IMPORTANT: We are about to open to the public the ability to create audio NFTs and offer them on Rarible and, CRUCIALLY, do so without paying any gas fees unless and until someone wants to buy your NFTs. If you are interested in opening an account with us, please click on the "Join Free" button below.
"NFT" stands for Non-Fungible Token and is a "unit of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, that certifies a digital asset to be unique and therefore not interchangeable" -- therefore "non-fungible." An NFT can be used to represent something like a photo, a video, a voice audio, or really any other type of digital files. Think of an NFT as a certificate of ownership of a specific digital artifact. If you own the voice NFT of say an audio, it means that you own full rights of that specific audio file (not its content, but that specific digital print that you created or bought). Should that specific audio be worth something in the market, then you would be owning something of value.
Simply this: you create an audio and then you create an NFT for it and now you officially own that specific audio file that you created.
If you are an artist, yes, you should create an NFT. Think of your NFTs as certificates of authentication of art that you created. If you can afford to create NFTs (they cost money to create), then do create them. But make sure that you do not do so at the risk of hurting yourself financially.
If you are an artist and it’s important for you to monetize your art -- that is, make money from your art -- creating NFTs makes sense because such NFTs enable you to certify a form of ownership that you can transfer without losing copyright to your art.
Artists make money in one of several ways. Here are three ways.
Someone commissions them to create a piece of art and pays them money for that piece of art. That piece of art then becomes the property of the person who bought the piece of art and the artist no longer owns that piece of art: meaning, they can’t sell it or license it to anyone else once they have sold it. In other words, the artist was paid for two things: (a) The labor they expended in creating the piece of art, and (b) The rights to that piece of art.
The artist creates art on their own (they were not commissioned) and someone then offers them money to buy that piece of art from them. Once sold, that piece of art becomes the property of the person who bought the piece of art and the artist no longer owns that piece of art.
The artist creates art and makes that art available for people to license that art for a fee. That fee could be fixed or could be based on royalties. As long as people pay that fee, they are given the right to use that art. If at some point the artist no longer wishes to license their art, then no one other than the artist can use it.
All of the above monetization models are based on compensation for labor and ownership of the content.
NFTs introduce a new way of monetizing objects that is not based on the labor expended in creating the content nor on the ownership of the content, but rather on the ownership of a unique artifact that in some way involves some content.
Here’s an example. I am an LGBTQ comedian and I am relatively well known within my community. I am touring the country and I will be stopping in Austin in January 2022 for a show. I do my show and record it and now I have audio of that show. Now, it so happens that that show was the very first time that I did a show in Austin. The material itself is not all new, really, but that show was a first. It was a once in a lifetime event by definition: my very first show in Austin. How do I capture that uniqueness, that scarcity?
NFTs are a way to do it. For instance, I take the audio of the first minute of my show, mint a token and provide details about that audio, and now I have created an object that is verifiably unique, that I, the artist, own. If I choose to, I can decide to put that NFT for sale and if one of my fans who happens to have the money and who believes in NFTs, and most crucially, believes in me, wants to buy it, they can make me an offer.
Flushed by my success, I can decide to create 1 minute NFTs for every show that I do. People are now collecting my “one minute” NFTs, the way say baseball cards are collected. And lo and behold, I now have a revenue stream that has nothing to do with my content, but rather, with my reputation and how valuable people think the NFTs that I sell and they hold are.
As such, NFTs as a concept and as a space are NOT a scam.
However: given the basic fact that NFTs, and the cryptocurrencies they are based on, are a real paradigm shift -- a completely new way of thinking about money, authentication, certification, transactions -- a lot of opportunity exists for taking advantage of people who don’t know enough or understand enough about them. Combine such innocent ignorance with real greed -- greed of both those who wish to take advantage of people who don’t know enough, and greed of people who think that they can make quick money buying and selling NFTs -- and you have a dangerous situation. So, no, NFTs are not a scam, but scams do exist to take advantage of people who have not done their homework.
Just like any other speculative activity, NFTs (as well as cryptocurrencies) can easily turn into a bubble if too many people rush into buying them and then, when the risk seems too high, too many people decide to pull out of the speculation at the same time. This is a very real possibility. But the way to survive bubbles is to (a) Put in only money that you can lose and not get hurt by losing it so that you can afford to (b) Keep that money in for the long term if, after the bubble has burst, things get back on track (but this time, on a much more solid and less speculative foundation).
The good news is that NFTs (and Crypto in general) are here to stay. They deliver too much value and their promise is real for them to disappear. They elegantly solve many real problems that the current paradigms (middlemen, experts, financial institutions, banks) will not be able to affordably solve in our increasingly digital world) for them to simply be abandoned.
First, Witlingo specializes in the minting and showcasing of audio NFTs. We don’t do any other sort of NFTs.
Second, our customers are not geeks and hackers. They are artists and content creators. They are not in the IT business. So, one of our primary goals is to make it as easy as possible for them to create their NFTs. They click a button, transact through their wallet to purchase the NFT and we take care of the minting and other behind the scenes registration.
Third: because our customers are not technical, we are here to support them and help answer their questions. Access to real people who will help you navigate the uncertain waters of NFT is not something that you can do in other platforms easily. Witlingo is a SaaS business, and we take seriously the Service part of the value that we provide our customers.
And finally: Witlingo is an established business. We are not a fly-by-night operation. We have been around since 2016 and all that we have done has revolved around audio. We make our money through a straightforward SaaS subscription model.
Yes, of course. Witlingo helps you mint your NFT and showcase it within the Witlingo NFT marketplace, but you are free to showcase it on any other NFT marketplace. You fully own your NFT and can do with it as you wish.
Witlingo is accepting applications from candidates who would like to open an Audio NFT account. If you are interested in opening an account, please apply here.