A new Miami company wants to reshape the music industry with NFTs.
Glozal Inc., the creator of an NFT music platform founded in 2021, recently moved into a 20,000-square-foot headquarters office in downtown Miami. The music technology startup aims to connect artists with new revenue streams and offer fans an opportunity to purchase exclusive content from their favorite performers in an NFT format.
Founder and CEO Tarek Kirschen said NFTs present an opportunity for artists who have lost royalties from their work due to the rise of streaming, which cuts into song and album sales.
"Independent artists are broke," said Kirschen, who is also the CEO of Miami-based medical equipment manufacturer V12 Health. "That got worse during the pandemic because there were no concerts or showings in clubs. It's really affected artists' income."
A non-fungible token, or NFT, is a unit of data stored on blockchain, a digital ledger that certifies a digital asset is one-of-a-kind and can't be replaced with a copy. NFTs can be used to represent virtual items like photos, videos and music, but have made headlines for fueling digital art sales.
An NFT owner can choose to trade the asset for dollars, just like you might sell an old album. But, because it's tracked on blockchain, the artist behind the NFT receives a royalty from every transaction, no matter how many times it may be transferred.
And that could potentially benefit more than the artist. The so-called "smart contracts" stored on blockchain could include revenue cuts for songwriters, producers and editors who compose a song or album, Kirschen said.
Glozal's NFT Music Player will launch this fall. The platform will only accept payments in cryptocurrency and will pay artists in crypto as well.
The company's executive team includes music industry veterans such as executive VP J.C. Losada, a Grammy-award winning producer and songwriter; and executive VP of Client Relations Cesar A. Ochoa, a former VP at New York-based Sony Music Entertainment.
Glozal currently has 20 employees, with plans to grow its sales, tech support and marketing teams, Kirschen said.
Glozal is the latest cryptocurrency industry firm to plant a stake in Miami. Mayor Francis Suarez, a crypto advocate, has recruited multiple digital currency exchanges and investment firms to the region in his quest to make the city the crypto capital of the world.
"Crypto art and NFTs are here to stay and as we push to become the global epicenter for crypto, art, and music we are honored to have companies like these in our city transforming industries," Suarez said in a statement.
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