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Universal buys NFT manager for NFT band
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 21 March 2022
Kingship – the metaverse boyband created by Universal Music’s Web3 label 10:22PM – now have a manager. Who – like the four members of the group – is an NFT. Once you’ve stopped rolling your eyes I’ll get on and explain all this.
It was first announced in November that 10:22PM was teaming up with NFT collector and entrepreneur Jimmy McNeils to create Kingship, a group made up of four characters created as part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT project.
Bored Ape is one of the most successful NFT ventures to date, with 10,000 individual characters – each connected to an NFT on the blockchain – originally sold, followed by 20,000 ‘mutant’ versions. Kingship, on the off chance you care, is made up of three originals and one mutant.
10:22PM’s plan is seemingly to create a virtual group that will have their own ongoing story, which will conveniently fit around the release of music and staging of virtual live performances. And there will, of course, be plenty of new NFTs related to the band put on sale as part of the whole endeavour.
A narrative requires characters, which is where this new Bored Ape NFT comes in. Called Manager Noët All, she will act as the band’s manager in their story. The label paid $360,817 worth of Ethereum to buy the NFT that gives them control over the Noët character, who has a number of rare Bored Ape traits, including a blue dress, pilot helmet, white fur and sad eyes. Coincidentally the four traits any band looks for in a manager.
“We have been incredibly busy developing Kingship since our initial announcement and I’m so excited to introduce Manager Noët All, one of many new characters that will be joining the Kingship universe”, says 10:22PM founder Celine Joshua. “As the manager of the group, Manager Noët All will help drive the storyline and allow us to communicate with the community”.
“We hope to make the Kingship universe as entertaining and immersive as possible, while simultaneously building value for holders”, she goes on. “Stay tuned, there’s so much to come”.
Virtual band’s are nothing new, of course. Gorillaz have been around since the late 1990s, and one of Japan’s biggest pop stars, Hatsune Miku, is an animated representation of a piece of vocal generation software that anyone can use. These projects do tend to have music at their core though, while it’s currently not clear what Kingship will even sound like.
However, I guess, the difference between an NFT band and any other band is that if it’s all a flop, then the label can sell off the band members in an effort to make some of its money back. So that’s something.
