Muse is just weeks away from releasing their ninth studio album Will of the People, which will have an NFT (non-fungible token) edition. When it drops on August 26th, it will also become the first of its kind to quality for the charts in the UK and Australia. According to The Guardian, this will be the first new format to be added to the music charts since album streams in 2015.
One of the biggest concerns and complaints about NFTs and cryptocurrency, in general, is the amount of energy it takes to power the entire process. "Individual pieces of crypto art, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are at least partially responsible for the millions of tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions generated by the cryptocurrencies used to buy and sell them," explains writer Justine Calma in a 2021 piece on NFT's climate controversy for The Verge.
That's why the British rockers opted for the album to be sold via the "eco-friendly" NFT platform Serenade. The company's founder Max Shand said the Muse release is "the black T-shirt of NFTs." For starters, fans won't need a crypto wallet to buy the album. “What a fan wants is something simple and understandable but that gives them a sense of proximity to an artist and a sense of recognition from other fans,” Shand explained.
However, this isn't Muse's first time in the crypto world. The band has previously worked with blockchain platform CryptoKitties in 2020 to create digital collectibles. Ahead of the album's release, Muse has dropped several singles including "Kill Or Be Killed," "Will of The People," and "Compliance."