NFT Marketplace LimeWire Partners With Universal Music – Billboard

LimeWire has signed a brand new partnership with Common Music Group that may permit the document big’s artists to make use of the NFT market to promote and market music-focused NFTs, it was introduced on Tuesday (Might 17). This marks the primary major-label partnership for the newly rebooted LimeWire, which relaunched as an NFT market in March.

Beneath the partnership, UMG will present content material licenses to LimeWire, enabling {the marketplace} to associate with UMG artists to promote audio recordings, audiovisual content material, paintings, bonus tracks and extra on to followers. Collectibles from these artists will be bought with a bank card, and the LimeWire platform will deal with gasoline charges and “technical hurdles on behalf of its customers,” based on a press launch.

Initially based as a peer-to-peer file-sharing web site in 2000, LimeWire, alongside different comparable websites like Napster, rapidly upended the music enterprise following a decade of large progress. Internet hosting a myriad of free, pirated music and different information, LimeWire and others are sometimes cited for inflicting recorded music gross sales to plummet from their all-time excessive of $14.6 billion in 1999 to only $7 billion by the point LimeWire shuttered its enterprise in 2010 — a results of a 4 year-long authorized battle towards the document labels and the RIAA.

In March 2022, nonetheless, LimeWire reemerged underneath new possession — specifically tech entrepreneurs Paul and Julian Zehetmayr — and introduced plans to revamp the model right into a curated market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The announcement, curiously, repositions LimeWire’s fame from a platform of limitless file sharing to certainly one of restricted purchases. Not like underneath its earlier homeowners, LimeWire is now not preventing towards the recorded music business however working together with it.

In April, LimeWire introduced it had raised $10.4 million in a personal sale of its LMWR token, led by a number of giant VC companies. Additionally taking part had been Deadmau5’s 720Mau5 enterprise fund and DAO Jones, a bunch of music business buyers that features Steve Aoki.

In a press release, UMG govt vp of digital enterprise growth & technique Jonathan Dworkin famous his appreciation for LimeWire’s give attention to “guiding on a regular basis customers into this expansive area.” He added, “Common Music Group has all the time prioritized its artists’ creativity and valued followers’ need to interact in revolutionary new methods. Now, NFTs are offering an thrilling car to boost this connection between artists and audiences. Because of this we’re delighted to have partnered with LimeWire.”

Paul and Julian Zehetmayr added, “We see this partnership as a real demonstration of the tempo at which the music business is embracing Web3. We’re thrilled to open up the LimeWire NFT ecosystem to Common Music Group artists and followers and may’t wait to see the primary inventive initiatives being launched on {the marketplace}.”