Back in January of 2022, I was about to take my first flight post lockdown, so I asked Twitter for advice on masks.

One of the first people to respond was an old college friend of mine, Emilyn Brodsky:

Emilyn is a rad musician. She’s opened for bands like The Magnetic Fields and The Dresden Dolls. She’s been making and releasing music since 2003.

Anyway, through the magic of Twitter, Yuri Beats, who works at Zora, saw this exchange. It turns out Yuri is a long time fan of Emilyn’s:

This heartwarming internet moment made me incredibly happy. But it’s what Yuri said next that really got me:

Of course, for Emilyn, the phrase “1e reserve” meant nothing, so I DM’d her to explain that Yuri was saying that he actively wanted to pay her a couple thousand dollars for an NFT of an old song he loved from her MySpace.

This, to me, is the purest expression of the value of music NFTs. Every single person reading this, whether you’re into NFTs or not, can think of a song from your past that has meant something to you. Songs are magical feeling-containers for the most important moments in our lives. They are time machines.

Here’s what Yuri had to say specifically about that MySpace demo version of Emilyn’s song “New and Fun”:

That demo is layered with the meaning and context of a confused youth in a fragile and lost place. Pre-Giuliani Tompkins Square Park doesn’t exist anymore, and even if it did, I don’t live on Avenue A anymore and also I’m not 15. ‘New and Fun’ is a personal map of memory, a series of vibrations that transport me back to a very specific place and time.

Music NFTs offer a way for that song to exist out in the world again, to be enjoyed by new fans and old, while also giving Yuri the opportunity to show Emilyn how much he valued the song, while also allowing him to form an even deeper connection with the song by collecting it.

I want to live in the world where this is possible for every single song.