The debut album of the virtual band Gorillaz turns 20 today (a fact that I will try to forget immediately), and to celebrate the group will be holding the usual anniversary celebrations: relaunching albums, selling new products and, according to NME, selling NFTs.
This news has Broken me.
At this point, it is quite clear that NFTs are a thorny environmental issue – although it can be difficult to calculate exactly how bad they are in terms of carbon emissions, the picture does not look good. In general, seeing the torrent of news from the NFT, it has been easy to incite people to participate in a market that is doing real damage to the world: “Okay, Brand, I hope this marketing maneuver is worth firing on Earth? It turns out that it’s not so much fun when someone you really care about is doing it, especially if that artist has already done it an entire album on ecological destruction.
I don’t want to look like I’m trying to cancel Gorillaz, or say it’s bad for artists to make money. The artists should be paid absolutely more for their work, and I am totally in favor of them trying to invent new things to sell to fans willing to pay. But NFTs have a hard cost to justify, and seeing a band I like to seem to ignore that left me sitting in a Melancholy Hill. And I’m not Alone – there have been many other fans expressing their disappointment on Twitter. It probably doesn’t help that your eco-album was called Plastic beach, and they are reportedly working with a company called Superplastic to sell the NFTs. Life comes to you fast.
If you’re an artist, here’s a Song 2 repeat:
The NFT market has grown,
As the eight-digit auctions showed.
The general price is
A worse climate crisis
For art, you pretend to own it.– Limericking (@Limericking) March 15, 2021