Ashanti plans to introduce women to Web3, and at the NFT music meetup, she affirmed that owning your NFTs is important.
The billion-dollar music business is going through a big change as artists realize how valuable it could be to own their work through nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Ashanti, a singer, actress, and co-founder of EQ Exchange, a Web3 platform run by women, recently gave more information about this at a Cotton Candy Records meetup on June 20 in New York.
Ashanti was on a panel with Janice Taylor, the founder, and CEO of EQ Exchange, where they talked about how important it is for creators to own their work. Using his own life as an example, Ashanti said:
“It’s very important to keep saying that owning is the best way to live. Who wants to wake up and put their heart, blood, sweat, and tears into a project, only to have someone next to them get all the benefits while they do all the work? That’s how my contract was set up years ago, but now, 20 years later, I have the right to go in and re-record my first album and own new masters.”
Why do creators need to own their work?
According to Ashanti, it was very disheartening to make an album before Web3 and the start of music NFTs. She said that an artist would sign a record deal and make an album, which would then sell for about $15. An artist would only get about $0.38 out of that amount, and that was on the high end the R&B legend said. As soon as Ashanti realized that this was a common thing to do, she started to look for other ways to own her intellectual property.
Ashanti teamed up with EQ Exchange on March 25, 2022, almost 20 years after her first album came out. This made her the first Black female artist to co-found a Web3 company. Then, on April 6, 2022, Ashanti released an NFT collection with EQ Exchange. She released the collection on the 20th anniversary of her first album, Ashanti. She sold her first five NFTs in less than a minute. Even though music NFTs are impressive, Ashanti said that the real message behind them is “how important it is to own your work.”
Her NFT collection will help her fans in more ways than just giving them ownership. “My fans will be the only ones who can hear my music first, which means they will also own it. They will also get a share of the royalties for new records, tickets to shows, trips, and the chance to buy limited-edition merchandise, she said.
Women in Web3 becoming Models for other women.
She also hopes that her NFT collection and work in the Web3 space will bring more women to the space. This is very important because a recent study by the media company EWG Unlimited and The Female Quotient found that men still run Web3. The report says that only 16% of Web3 creators say they are women, which has led to a bias toward men.Â
Even though women still make up a small portion of Web3 users, Omolewu said that Access Abu Dhabi recently teamed up with Unstoppable Domains. The platform gives ownership of NFT domains, to give free blockchain domains to women of all nationalities who live in Abu Dhabi. Omolewu believes that Partnering with Unstoppable Domains to give free blockchain domains to all women in the country for the first time ever is the first step toward our long-term goal of disrupting this space for women in the region.
Free NFT Domains for Women inclusive
Sandy Carter, the senior vice president of Unstoppable Domains, disclosed that Unstoppable Domains is a user’s digital identity. This makes it easy for people who aren’t used to crypto to get into Web3. For instance, users don’t have to type in a complicated wallet address to send and receive crypto transactions. Instead, they can just use their NFT domain.
On the Unstoppable Domains website, it says that applications like Coinbase Wallet, ShapeShift, and other crypto wallets are supported. they even have more than 300 business deals. In fact, Paris Hilton’s Twitter name is now ParisHilton.NFT.
The time has come for women to join Web3
Even with the benefits of music NFTs and the help of influential people, it may still be hard or scary for women to get into the Web3 sector. But women should start as soon as possible because the space is still very young. We are changing what the internet is, and we need different voices now.