My personal belief is that women in NFTs need to be pushing for our space in every single vertical — and we know that women have always been a core driver in cultural change and evolution through music. We know that the strides we’ve made in women’s rights have been taken to a soundtrack of Aretha Franklin, Joan Jett, Beyonce and Bikini Kill. As we expand our presence and our power in NFTs, we need to be doing the same thing in NFT music.

NFT music has so much potential to be a gamechanger for the entire ecosystem. I love playing my vinyl records. I also really enjoy streaming on Spotify. But, at the end of the day, I still feel like something’s missing. I’m a music fan — almost a music tragic — and I am a collector. But I spend so much of my time living digitally that it doesn’t make sense for the music I collect to be purely physical.

I also feel a sense of anxiety when I think about the state of affairs for music. We have a massive opportunity to build a fairer and more democratic future for artists, but we’re in danger of getting left behind due largely to an industry that has stuck with out-of-date business models and isn’t ready (or willing) to embrace new technologies…

That’s why projects that focus on building an advantage for musicians on the blockchain matter so much: they’ve begun to break down the silos that separate people who love music, building a future where we can be fans of artists without necessarily being fans of labels or distribution channels instead. When we consider how much women are disadvantaged and often exploited by the music industry, the value of this becomes even clearer.

So many blockchain projects are trying to recreate the wheel, focusing on what they think is most important for their specific ecosystem. But it’s important that we see this big picture. Music NFTs will only succeed if they focus on what benefits musicians most — better distribution, fairer compensations and better relationships with their fans. And in the case of women and femme musicians — true independence from systems and structures designed to take from us instead of empowering us.

Every time I read about yet another artist getting ripped off by a label or publisher, I feel like something needs to change. As musicians ourselves (and sonically as obsessed as it’s possible to be), we’re acutely aware of the problems with the music industry and the challenges that artists face in their lives and careers.

We know that fans, traders and crypto adopters all over the world are already using blockchain-based tokens and collectibles to show their love for artists and demonstrate their personal connection with subcultures and vibes. We want music to take that same place.

This is why I’m excited about NFTs — Non-Fungible Tokens — that represent music. These are tokens on the blockchain that represent evidence of a certain song, album or artist that lives in my collection. These are tradable songs, tradable, limited edition pieces by artists that I love and respect.

The blockchain means that the music I bring into my collection can be traded and sold on peer-to-peer networks without international borders, with less fees and much faster payments. I’ve written before about why this matters for artists, but it also makes complete sense as for me as a music fan.

NFTs are just getting started — and we are early enough that right now we’re still in the Web3 equivalent of the Netscape era — but I’m excited about what they mean for the future of music. We’re going to be supporting these projects in their early life and we’ll be helping them integrate with existing platforms.

For Riot Grrrls the first part of our mission is bringing more women into NFT music. We are offering artist grants of $1,000-$2,000 to directly fund women on the blockchain and help them record, release, distribute and mint their music. It’s a mission that’s close to my heart as an artist, and I could not be more excited by it.