Artists and labels hit out at unofficial NFTs site that allows people to “own a song”
completemusicupdate.comThere has been a flurry of social media posts overnight from artists and labels hitting out at a music NFTs website called HitPiece that is seemingly promoting non-fungible tokens linked to all kinds of music, but without the permission of the artists or labels who made and released that music.
The band Eve 6 were among those to shout about it all on Twitter, delivering that common legal demand: “Cease and desist motherfuckers”.It’s not 100% clear what HitPiece is selling and since the backlash began on social media its website has gone down.
But the official pitch is that people can buy “one of one NFTs of all your favourite songs – own a song, build your unique playlist and join an artist’s community”.It’s possible that what the buyer actually ‘owns’ is the right to say they own a song within the HitPiece community, so basically bragging rights, which is what quite a lot of music NFTs are really selling.
That would mean no actual song or recording was being sold or distributed as part of the deal, which means technically no song or recording copyright would be infringed.However, there might be a case for saying an artist’s trademarks had been exploiting without permission, and in some countries publicity or image rights would probably have been infringed too.
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