The lasting impact of Web3 technologies on the music and ticketing sectors remains to be seen, but for now, NTFs are more popular than ever and are helping to democratize the space by allowing artists more control over their revenue and relationships with fans.
Web3 platform Afterparty, which hosted its first NFT-gated music and art festival in March for over 6,000 attendees, has demonstrated the ongoing enthusiasm around Web3 and NFTs with a recent unsolicited $4 million funding round, including participation from Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media, Jason Calacanis, Blockchange Ventures, and Acrew Capital.
This new funding brings Afterparty’s total funding to date to $7 million and will support the platform’s new “NFTs for Access” transparent ticketing platform for artists. Ticketing has been one of the main use cases for NFTs in the live entertainment industry as they can help verify ownership and prevent ticket scalping on the secondary market.
“When we launched Afterparty, we knew we were creating a new model for NFTs based on lifetime ‘membership’ access and IRL experiences,” said Afterparty CEO David Fields in a statement. “What we didn’t know was just how much and how fast the idea of ‘Coachella meets Art Basel’ would resonate with our dynamic community of investors, artists, creators and fans. Now, we are using that valuable support to create something that gives back to the entire music ecosystem.”
Following the success of its first festival last month, Afterparty will be hosting a second iteration in LA this fall. Fans will be able to access the festival only if they own an NFT from Afterparty’s upcoming Guardian collection, of which there will be 10,000.
These NFTs will also provide priority access to owners to purchase VIP tickets to subsequent editions of the festival, and will likely include other perks down the line — holders of other Afterparty NFTs have previously been granted access to experiences like live minting parties and exclusive artists performances.
“Afterparty’s mission has always been to open up the crypto and NFT world to everyone and show the possibilities of NFT technology for all creators and fans,” added Lauren Kolodny, Founding Partner at Acrew Capital and co-lead investor in Afterparty. “Afterparty’s NFT collection gives anyone who has ever been to a festival a way to understand the power of ‘NFTs for access’ and gives them ownership in the community they help build.”