This week’s Web3 Wrap includes the launch of new music NFT and discovery platform Sound, Richie Hawtin and deadmau5’s $4.5 million fundraise, Mirror’s new dashboard, Tupac’s posthumous NFT drop, and NFT releases from Surgeon, Jay Daniel, Teen Daze, and many more.

Dive in below to check it all out.

New Music NFT Platform Sound Launches

New music NFT and discovery platform Sound launched this week.

Sound will aim to power the next generation of artists with a set of Web3 music and economic tools with the mission to allow a million artists to make a living off of their art. Sound allows artists to debut new music using a listening parties feature and by offering limited edition NFTs. Early editions are notably more valuable than later editions, so it looks to reward early adopters and put value back in the art of discovery.

On the fan side, owning a song’s NFT allows the fan to comment on the track while they are an owner; if they sell the NFT, the comment disappears and is replaced with the new owner’s comment. Each song is also embedded with one “golden egg” randomly positioned somewhere on the track’s timestamp. If an owner comments on the track at the point of the golden egg then the NFT gets upgraded to a 1/1 edition with a unique artwork chosen by the artist. The golden eggs are announced once the song sells out. Sound NFTs are also a fan’s access pass to the Sound community on Discord where “artists and listeners interact with each other through weekly hangouts, collaborative projects, and more.”

Sound is onboarding artists one by one, with three artists onboarded so far: Oshi, Grady, and Daniel Allan, with all three selling out their drops within the first hour.

You can read more about the launch here and check out the platform here.

MakersPlace to Release New Tupac Jewelry NFTs

MakersPlace and the Shakur Estate have announced a new drop featuring jewelry designs inspired by Tupac’s own jewelry.

The upcoming drop, called The Immortal Collection, is set to release on December 15 and will feature four pieces created by NFT artist Impossible Brief, titled ACTIVIST, ARTIST, SAINT, and SINNER. The NFT designs draw from and incorporate some of the most well-known pieces from Tupac’s collection, including his 2PAC and diamond solitaire rings, his Makaveli bracelet, and the medallion he wore in the last photo ever taken of him. 

The drop gives fans a first look at some of the items to be featured in the upcoming museum experience titled Tupac Shakur. Wake Me When I’m Free., which opens in January 2022.

You can find out more on the drop here.

deadmau5 and Richie Hawtin’s Gaming Platform PIXELYNX Announces $4.5 Million Seed Investment Round

PIXELYNX, Joel Zimmermann (a.k.a. deadmau5) and Richie Hawtin’s gaming platform, this week announced the closure of a $4.5 million seed investment round.

PIXELYNX was founded by Hawtin, Zimmermann, and music and gaming industry veterans Ben Turner, Dean Wilson, and Inder Phull to offer “an exciting new physical and digital music ecosystem for artists to launch and control their own interactive experiences through playable worlds and NFTs.” PIXELYNX partnered with Niantic’s Lightship SDK, the creators of Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Ingress to create a new virtual world platform called Musicverse. The company also has a funding and incubation arm called LynxLabs.

The $4.5 million round was led by Animoca Brands and included investment from Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, Republic Realm, and Sfermion, among others.

The platform is due to launch in 2022.

Mirror Gets a New Dashboard

Earlier this week, Mirror released a new dashboard for users.

The new dashboard provides an improved structure to manage Mirror’s myriad features, including crowdfunding, NFT Editions, Splits, Publishing, Auctions, and the new Token Race feature, which allows individuals and DAOs to have their community involved in decision-making via voting. There is now also an easily accessible feature to switch between accounts for those managing or contributing to more than one .eth address, plus a light and dark mode. Mirror has also noted that there is an “abundance of room for all the exciting features and integrations” the platform has on the way, so keep an eye out for more.

You can check out the new dashboard and read through the features here.

XLR8R’s Favorite Music NFT Drops, Featuring Jay Daniel, Kamran Sadeghi, Surgeon, Jansport J, and More

Moving forward, every other week, our Web3 Wraps will include XLR8R’s picks from the music NFT ecosystem. This week, we trawled the latest releases on Catalog and Nina, our picks of which are detailed below.

On Catalog, Teen Daze dropped a dreamy neo-house cut inspired by Akira; Haleek Maul seals another record-breaking 25 ETH sale in “Violate,” with three more cuts available; Pussy Riot teams up with Boys Noize for a punked-up slice of proto-techno; Jansport J’s genesis beat tape lands with the silky grooves of “Nights Like These”; GRGNWMN offers up fierce bars and beats on “SECOND WIND / A_U”; and XLR8R favorite Jay Daniel delivers two cuts, an ambient piece and a breaks-driven house track, pulled from his forthcoming album.

Nina also saw a raft of killer drops, including Surgeon’s double pack of sophisticated house and techno hybrids; Igor Dyachenko’s modular synthesizer exercise, featuring art from his neural research; a nuclear tower sound installation recording by Kamran Sadeghi; Bergonist’s searing beat science; a stunning five-piece series of forward-thinking electronics by Feu St-Antoine; and chugging sci-fi disco by Space Dimension Controller.

What to Join and Who to Follow:

Michail Stangl: Zora’s Head of Culture and key music-industry figure.

David Rudnick: renowned designer and cultural thinker.

Arpeggi Labs: world-first on-chain DAW.

David Greenstein: Sound co-founder.