Rory Felton has spent most of his past two decades in music being pro-artist. He developed talent and sold millions of records under his Militia Group label that he co-founded and eventually sold to Sony. In the early days of social media, Rory worked with Top 40 artists and majors to monetize on these new platforms. That’s why it was ironic that Rory was recently criticized for being anti-artist.

Rory founded HitPiece two years ago. HitPiece is an NFT marketplace focused solely on music collections. While in beta earlier this year, unauthorized NFTs from big-name artists became available for purchase on HitPiece. HitPiece was hit with wide-spread backlash from artists, the RIAA, and many others for copyright infringement. The company quickly went dark while the team recalibrated its business.

Months later, HitPiece has now re-launched. This time with strictly-authenticated collections on-site from rising artists like ATL Jacob, Pyrex Whippa, and proven commodities such as Rick Ross. A metaverse add-on is also in the works to virtually display purchased NFTs. In many ways, the industry-wide blowback changed both Rory and HitPiece. The company’s intent has stayed consistent from the get-go: to make NFTs easy for both artists and fans.

Rory joined me on the show to cover what went wrong with HitPiece earlier this year, why this relaunch is different, and the opportunities and challenges NFTs have inside the music industry. Here’s everything we covered:

0:50 Rory’s two decades in the industry pre-HitPiece
4:12 “Best time in human history to be an artist”
7:10 What went wrong with HitPiece’s beta release
12:23 Re-gaining industry trust after the backlash
15:42 Did HitPiece consider rebranding?
18:39 How HitPiece built a collection with rising star ATL Jacob
21:57 Web3 co-existing with industry, not replacing it
27:53 Building out a music-centric metaverse
30:54 A virtual display experience is what’s missing from NFTs right now
33:07 How HitPiece will compete against Facebook, Opensea, and other big players
38:26 Types of NFT collections on HitPiece
40:22 How to win the music industry in 2022 and onward
45:28 HitPiece plans for 2023

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