PROVO, UT (CelebrityAccess) – The NFT community has been running hot as of late and this time they appear to be selling music they don’t own. The latest culprit is HitPiece, a site which is currently listing auctions for music from major companies like Disney and The Pokémon Company. In addition, NFTs are listed from artists such as Eve5, Jack Antonoff (Bleachers), John Lennon, Taylor Swift, and more obscure acts like clipping., MUNA and more.
Numerous artists have lit up Twitter to complain about HitPiece selling their music as NFTs without their permission. On their website, HitPiece claims to sell one-of-one NFTs, meaning that each one sold is singular and unique. “Each HitPiece NFT is a One of One NFT for each unique song recording,” said on the website. “Members build their Hitlist, get on leaderboards and receive in real life value such as access and experiences with Artists.” Except, according to the artists, they don’t have any authority to do so.
Via LinkedIn, HitPiece’s co-founder is listed as Rory Felton with Michael Berrin as Chief Creative Officer. It states the company was founded out of Provo, UT in 2021 and lists Blake Modersitzki (venture capitalist) and Ryan Singer.
HitPiece has responded to the numerous Twitter rages with “requests for DMs and claimed that music made it to their platform via “music distributor”. HitPiece specially tells musician Al Riggs via DM, “Your content is on our site via Spotify’s API”, as Riggs shared the shot on social media.
Update pic.twitter.com/C4iptrWpRW
— 𝖆𝖑𝖊𝖝 𝕽𝖎𝖌𝖌𝖘 𝖒𝖚𝖘𝖎𝖈 𝖆𝖑𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙 (@alRiggsMusicOk) February 1, 2022
HitPiece has also released a statement via their Twitter page.
“Clearly we have struck a nerve and are very eager to create the ideal experience for music fans. To be clear, artists get paid when digital goods are sold on HitPiece. Like all beta products, we are continuing to listen to all user feedback and are committed to evolving the product to fit the needs of the artists, labels, and fans alike.”
See below for some of the tweets in relation to HitPiece.
Jack Antonoff: “Any bleachers NFTs are fake. At the moment I do not believe in NFTs so anything you see associated with me isn’t real. And thanks to M for sending me this bullshit 🙂 I’m on one today!”
Eve6: “Cease and desist motherf-ckers. NFTs are fraud.” In a follow-up, they called NFTs a “multi-level marketing scam” that are “awful for artists.”
clipping.: “Thanks for the heads up. We’re looking into what we can do to get it taken down. F-ck this scam shit”
Ted Leo: “Bottom feeding scavengers of late capitalism sucking the last marrow from our bones and/or running a scam on me, you, or everyone, because obviously, I didn’t approve this and apparently neither did anyone else you’ll see on the site”
Earlier today the HitPiece website was sending out a 404 Error, however as of press time you cannot access any auctions and it simply reads, “We Started the Conversation and We’re Listening.” Well, so is everyone else.
