Artist and Elon Musk Ex-Partner Grimes Made More Money From NFT Sales Than Music

Claire Elise Boucher, known professionally as Grimes, has raked in around $6 million from her NFT collection. 

In a recent interview with technology magazine Wired, the Canadian musician and Elon Musk‘s former partner confirmed that she managed to make more money off of NFTs than she has made across her entire music career.

“Yes, that went really well,” she said. ” I’m sad about what happened to NFTs and crypto, because it got polluted fast with people trying to make as much money as possible.”

In 2021, Grimes launched her “War Nymph” NFT collection via the Nifty Gateway marketplace. 

The collection featured a series of digital artworks set to her music, as well as a one-of-one music video that sold for almost $400,000.

Grimes said that the project was actually his brother’s idea. “We wound up doing one of the first big ones. It did actually change my life,” she added. 

Beyond just NFTs, the Canadian artist is also bullish on Web3. 

In March 2022, she spoke at the Avalanche Summit in Spain, explaining her plans to create a metaverse children’s book with support from Web3 artificial-intelligence platform OP3N and Avalanche’s $100 million fund to fuel development on the network.

NFT Market Slump Has Hit Artists Hard

The NFT market has been experiencing a tumultuous slump, with record low trading volume and plunging floor prices. 

In another blow to the emerging NFT market, tensions between traders and creators of digital collectibles have increased amid controversy surrounding royalties. 

This friction has resulted from the recent decision by top NFT exchanges, including Blur and OpenSea, to cut royalty rates paid to artists when a token’s ownership changes. 

The reason behind the move is that lower costs will incentivize more buying and selling in a market that has seen trading volumes plummet by 95% from $17 billion in January 2022.

Royalties, which reached a peak of $269 million in January, have since dwindled to just $4.3 million in July, as the rates paid fell from as much as 5% per transaction to a meager 0.6%.

This significant drop in artist income could potentially discourage new work, further stagnating a market that has already experienced a significant downturn.

The NFT market enjoyed a successful period from August 2021 to May 2022.

However, following some high-profile collapses in the crypto industry last year and the subsequent market downturn, the NFT market also took a hit.