In 2021 and 2022, when the non-fungible token house and the broader crypto market had been flying excessive, music NFT platform OneOf raised tens of millions. Now, some who dropped 1000’s on the corporate’s tokens declare they’re lacking out on promised advantages and assist whereas holding digital items price a fraction of their preliminary value.
Greater than two years have handed since OneOf introduced it had secured $63 million in seed funding and garnered the backing of trade powerhouse Quincy Jones. And all through the next 12 months or so, different non-fungible token (NFT) startups would go on to disclose multimillion-dollar raises of their very own – to the tune of over $100 million in funding disclosed particularly by music NFT firms.
Accompanying these raises had been all method of attention-grabbing headlines – involving the sale of total NFT collections and the large value tags attributed to sure tokens – as key stakeholders predicted that the continued embrace of the know-how at hand would essentially change the music trade.
Alongside the way in which, OneOf specifically made waves within the music world, together with by partnering with iHeartRadio, the Grammys, and Warner Music Group, to call a number of. August of 2022 then noticed the Tezos- and Polygon-built platform unveil an $8 million increase with assist from Amex Ventures.
However some imagine that OneOf’s operational actuality starkly contrasts the optimism implied by latest headlines and social-media posts.
In opposition to the backdrop of rising charges and a well-documented crypto winter, an NFT purchaser described to Digital Music Information an alleged failure on the a part of OneOf to comply with by way of on key guarantees, hold alive the communities behind its tokens, and transparently talk with those that’d participated in even the costliest of “drops.”
Having initially been drawn to OneOf by Quincy Jones’ involvement – “you realize, all that hype and every little thing” – the investor mentioned he’d participated in practically each drop from the corporate’s inception till early 2023. All instructed, he estimated that he’d bought 1,500 to 2,000 tokens through OneOf for a cumulative $40,000.
“There was a extremely, actually robust neighborhood at one level, and folks simply regularly bought bored with the dearth of achievement, the dearth of transparency, the withdrawal from contact of the management and the founders,” the investor defined to DMN.
This alleged lack of achievement, he mentioned, was maybe most evident with regard to the “Sky’s the Restrict: The Infamous B.I.G. NFT Assortment.” First detailed with the legendary rapper’s property in June of 2022, the three,000-token providing would per its formal launch allow contributors “to collectively license the audio of Biggie Smalls’ most well-known freestyle.”
Moreover, OneOf and the opposite concerned events of their launch promised holders “first entry to The Brook, a life-style, trend, tradition, music, leisure metaverse expertise launching quickly with BIGGIE’s hyper life like avatar as a personality.”
Whereas the Biggie drop reportedly offered out in 10 minutes – producing “over $300,000 in income,” per the LinkedIn profile of OneOf’s social media coordinator – no such metaverse expertise had arrived on the time of writing. Little greater than a flashy trailer for the as-yet-undelivered digital world had been launched, and the net deal with featured in mentioned trailer, TheBrook.io, was completely inactive.
Additionally created for the Biggie drop had been 10 “gold microphone” digital objects that the investor instructed us had been anticipated to be “randomly airdropped” to purchasers. However in accordance with the person and a number of posts on OneOf’s official Discord server, prospects acquired only a small portion of the ten microphones.
“The one method we discovered that they did this was by noticing no one was speaking about getting one,” he mentioned. “As a result of within the Discord everybody was speaking to everybody.”
OneOf’s roughly 23,000-member Discord server remained energetic – and featured different complaints from these described as NFT holders – when this piece was revealed. “Considered one of [sic] is simply promoting artwork it’s not an funding except you discover a particular purchaser who likes jpgs,” one particular person wrote on the Biggie thread in late June. “This undertaking was liquidity for somebody however not us.”
“This undertaking is lifeless. Oneof bought their cash and has moved on. … The Brook.io (one among our ‘perks’) web site hasn’t labored for months,” commented one other, with a 3rd having described the scenario as “100% a rug pull.”
“OneOf and the creators of this one performed everybody,” a distinct critic claimed in a late-June put up concerning the Biggie NFTs. “tf is even occurring with the Fulton freestyle all of us supposedly personal a % of[?]”
A OneOf consultant didn’t reply to DMN’s request for remark concerning the standing of The Brook, the corporate’s current crew dimension, and different subjects.
Past the alleged failure to ship promised NFT advantages, OneOf noticed high-profile partnerships – together with with the aforementioned Grammys and iHeartRadio – fizzle out regardless of having been set in movement by multiyear pacts, in accordance with the investor and the platform’s token drops.
“They’d a three-year take care of iHeartRadio Pageant,” he instructed DMN. “The primary drop was actually, actually good. After which the subsequent pageant got here round – nothing. There was no announcement. They simply didn’t do it. And the identical factor with the Grammys. They’d a fairly good drop with the Grammys, they’d two or three events in Las Vegas on the Grammys.
“We seen, ‘Nicely, the Grammys are arising they usually haven’t mentioned a phrase.’ I lastly bought a solution like two weeks earlier than the [65th Annual] Grammys, ‘Oh, they’re not on the schedule.’ That’s all they might say. And in order that’s two three-year contracts that appear to have fizzled out. No bulletins,” he continued.
Of their 2021 announcement message, the Grammys and OneOf did in actual fact emphasize that they’d “teamed up for an unique partnership to launch NFTs that can commemorate the sixty fourth, sixty fifth and 66th Annual GRAMMY Awards.”
Although a drop didn’t seem to coincide with the sixty fifth Grammys, OneOf in October of 2022 reiterated a separate deal centering on the Latin Grammys. And in a launch about their very own August of 2021 settlement, iHeartRadio and OneOf didn’t level to a particular timeframe for the union. OneOf introduced a tie-up with iHeartRadio’s The Breakfast Membership program in February of 2022, nevertheless.
However the ensuing difficult-to-quantify neighborhood and sale-price impacts, a number of NFT holders lately tried to promote their digital items at losses by way of the OneOf Discord – “affords will likely be accepted in search of 500$ i paid 999$,” a person penned of a G-Eazy token that appeared to incorporate two VIP tickets to one of many rapper’s reveals.
A personnel discount, together with a number of government departures, accompanied OneOf’s described operational scale-back; the entity had roughly 80 crew members following its $64 million increase, the investor estimated.
However, Refresh Miami in a February of 2022 article talked about Miami-headquartered OneOf’s having “round 60 staff.” On the time of this writing, the enterprise was displaying on LinkedIn a “firm dimension” of between 51 and 200 staff, with 54 of the people on the networking platform itself.
Upon reviewing the related profiles, although, DMN discovered that a number of of the professionals had been concurrently holding roles at seemingly unrelated organizations (Adweek, DropChain, and extra).
Others, as buyers whose companies had backed the corporate, didn’t truly maintain positions at OneOf. And a lot of totally different crew members had been concurrently working for Quincy Jones Productions, making the extent of their day-to-day involvement with OneOf unclear.
2022 and 2023’s opening half additionally introduced the quiet departures of the platform’s director of occasions, head of promoting, director of technique and manufacturing, senior director of product, VP of artist acquisitions, lead advertising and marketing copywriter, artist relations supervisor, and chief know-how officer, per the now-former OneOf staff’ LinkedIn profiles.
Regardless of these factors and a purported dramatic slowdown in on-platform NFT gross sales – “{the marketplace} is sort of completely inactive; no one’s shopping for something,” the investor mentioned – OneOf added former Warner Music Group head Stephen Cooper to its board in February.
Then, the entity quietly purchased enterprise-focused Faucet Community in April, supplied “free digital collectibles” for a TLC-Songvest partnership in Might, accomplished a “Jimi Hendrix – Contact Sheet Prints” drop in June, and debuted a sequence of GLOrdinal NFTs in July – with execs teasing on social media a “Center East and Africa enlargement.”
Based on the longtime OneOf person and NFT investor we spoke with, nevertheless, the perceived lack of assist and neighborhood behind prior tasks will undermine confidence in any future initiatives amongst veteran and potential prospects alike.
“I couldn’t look myself within the mirror if I had taken $1 million or $2 million from 2,000 individuals over the past two years and simply fully left them excessive and dry with no guarantees of something for the long run,” he mentioned. “And that’s principally the place we’re.”