After buying “Death Row Records” from the “MNRK” music group, famous L.A. rapper Snoop Dogg has pulled Death Row affiliated records from major streaming services such as Spotify in order to mint them into NFTs. Snoop Dogg aims to make the record’s music more lucrative as artists are underpaid in today’s streaming age, with major platforms such as Spotify only paying from $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream for most artists. Although the rapper wanted to make music more lucrative, many fans, such as Senior Zach Manack, have complained that his NFT minting of the music has made it less accessible, going against the core message of the music.

“Rappers like Snoop, Tupac, and Dre made music that was supposed to be for the people, making it into NFTs just takes it away from them,” says Manack. “Artists deserve to be paid more, but the listeners shouldn’t be losing out because of it.”

 For years the aforementioned artists have been preaching about social justice, community ties, and rising to financial freedom after difficult upbringings. If the music is minted into NFTs it takes away the music from the common folk and brings it to the elite few, which means the music won’t even be enjoyed by the people it was made for. Snoop Dogg reported that he made $21 million within the metaverse on the first day of his most recent album Bacc On Death Row (BODR). Most of his profits came from a collection of NFTs that sold for $5,000 apiece, along with another collection that sold for 0.1 ETH each.  They were initially around $300 at the time of release. Although it sold quickly in the metaverse, BODR didn’t perform well on more traditional services. The rapper claimed that he had less than 10 million streams total, as well as a mere 34,000 downloads. With the music not performing well, it’s easy to question if the music’s success was only due to the novelty of the idea, a novelty that is unstable and can wear off quickly. 

Snoop Dogg also expressed how the music was minted as a way for the label to give back to the fans. ”Now you actually own something that’s actually yours that you can profit off of.”

 Unfortunately, the instability of the NFT market has been especially apparent within the last few weeks with Bitcoin losing over 25% of its value and Ethereum losing over 30% of its value over the last month. Even major Wall Street competitors such as Morgan Stanley are warning consumers about predicted price crashes within NFTs. NFTs aren’t a commodity for the average fan, they’re a commodity for those that can afford to lose significant funds while essentially gambling with cryptocurrencies. Minting music into NFTs isn’t a thing that can give back to the fans, it takes away from the masses. Music being taken off of popular streaming platforms and being minted into NFTs goes against the core message of the original music.