Bob Dylan, the legendary troubadour, is the latest name to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) industry, defying the trend that technology favors the young. Along with his son Jesse, Walter De Brouwer, and Jeff Rosen, Bob Dylan has developed a new NFT marketplace called Snowcrash. Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group collaborated to form Snowcrash. The idea is to bring together diverse segments of technology, the creative arts, and digital innovation.
Snowcrash is a Solana-based platform for artists who want to digitize and distribute their work as collectibles, which are then sold as limited edition NFTs. Snowcrash “empowers artists, cultural icons, content creators, influencers, celebrities, and brands to access the untapped creative and economic potential of NFTs by unlocking latent value in already-created properties and designing new digital assets and virtual experiences,” according to the website. If the name ‘Snowcrash’ seems familiar, it’s because it’s the title of a famous 1992 science fiction novel by author Neal Stephenson, who coined the now-common web3 term’metaverse.’ Later this year, Snowcrash aims to release NFTs for Dylan and jazz superstar Miles Davis, with more artists to come.
Walter De Brouwer, who is the blockchain architect of the Snowcrash NFT marketplace, spoke on the project, stating: “With Snowcrash, we have found a perfect opportunity where the entertainment community, Silicon Valley and Wall Street all come together to create opportunities for artists and organizations impacting the world today.”
By the way, this isn’t the first time Bob Dylan has teamed up with Sony Music. The musician sold the master rights to his complete catalog of recorded music to SME for $150 million in January of this year. Dylan also sold the publication rights to his works to Universal Music Publishing in 2020, for a total of $400 million. As a result, Dylan’s latest NFT relationship with the corporations comes as no surprise.
