Imperial Triumphant Guitarist Says He’s Earned More Money From NFTs Than From Music

Imperial Triumphant guitarist Zachary Ilya Ezrin joined us on a recent episode of The MetalSucks Podcast to discuss the band’s latest album, Alphaville, embracing all the changes that come into the music industry, making the band’s new live album available only on vinyl, and a host of other topics.

Ezrin also shared his thoughts on the burgeoning NFT trend. When asked by podcast host Petar Spajic for his thoughts on NFTs in the music industry, he responded:

“You should definitely get into NFTs. [I’m] not [involved with them] as much as I should be, but I definitely have made more money with NFTs than I have with music so… there’s definitely something to be [said] there.

“I think beyond that, people have such a negative outlook on the stuff. It’s really much more beneficial than people think, especially for the music industry which has just been getting destroyed, more and more, year after year.

“For one example, you can see there’s a company that’s starting to shoot up that are selling tickets on the blockchain as an NFT or something like that and that is unbelievable. So imagine you buy a ticket to a show and you have your ticket there, right? It’s there. You can’t like, lose it or anything. It exists on the blockchain and if you wanted to sell your ticket to someone, that person could verify that it’s real, it’s not like a fake ticket or a scam. They can verify it through the blockchain that it’s a real ticket, and then when they buy that ticket from you, the band that you bought it from gets a cut. I mean that already helps with the whole scalping issues and people trying to rip off bands.

“Then there’s a whole other world of perks that I see bands doing and I just think it’s really beneficial. I’m not so into like, a band just selling pictures as an NFT. ‘Cause we’re not visual artists, even if there’s a visual aspect. I think there should be something more to it, personally. But I don’t hate on NFTs as much as some other musicians seem to.

Alphaville is out now and you can stream it here.

Listen to our full chat with Ezrin below or right here.