The BRIT Awards with Mastercard Announce Their First NFT Collection With Serenade
The BRIT Awards with Mastercard, in partnership with eco-friendly NFT platform Serenade, have announced their first ever NFT collection to celebrate the 2022 award winners, following the ceremony on Tuesday 8th February at The O2 arena in London, broadcast exclusively on ITV and ITV Hub.
Designed by West Midlands-born digital artist MRE, who has worked with previous BRIT winners Dave and J Hus, this innovative collection of unique NFTs will commemorate the 2022 winning artists of categories including Artist of the Year, Best New Artist, Mastercard Album of the Year and the four new genre awards Alternative/Rock Act, Dance Act, Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act and Pop/R&B Act.
This groundbreaking initiative will offer music fans the opportunity to own a piece of music history and get closer to the winning artists by owning an official digital collectible associated with this significant career milestone. The limited edition NFTs, which will cost just £10 each, will also give fans who collect them all the chance to win tickets to next year’s BRIT Awards. The NFTs will be available from Wednesday 9th February, with purchases through credit or debit card over on serenade.co.
MRE said, “Working with The BRIT Awards to create something special to celebrate this year’s BRITs winners is a great opportunity to bring digital art and NFTs to a wider audience. This collaboration is helping develop new creative possibilities and to push the boundaries of what can be done to make music fans part of a wider experience.”
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is a unique digital asset with an individual identity that can be purchased for collection, trading or public display. NFTs cannot be faked or copied, giving each NFT intrinsic value for its owner. The BRITs will be the first ever UK awards show to partner with an NFT platform.
All proceeds raised from the sale of the NFTs will be donated to The BRIT Trust, the charity arm of The BRITs which distributes money raised from The BRIT Awards to organisations and charities that promote education and well-being through music, including The BRIT School and Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy.
Nominations for this year’s BRIT Awards were revealed before Christmas, with artists including Adele, Dave, Ed Sheeran, Little Simz, Sam Fender, Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Central Cee amongst the nominees. The winner of the BRITs Rising Star award has already been announced as Holly Humberstone, who will perform at the ceremony, along with Dave, Doja Cat, Ed Sheeran, Liam Gallagher and Little Simz, with more names to be announced soon.
Luke Ferrar, Innovation Director, Polydor Records + Co-Chair of BRITs Digital Committee: “We wanted to find a new way for fans to commemorate their favourite Artists winning a BRIT award. Creating a unique NFT felt like an interesting and different approach, and by pricing them at a reasonable cost (£10 charity donation) it allows more people to enter the emerging space of blockchain/digital Art. MRE is an incredible digital artist and I hope these can be displayed and remembered for years to come and that it challenges conventional ways to own and share a moment with an Artist, at the same time raising money for charity.”
Giuseppe De Cristofano, Director of Digital, BRIT Awards + Co-Chair of BRITs Digital Committee: “NFTs are an exciting new space for The BRIT Awards, and we feel it is really important that we take this opportunity to help support charities such as Nordoff Robbins and The BRIT School through The BRIT Trust by pricing the collectibles at just £10. We’re really excited by the creative from MRE, and we can’t wait to see how fans engage with the collection and commemorate with artists after The BRITs on February 8th!” Max Shand of Serenade, the NFT platform: “Serenade couldn’t be more excited to extend The BRIT Awards’ legacy of innovation and philanthropy into the NFT world with simplified eco-friendly digital collectibles, commemorating 2022’s award winners with digital trophies designed by the wonderful MRE. It’s a pleasure to work with such a credible and forward looking institution as The BRITs, and we look forward to a long, strategic partnership.”
Max Shand of Serenade, the NFT platform: “Serenade couldn’t be more excited to extend The BRIT Awards’ legacy of innovation and philanthropy into the NFT world with simplified eco-friendly digital collectibles, commemorating 2022’s award winners with digital trophies designed by the wonderful MRE. It’s a pleasure to work with such a credible and forward looking institution as The BRITs, and we look forward to a long, strategic partnership.”
Serenade’s Environmental Credentials Explained
Serenade NFT emits just 1/10th of the carbon of a tweet, which comes to 1/44,000th of the footprint of a normal NFT. We do this through an energy-efficient NFT authentication method called ‘Proof of Stake,’ a counterpoint to the standard Ethereum ‘Proof of Work’ method.
This marked improvement is a result of the Serenade platform being built on top of a layer two blockchain called Polygon. Polygon has a trusted relationship with Ethereum, which means it doesn’t have to go through the exhaustive process of proving every NFT transaction to the blockchain, but rather achieves this via collective proofs.
Not only does this lead to far better ecological outcomes, but it lowers the cost of creating NFTs so artists can be free to produce more work for their fanbases without bearing any gas fees.
Not sure what an NFT is? An NFT is essentially the same as a physical limited-edition merch item, like vinyl or an artwork, only a digital file. The owner holds the copy of the digital file but not the copyright within it, as they would with a physical item, and they can sell their item at any time to another fan.
