Blockchain technology and NFT’s have the potential to make a huge impact in the music industry. Currently most of the websites and technologies are in their infancy, but it’s not hard to imagine what they may be like 5 years from now. Large artists have gotten in on the NFT game and are making millions, making many independent artists wonder how they can get in on it to.

In this post i’m going to go over the best music NFT platforms for music creators. So what is the best NFT marketplace for music creators?

The best NFT marketplace for music creators is Fanfare.fm. One huge problem with NFT’s is that the average consumer doesn’t understand blockchain technology, and Fanfare gets around this by listing prices in USD. Wallets are also incredibly easy to get setup and utilize the Flow blockchain. Plus it’s a platform designed for music.

Every artist has their own vision and goals, so now i’m going to break down what I do and do not like about each of these platforms.

Fanfare (Flow)

At first glance Fanfare isn’t even an NFT website. Songs are listed in USD instead of Flow, the native blockchain on the platform. When you sign up for an account you use an email address, which automatically makes you a wallet with Blocto. The entire process is super smooth.

On top of that, fans can also purchase NFT’s on the platform using credit cards! This is massive for the NFT world.

Imagine you’re an indie music artist, and it’s already hard to grow your audience. If you were to find 1,000 people who like your music, what are the chances that those people are into NFT’s and/or crypto? Maybe out of those 1,000 people there are 20-30 who have some crypto through Robinhood, and even less that have a crypto wallet.

Try convincing a fan that just heard of you to not only give you money, but set up a complicated digital wallet to store a cryptocurrency so they can buy your digital good. It’s not going to happen!

Fanfare is also designed around music, unlike the others on this list that are primarily for other types of digital art. They have a Fanclub system built directly into the platform, so when fans purchase your music NFT they also get access to your Fanclub. Inside the Fanclub you can put exclusive content and other goodies for your fans to enjoy.

Solsea (Solana)

Solsea is an NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain. The gas fees on Solana are virtually non-existent, we’re talking pennies for minting, plus its pretty fast. The wallet ‘Phantom Wallet’ is what most people use and its quite nice (they recently released an iOS version of the wallet as well).

One awesome win with Solsea, aside from the fact they have very low gas fees, is that directly on each product page they give a way to buy more SOL via MoonPay. This makes it easier for noobies to grab some Sol to purchase your NFT.

To me the biggest downside of Solsea is you can’t list multiple copies of each NFT, but they claim the feature is coming soon. They also technically don’t support ‘music’ NFT’s, you’ll need to make a video file with your audio to list it.

Rarible (Tezos)

Rarible is an NFT platform that supports three different blockchains – Ethereum, Tezos and Flow. Personally I found it because of its support for Tezos which is a pretty cheap, low gas cost cryptocurrency. You can also stake Tezos on platforms such as Coinbase and make 4-5% p.a. on it, without having to ‘actually’ stake it.

Rarible supports a ton of different NFT types including audio files, but the one audio file NFT I minted for some reason is broken (but it shows up on Objkt just fine). Video NFT’s work fine.

Rarible solves my biggest complain about Solsea not letting you mint copies, so you can easily list QTY 20 NFTs for your music or whatever you want.

Collections are kind of weird and glitchy on Rarible, I was never able to make one for Tezos. The wallet situation is pretty nice for the Tezos blockchain, AirGap Wallet is pretty smooth to use once you get it up and running. It also gives you a nice sense of security.

Objkt (Tezos)

Everything I said about Rarible when it comes to the Tezos blockchain applies to Objkt as well. Cheap, low gas costs, staking available, wallets are nice. Personally I find Objkt to have a worse interface and is harder to sort than Rarible

It seems like it may be more stable than Rarible due to me noticing less glitches when creating audio NFT’s and collections, but its hard to know if that was a temporary error or an actual problem on Rarible’s part.

The nice thing about Objkt and Rarible is when you upload to one it will show up on the other since they both use the Tezos blockchain.

OpenSea (Ethereum, Polygon)

You might be wondering why the most popular NFT site in the world is the last option in this post? Well, its because as of the time i’m writing this OpenSea only supports Ethereum and Polygon, and it only supports time limited NFT releases. (**update, they also support something called Klaytn, but I don’t know anything about it).

OpenSea was my first attempt as minting an NFT because the platform is so popular. I never actually listed my NFT though, because since I was using Ethereum there was over $300 in gas fees! Solana and Tezos (and I assume Flow) are literally pennies to mint an NFT, but Ethereum is pretty much always over $100.

Apparently there are methods of lazy minting, and it sounds like on OpenSea you’re only paying for the first mint and OpenSea subsidizes future mints. But its just too expensive to even bother with that first mint when options like Solana and Tezos are out there.

Polygon solves a lot of the problems Ethereum has such as super high transaction costs, but not all features are available when you choose to use Polygon. Some people might not care about the time limited NFT release issue but it’d be much better if you could just list your NFT’s forever, instead of having to list them again in 1 month, or 3 months.