The Bored Ape duo recently debuted in the metaverse with “Drip,” exclusively on Sound.xyz. Boardroom gained insight from Manager Myles about the move.
“Music done. The apes are getting restless.”
That tweet came from the formerly cryptic Twitter account for Bored Brothers in mid-March.
Days later, Bored Ape #1554 and Ape #4951 posted a snippet and a thank you to Bored Ape Yacht Club for creating its own cryptocurrency token, ApeCoin ($APE), because it “just made this whole project better.”
OneRepublic frontman and ubiquitous songwriter/producer Ryan Tedder posted the same clip to his personal Instagram account and clarified that he and Kygo are “overseeing this project as co-EPs & writers/[producers]…. The Apes do the rest.”
In other words, Kygo and Tedder’s Apes are fronting an animated metaverse band, and all of the bread crumbs were leading to Bored Brothers’ debut music NFT “DRIP.”
It dropped exclusively on Sound.xyz on April 22.
And sold out just as swiftly: 300 collectors, 30 ETH.
“The music NFT represents a limited relationship between the artist and collector, an emotional connection to the music as art, and the signal of those to other people that would find it meaningful as well,” Myles Shear explained to Boardroom over email. “It’s ownership in the form of collecting and removes the valuation cap the current system has placed on music and musicians.”
Bored Brothers further solidifies the innovative reputations Kygo and Tedder have respectively built for consistently being at the cutting edge of music and industry trends.
Boardroom gained more insight into the project from Manager Myles below.
BOARDROOM: Since 2016, you’ve been diving deep into crypto. When did you first see it reshaping the business of music?
Myles Shear: The NFT culture around art and music really started around 2018. There were earlier conversations about all forms of media being disrupted by crypto, including music, and eventually, it took NFTs as a foundation to kickstart the journey. From early 2018 through 2020, crypto art grew as a sector, and music starting infusing with it. By early 2021, major music producers were doing music x art NFT drops on popular crypto art marketplaces. We did Kygo’s AudioVisual NFT in March of 2021 on Nifty Gateway and Sam Feldt’s in April.
It was the conversion between art and music as NFTs that ended up opening the gateway to pure music NFTs. This is where musicians were starting to release their music as NFTs, and the only visual component was something as simple as single or album cover art. The foundation for reshaping the music industry really begins around Music NFTs. It adjusts the way people think about the value of music and artists being able to connect directly with their audiences and have their audience pay what it’s worth to hold their music NFTs.
You’re always one to “get on the bus.” Why is Bored Brothers the next door you and Kygo are opening?
Bored Brothers is an evolution of NFT-enabled digital ownership innovation — and music NFTs. We’ve gone from CryptoPunks being NFTs to Bored Apes being NFTs that give the NFT holder commercial rights. This allows the NFT to be an entity, and for producers to make music for the NFTs. And the Bored Brothers are using Bored Apes as their characters that are releasing their music as music NFTs. Bored Brothers shows how producers and musicians can leverage the brand of major NFT projects and the innovation of digital ownership to build a brand for themselves while using crypto native tools for their content.
Why is Bored Ape the NFT project/partner that spoke most to Palm Tree Crew when forming this group?
Bored Apes were at the forefront of digital ownership innovation by giving all the NFT characters full commercial licenses. And their popularity in culture has built a strong community and recognizable brand. Bored Apes hands each NFT character a platform to build on the foundation of an existing community and exciting image.
Should Bored Brothers be seen as a separate entity from Kygo or rather the evolution of his catalog?
Bored Brothers is a new band, a metaverse band, with a new sound. As avid NFT [and] Web3 enthusiasts, they conceived the idea of auditioning some of their Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) apes to form an animated, multi-genre duo based primarily on dance and hip-hop. This project stems from an overwhelming desire to curate and create music outside their respective genres. They’re flirting with everything from deep house to Miami bass and deeper dance genres like Phonk.
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