Revolutionizing The World of Music Through NFTs and Social Tokens

The IE Fintech Club, in collaboration with the IE Crypto Club, hosted William Bailey, the CEO and co-founder of Bolero Music, who shared his experience in the world of music Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Social Tokens with IE Business School students. Bolero talked about his process of attracting investors for his project, how he got inspiration for this idea and how he executed it with his co-founder to give musicians’ careers new meaning through Web 3.0.

Bolero Music is a blockchain-based platform for investing in music through tokens and NFTs that aims to bring fans closer to their favorite artists as well as grow their investments through the artists’ careers. It also helps artists gain another source of income through the tokenization of their music and their careers.

“The mission of Bolero Music is to help artists and their teams make a better living from their art and figure out ways of creating recurring revenue for the artists to support them through their whole career,” Bailey said. “For the fans, it is all about helping them create a tighter relationship with their favorite artists through social tokens which are basically memberships or stakes from the artists’ career which provides fans with exclusive rewards and access.”

More than 70 IE students and alumni listened as Bailey told the story of founding Bolero music in France and the level of commitment required of him and his co-founder who left their jobs in order to dedicate themselves fully to the project.

The world of NFTs and social tokens is ever-evolving and timing is key, Bailey said. For him, speed was essential given that, when they started, they had three competitors in the same sector and less than one year later, there are now 25.

“One of my biggest learnings from this experience has been to execute fast because if we hadn’t had the energy and motivation to build our project when we first had the idea, we would be way behind the competition. In this world you need to be able to execute fast in order to stay in the race.”

WILLIAM BAILEY, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER OF BOLERO MUSIC

In addition to sharing his experience with a topic trending in the media for several months, Bailey offered tips about becoming a young entrepreneur and urged students to jump into their dreams and execute their ideas.

“Bringing professionals like William inspires the students because we are all capable of something equivalent. It’s all about just going for it, as William said,” said attendee Max Harding, an IE Masters student in the IE School of Human Sciences and Technologies (HST).

The talk was moderated by Phillipe Henderson, a computer science masters student at IE, who is interested in blockchain technology. He moderated the talk with a series of questions for Bailey that kept the audience engaged throughout, as well as took questions in between the session. What most of the audience appreciated was the speaker’s transparency and approachability about the project.