Sadie Dupuis and Jack Antonoff, both of whom criticized NFT platform HitPiece.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Getty Images
Don’t worry, your favorite indie band didn’t get into selling NFTs overnight. A new NFT platform called HitPiece has caught heat from a number of musicians — largely indie bands — for selling NFTs of their music without permission. Per a description on its website that has since been taken down, “HitPiece lets fans collect NFTs of your favorite songs.” What that seemed to mean in practice was music was available on HitPiece, like a streaming service, to be turned into NFTs without consent from musicians. (To backtrack: An NFT, or nonfungible token, is a unique electronic thing that exists on the blockchain, which is what also powers cryptocurrency.) As NFTs have gained traction in the music and art communities over the past several months, many have criticized them for negatively impacting the environment via the blockchain and just not making sense.
Which brings us to Tuesday, when dozens of artists weren’t too happy to find out their music was on HitPiece. “hey you stupid fucks @joinhitpiece we don’t have any deal with you or any NFT site and there SURE DOES LOOK like an active auction going on for a speedy ortiz song,” tweeted Sadie Dupuis of the band…
