Beatport has announced that it is soon to begin accepting Bitcoin in payment for its services. As of June, customers will be able to pay with Bitcoin if they choose, making Beatport the first major digital music retailer to offer this.
The DJ download and streaming company has also announced that it has signed a partnership with Crypto.com to drop an NFT (non-fungible token) called “Music for Future Dance Floors” on 23 April, 2021. Boys Noize, Charlotte de Witte, Risa Taniguchi, Sama’ Abdulhadi, Sasha and more are part of the compilation along with visual artist, Leif Podhajsky.
Learn to DJ with Digital DJ Tips: The Complete DJ Course
Crypto? NFT? Please someone explain…
While many of us understand and even own cryptocurrency and NFTs, they can appear impenetrable to the uninitiated. So here’s our quick go at explaining them to you:
- Cryptocurrencies are a way of storing wealth outside of mainstream banking, with a publicly available and unchangeable “ledger” of who owns what. Central banks can’t simply print more cryptocurrency (devaluing everyone else’s), and at least in the case of Bitcoin, supply is cleverly limited so that (in theory) cryptocurrencies stand a good chance of holding their value over time. Bitcoin is easily the leading cryptocurrency, and is rapidly gaining acceptance at the moment
- NFTs are tradable digital goods. If you (or more likely, your kids) have ever purchased items for your characters in video games (clothes, weapons, whatever) – that’s an example on an NFT. Again, ownership of them is held in a public, unchangeable ledger, and they can be bought and sold. Anything digital could potentially be an NFT. They are exciting to musicians because it means musicians can package up special digital editions of their work and sell them directly to fans, giving more creative control to musicians and potentially getting them more money for their work. NFTs tend to use the Ethereum cryptocurrency/blockchain (“blockchain” is just another word for the ledger of ownership)
Read this next: First Look: Beatport’s Brand New Mobile App
What’s your view on crypto and NFTs when it comes to DJing and musicians? Feel free to share in the comments…
Phil Morse
