n the space of 24 hours, a young American company evolving at the crossroads of music and new technologies called HitPiece succeeded in winning unanimous support by offering non-fungible tokens at auction (JNF, “ non-fungible tokens in English) “unique of all your favorite songs” without the knowledge of the creators of these. It has thus provoked the ire of musicians, who have stormed social networks to demand that the company remove all mention of their names and songs on the trading platform. The case casts a new veil of suspicion over the expanding universe of JNF.
Would you like to acquire the non-fungible Token of the Immortal Song People of the country ? Last Tuesday evening, HitPiece launched the bidding at US$100. However, Gilles Vigneault — who incidentally has just joined Neil Young and Joni Mitchell in boycotting the Spotify service — never authorized the company to manufacture and sell a JNF of his song, a representative from his record company, Tandem. Similar observation in the camp of Patrick Watson, confirms his label, Secret City Records.
Steve Jolin, boss and founder of Disques 7th Ciel, was still unaware of the existence of HitPiece when contacted by the Duty, although a JNF of a song from Alaclair Ensemble’s debut album was offered at auction there. “That’s good, I had an appointment with our lawyer this afternoon, I’m going to discuss it with her,” replies Jolin, who is not surprised by this kind of manipulation, however: “It seems that any who can pick up a song and create a JNF without our permission. »
HitPiece’s scheme was exposed on Tuesday when hundreds of musicians spread word that JNFs of their works were being offered on the site, which invites customers to create “its unique metaverse playlist” and join ” the community of artists [pour obtenir] exclusives,” according to the description posted on her Instagram profile. Composer and producer Jack Antonoff, bands Speedy Ortiz, Best Coast and Deerhoof and Montreal’s Backxwash, among others, all took to HitPiece on Twitter to demand a retraction.
In the “frequently asked questions” section – since disappeared from its website – the company said that it allowed “fans to collect JNFs of their favorite songs. Each JNF HitPiece is a unique token for each unique recording of a song. Members create the list of their favorite songs, appear in the charts and receive real value such as access and experiences with the artists”, without specifying the nature of these experiences or these accesses. The directors of HitPiece, a Utah-based company, according to information found on LinkedIn, did not respond to our interview request.
“Pernicious”
“We are either faced with a flagrant lack of knowledge of the structure of rights surrounding a work, or faced with bad faith or a malicious maneuver”, judge Guillaume Déziel, president and general manager of Allocentric, a company specializing in distributed technologies such as JNFs and blockchain-hosted smart contracts (blockchains). “Perhaps they risked selling songs that don’t belong to them, without anyone’s consent, in order to pocket money? »
“Theft of work was not invented by non-fungible tokens, but there, it is really pernicious”, estimates Bruno Guglielminetti, host of the podcast of digital news My notebook. “In the past, music theft was copies of tapes sold at flea markets, and then Internet piracy and illegal downloading. JNF is even worse because it makes fans feel like they’re buying a song and it’s now theirs, especially since the rights holders of those songs don’t seem to be getting anything at all. »
The counterfeiting or usurpation of the work of artists is unfortunately commonplace in the world of non-fungible tokens, underlines Guglielminetti. Last week, OpenSea, a major digital art marketplace authenticated by JNF, admitted that 80% of the tokens generated for free from its platform (which adopted the Ethereum decentralized exchange protocol, used by many cryptocurrencies) for then to be traded plagiarized works by established and non-established artists alike. The case of OpenSea, like the “HitPiece affair”, believe Déziel and Guglielminetti, will unfortunately not help to instil confidence in this new technology, both for creators and for users.
Yet it’s not without revenue potential for creators, with the global music industry discussing the benefits of JNFs for more than a year. Montreal electronic composer Philippe Aubin-Dionne, alias Jacques Greene, was one of the first to try it: in February 2021, he sold the JNF of his song promise auction on the platform foundation.app, for an amount of 13 ETH (the Etherum cryptocurrency), a value of just over 23,000 US dollars. According to the terms of this transaction enshrined in the certificate of authenticity of the token, Aubin-Dionne sells its publishing rights while retaining its copyright as well as a right of veto on the use that could be made of this song. its new owner.
Jacques Greene (whose songs were listed by HitPiece) recently released JNFs of songs from his recent mini-album fantasy, which fans can acquire on the platform sound.xyz. “JNFs are still very nebulous to everyone, it’s kind of like buying stars… I’m not 100% behind everything about cryptocurrencies and JNFs, but I also feel that when things happens like that in technology, if no artist is interested in it, the culture loses there. […] It is also interesting that this case arises at a time when we are debating the Spotify model; it is cool that old artists are taking a stand, but I wish they had done it sooner, and because of the royalty crumbs that Spotify gives back to us. »