We're Not in Kansas Anymore

"Many years ago, I would ride my bicycle to the neighborhood record store, lean it against the window (no need to padlock), spend an enjoyable hour flipping through LPs, pick one out, and buy it (cash, of course). I would then slip it into my backpack and ride home, put the needle in the groove, and enjoy the sound of my purchase. Oh, how times have changed. In particular, the cool kids are now buying music as non-fungible tokens (NFT)."

- By Ken C. Pohlmann

Strictly speaking, music is a stream of ever-changing fluctuations in pressure that are literally airy. Some pieces of music could even be described as superlunary. Nevertheless, we have found ways to brutally commercialize it. For well over a hundred years, companies have churned out packaged music on a wide variety of discs and tapes containing waveforms, and more recently as media and files containing binary digits.

The newest iteration in music merchandising, and one that I have not quite wrapped my mind around, is music sold as NFTs. You probably already know what NFTs are, but I had to consult Wikipedia. An NFT is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger. The authenticity of an NFT is verified with a blockchain and it’s often purchased using cryptocurrency. NFTs might diversely present as an image, a document, a video, a baseball card, and, yes, as a music recording.