Steve Aoki is riding to New York City in a Sprinter-van tour bus when the Zoom call comes in. The iconic DJ fumbles with his iPhone, brushes back his sweeping black hair, and greets his younger friend and collaborator Justin Blau, a.k.a. 3LAU. The pair are eager to talk about a technology they say will transform the business model of music and redefine the relationship between artists and their fans. “The only opportunity for fans used to be merch,” says Blau, becoming animated as he makes his case. The next opportunity, he says, is what he and Aoki are sure is the hot new thing for music: NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
The term describes unique items inscribed on a blockchain—most commonly pieces of art, but also other digital artifacts like songs—that can include rights of ownership to those items. In 2021, NFTs became part of the cultural zeitgeist as celebrities plunked down millions to collect digital primates known as Bored Apes, and the artist Beeple sold an NFT piece at auction for an eye-popping $69 million.
