Dallas choir Verdigris Ensemble turns unique digital music piece into $375,000 NFT windfall at auction

The craze to own digital art and media known as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is still going strong.

The Verdigris Ensemble, an innovative choir based in Dallas, sold a digital work last weekend at online auction. Total sales from the auction came to more than $375,000. The auction was conducted using a form of cryptocurrency called ether.

Composed by Nicholas Reeves, the 21-minute piece, Betty’s Notebook, incorporates prerecorded sounds and a 16-voice choir. Verdigris released the composition on the blockchain, an online ledger system that keeps track of transactions made in cryptocurrency, in five separate NFTs.

These consist of a master recording and four components of that recording. Each component comes with three different MP3 files. Whoever owns the components can switch between the different MP3 files online, changing how Betty’s Notebook sounds on the blockchain.

Metapurse, which claims to be the largest cryptocurrency NFT fund in the world, gobbled up the master recording and three of the components at the auction. (The fourth component was bought by MaximoNX.) Metapurse made national headlines in March when they paid $69.3 million at a Christie’s auction for a collage by artist Mike Winkelmann, who goes by Beeple. That auction marked the first time that Christie’s sold entirely digital art.

Metapurse plans on putting Betty’s Notebook into a virtual space, kind of like a gallery or museum, where users can view and interact with the work, said Anand Venkateswaran, a.k.a. Twobadour, the steward of Metapurse. Venkateswaran jointly runs the company with its Singapore-based founder, Vignesh Sundaresan, whose alias is MetaKovan.

“2020 had all been about crypto art,” said Venkateswaran, who lives in Chennai, India. “We believe that Betty’s Notebook is the birth of crypto music. It makes music truly ‘crypto native’,” meaning the piece is designed and meant for consumption on the blockchain, instead of simply being added to it as a NFT. “You can’t have Betty’s Notebook without the blockchain.”

Based on the results of the auction, Metapurse was eager to buy the piece. The fund was behind two of the three accounts that bid on the master recording and the individual components, according to Venkateswaran. In the case of the master recording, Metapurse even outbid its initial offering. “It felt like it deserved something more,” Venkateswaran said.

While the NFTs have no physical existence, Verdigris is repurposing a 1930s radio console that’ll be equipped to play the master recording of Betty’s Notebook. The console will also feature digital art by Bryan Brinkman, a graphic artist and animator, on an LCD screen.

Metapurse will own the console, but will allow Verdigris to lend it to interested museums. Verdigris hopes to loan it to an area museum like the Dallas Contemporary or the Fort Worth Modern, said Sam Brukhman, director of the ensemble.