Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows has warned the bands in the industry to not fall behind on modern technology on social media.
The singer took to X and wrote, “The music industry is notorious for being behind technology and change. They were forced when streaming arrived and took their lunch. They are behind again with blockchain and AI. Deathbats Club to ignite a change industry wide.”
Shadows is known for keeping up with everything related to technology and even uses it to benefit his own band. He created a platform called ‘TicketPass,’ a new and ‘ethical’ online platform where loyal fans could buy tickets without being charged extra. The band also released one million NFTs for their alternate reality game (ARG), and their album ‘Life is But a Dream…’ announcement and first single. They also airdropped over 335,000 Ticketmaster digital collectibles and created over 215,000 digital merchandise collectibles, as part of a rewards program for their fans.
However, there have been times that he faced backlash too. The singer defended and kept using Spotify even when he knew it was exploiting musicians.
“Spotify has a great system for the user. They pay $9.99 a month or $14.99, whatever it is at this point, and they get all the music that’s ever been created for virtually nothing,” he wrote. “Now, on the other end, the artist has nowhere else to have their music listened to. You’re not gonna go on a road trip and go to every individual artist’s website to pull up their latest record and stream it from there. It’s just not gonna happen. It’s kind of like when you put a AAA movie out, but it’s not on Netflix, and it’s not in the theaters. Who actually goes and sees it?”
Shadows also thinks all merchandise will be scannable in the future, and more artists will use blockchain for fan clubs. He believes many artists will see the benefits and join this movement.
