How HitPiece Rebounded and Relaunched After Controversy

Rory Felton has spent most of his past two decades in music being pro-artist. He developed talent and sold millions of records under his Militia Group label that he co-founded and eventually sold to Sony. In the early days of social media, Rory worked with Top 40 artists and majors to monetize on these new platforms. That’s why it was ironic that Rory was recently criticized for being anti-artist. 

Rory founded HitPiece two years ago. HitPiece is an NFT marketplace focused solely on music collections. While in beta earlier this year, unauthorized NFTs from big-name artists became available for purchase on HitPiece. HitPiece was hit with wide-spread backlash from artists, the RIAA, and many others for copyright infringement. The company quickly went dark while the team recalibrated its business.

Months later, HitPiece has now re-launched. This time with strictly-authenticated collections on-site from rising artists like ATL Jacob, Pyrex Whippa, and proven commodities such as Rick Ross. A metaverse add-on is also in the works to virtually display purchased NFTs. In many ways, the industry-wide blowback changed both Rory and HitPiece. The company’s intent has stayed consistent from the get-go: to make NFTs easy for both artists and fans.

Rory joined me on the show to cover what went wrong with HitPiece earlier this year, why this relaunch is different, and the opportunities and challenges NFTs have inside the music industry. Here’s everything we covered:

[2:58] Rory’s two decades in the industry pre-HitPiece

[6:07] “Best time in human history to be an artist” 

[9:19] What went wrong with HitPiece’s beta release

[13:33] Re-gaining industry trust after the backlash 

[16:22] Did HitPiece consider rebranding?

[19:12] How HitPiece built a collection with rising star ATL Jacob

[20:27] Web3 co-existing with industry, not replacing it

[27:34] Building out a music-centric metaverse 

[33:32] How HitPiece will compete against Facebook, Opensea, and other big players

[35:57] Types of NFT collections on HitPiece

[39:00] How to win the music industry in 2022 and onward 

[43:17] HitPiece plans for 2023

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Host: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co

Guests: Rory Felton, @Roryfelton

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TRANSCRIPTION

[00:00:00] Rory Felton: We think this space is for everyone. And we think that the smallest artists on the planet can actually benefit from Web 3.0 in a way that maybe streaming isn't changing the game for them right now. For instance, we've worked with baby developing artists that are making more money from Web 3.0 in one launch of an NFT collection than they would over two to three months from streaming. In general, we all think music's the coolest thing in the world. And so we want to revalue it in a way that maybe NFTs allow us to that technology hasn't enabled in the past.

[00:00:40] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment,