something that already exists on some level. How much different is it from receiving a grant from the government or a public arts foundation? Of course, state funding for the arts isn’t abundantly available or equitably distributed in all countries, and so the NFT fills that hole, thus satisfying the neoliberal dream of market solutions as replacement for government spending.
Even the resale market logic of crypto art is a replica of an existing model. An apt comparison to make NFTs to is how they are like baseball cards. Like collectors snatching up rookie cards of future star players to cash in on their projected value increase, proponents of NFTs argue that collectors are incentivized to support smaller artists because of the possibility for a piece of art to grow in value over time. If they resell it, the artist receives a cut of the sale.
It’s hard to see how much this differs from a major record label signing an up-and-coming band to a record contract that will give the musicians a small percentage of royalties. Both are methods of treating artists like stock, and both stand to see an entity not involved in the art’s creation to see the largest gain from an artist’s rise. If an artist creates something that becomes more valuable over the passing of time, then shouldn’t they be the one who reaps the most benefits? Rather than removing the middleman, the blockchain is just moving them to the end of the production process.
And we can’t ignore the ridiculously huge amounts of energy required to construct and maintain the blockchain. In a deep dive on the ecological costs and other problems with cryptocurrency, Everest Pipkin cites “a recent study out of the University of New Mexico estimated that in 2018 every $1 of Bitcoin value was responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in the US”, before going on to say:
“During unprecedented temperature increases, sea level rise, the total loss of permanent sea ice, widespread species extinction, countless severe weather events, and all the other hallmarks of total climate collapse, this kind of gleeful wastefulness is, and I am not being hyperbolic, a crime against humanity.”
Of course, we shouldn’t be slandering artists as climate killers for attempting to make a decent living. There are more egregrious offenders out there. That said, like any energy-intensive production and consumption system, we must consider the implications that relying on crypto-art as a viable source of income for artists would have on those who will be and currently are most negatively affected by the climate crisis.
For artists concerned about efficiency but wanting to cash in, platforms using PoS and PoA are more eco-friendly than those using PoW. It is possible that increased demand for sustainable and transparent platforms could influence developers and collectors to invest and foster the market for eco-friendly alternatives. Ethereum is expecting to finish their transition to the more efficient PoS ETH2 protocol by 2022, a very necessary step when considering that its power consumption is currently comparable to that of Ireland.
But, Alex Devries notes that Ethereum has “been saying we’re going to proof of stake since 2014, and they’ve been saying since 2014 it’s going to take six months. So for me, I’ve become a bit skeptical that this is going to happen on the timeline they say it will because they haven’t been able to achieve their deadlines for the past few years.”
We cannot see the devaluation of art, and solutions to rectify it, as existing in a vacuum, independent of the devaluation and exploitation of the natural world. Aitken explains, “Given the constraints imposed on us by global warming, we have a severe problem if we cannot discuss the issues of today because we hope they will be resolved “in a year or two,” and if we acquiesce to businesses and platforms operating in this manner. Because if we don’t hold them accountable as artists and citizens, then who will?”
And if there’s one more thing that I can object to regarding NFTs, is that they are yet another market-based solution that without a doubt will inevitably be exploited as corporations and major record labels weasel their way into the game. Hell, even fucking Taco Bell is dropping NFTs.
In a discussion with Zachary Cole Smith of DIIV and Lukas Frank of Storefront Church, Deafheaven vocalist George Clarke described how hearing the news that a small scale artist sold an NFT for a huge sum feels akin to reading the headline: “Girl Sells Lemonade For Mom’s Cancer Treatment.” Smith noted how these “feel-good” stories expose the larger underlying problem, that receiving health care or making a living as an artist are things only rich people can do. But if you work harder and sell more lemonade, or make cute fish gifs in addition to pumping out a new full length album every year than maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to do it too!
The point is reaffirmed by Clarke when he notes that he hasn’t been able to go see a doctor in 14 years. While the American model of health care makes treatment inaccessible for millions of people, to hear this from a member of a touring band with millions of Spotify streams and enough mainstream credibility to receive a Grammy nomination in 2019 is very telling. It makes especially apparent how the current music industry model provides only the most superficial qualities of success, while denying the financial autonomy for most artists to live a dignified life in capitalist countries like the United States.
For Clarke, NFTs are yet another cosmetic fix that puts people in a bind where if they don’t take the opportunity in the market, it’s on them for not being able to access a certain level of financial autonomy. It doesn’t go deep enough to solve the problem and level the playing field. it only provides what those in power want: individuals representing the false illusion of climbing the ladder through hard work instead of real systematic change. Like a corporation celebrating girl boss feminism or priding itself on having BIPOC and LGBTQ+ staff, the NFT success stories highlight the rise of a small group of individuals, but do nothing to liberate the collective that is under the foot of capitalism’s hierarchies.
NFTs are not the radical transformation that some would like them to be. If anything, they appear to be kind of a neoliberal reform wearing the mask of innovation: yet another space propped up by ecological destruction and competitive market principles in which workers are promised a chance to hit it big, rather than having some guarantee of financial security in exchange for the work they do.
I won’t deny the fact that people can’t wait for a widespread socioeconomic transformation when they need to pay the rent this month, and selling NFTs might help do that. But there is likely more change possible through the involvement of musicians and their supporters in groups like the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers and other forms of organization that collectively challenge and oppose (music) capitalism while advocating for and building alternatives to market-based solutions for the viability of the arts and the livelihoods of working class people.