Skip to main content

Steve Aoki NFTs Earn More In Months Than a Decade in Music

DJ Steve Aoki can claim almost 3 billion music streams, mapping together an admirable seven-album solo discography, 106 singles, and a multitude of collaborations. His electric streams crossover genres like crosswalks, working with hip-hop trendsetters will.i.am, Lil Uzi Vert, and Afrojack, 1990s boy band Backstreet Boys, snotty rockers blink-182, and (in some of his best work) uplifting the metal rap crew Linkin Park.

The man is so ubiquitous and so revered you’d expect him to be driving a gold Rolls Royce. The music industry, however, is tough. At the private Gala Games Music platform launch, Aoki asserted that his live DJ gigs probably make up 95% of his music income. The rest arrives in the form of paltry royalties and sporadic advances. (This is, after all, the job that the iconic David Crosby took a break from yelling at clouds to discourage kids from taking up.) After 10 years setting the music world on fire, Aoki has finally found the key to a music fortune: NFTs.

Steve Aoki on stage during day three of Collision 2019 at Enercare Center in Toronto, Canada.
Collision Conf/Flickr

“In the 10 years I’ve been making music … six albums, and all those advances … in one drop last year in NFTs, I made more money,” Aoki said at Gala Music.

Recommended Videos

As an artist, Aoki is no one-trick pony. In 1996, his first act was to build upon his production skills to found the genre-setting Dim Mak record label out of his college dorm room. Recognizing the brand potential in a trendsetting outfit, Aoki also included events, lifestyles, and the Dim Mak apparel brand. This has served as a rocket launchpad for global music partnerships, books, documentaries, visual art, and now NFTS.

After years in the business, Aoki spied a multi-billion dollar NFT market and reacted like the true collegial entrepreneur that he is: He joined up and joined forces. One of the first products to emerge was hairy, a dual video clip of an Aoki-inspired werewolf that award-winning German artist Antoni Tudisco colored with his signature bright, psychedelic color array, complete with purple and yellow shades. Hairy sold a year ago for $888,888.88, complete an over $4 million initial offering, not a bad score for an initial entry into the market.

Millions appear to be the norm payday as Aoki’s animated series, Dominion X, is available as an exclusive NFT now up to 1,000 Ether ($2,578,710) on Open Sea’s NFT marketplace.

Related Guides

Borne also out of work with Tudisco, Aoki teamed up with Seth Green’s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios to present what is now “the first episodic series to launch on the blockchain.” This stop-motion, animated short follows the adventures of Character X, first seen in the Aoki-Tudisco NFT drop Dream Catcher.

The fanged pink puppet is “blissfully unaware (he) is pitted against the microscopic inhabitants below his feet — ninja farmers Chonk and Swole.”

Though the series is a romp, jumping into NFTs isn’t just a game to the record executive. Aoki believes in enabling NFTs to revolutionize the record industry.

“As music NFTs become more of a part of how we integrate and support artists, the labels will have to do more than just add the song on a playlist,” he explained at Gala Music.

Aoki noted how NFTs avoid the need for record labels, thus severing artists of all stripes from contracts to connect directly with fans. Distributors and publishers could feel the pain, but they’ve long been a chain holding down creators from profiting from their output.

Like all utopian perspectives, though, there are multiple perspectives to this paradise, including that of the fans. K-Pop stars BTS faced blowback when they announced a summer roster of NFTs. The main complaint? The environmental impact of NFTs.

Still, as Aoki claims, the multimedia maker is a “futurist” and there already is an entire industry cadre aimed at attacking the carbon damages from NFT. For the future is not going away and a multibillion-dollar industry isn’t going to disappear any time soon.

Matthew Denis
Matt Denis is an on-the-go remote multimedia reporter, exploring arts, culture, and the existential in the Pacific Northwest…
Don’t ruin your cigars: here’s how to properly season a new humidor
Seasoning secrets every cigar lover could use
faceless man presenting a cigar humidor with cigars inside with gloved hands

If you're a newcomer to the world of cigars or just bought a brand-new humidor, you'll need to season it. And no, I'm not saying to add salt and pepper to it. If you've never heard of it, you might ask, "What is seasoning for a humidor?"

Don't think you need to flavor the box or anything — seasoning is really about getting the wood inside your humidor so as not to rob your cigars of precious moisture. Easy to understand, and getting it done is relatively straightforward as well. The trick is figuring out the "why," and we'll get into that in a bit. But let's first discuss seasoning a humidor.

Read more
The NBA’s ultimate celebration tool: The victory cigar
A look at the players and coaches who smoke to celebrate
Jordan smoking a cigar image on a bag

Sports are synonymous with celebration. After winning the biggest trophy of their lives, athletes want to indulge in the payoff that comes with seeing their dreams realized. Teams go into the locker room, where a waterfall of champagne hits them in the eyes, and swimming goggles seem to be a requirement, lest you walk around on the best night of your life half blind. While drinking is often the activity of choice after winning a championship, the NBA has an alternative symbol of greatness that other sports don't use nearly enough: the victory cigar.

Basketball is a team game, but it's also an individual canvas for solo superstardom. After winning an NBA championship, the coaches and players who sit atop the throne have long smoked a cigar in the locker room, during the parade, or even on the bench before the clock has hit zero. There's nothing quite like a good stogie to signify the ultimate win over the rest of the league, but how did the victory cigar get so ingrained in NBA championship celebrations? We want to take a walk down memory lane and look at some of the historical moments and people who made the cigar what it is within the NBA today.
Red Auerbach's victory cigar on the bench
Red Auerbach: The Story Behind the Victory Cigar + His Disdain of NBA Officials - Red on Roundball

Read more
The best medical shows of all time to binge now
From ER to The Pitt, these are the best medical shows ever made
Noah Wyle in the Pitt

Throughout TV's long history, the medical drama has occupied a somewhat unique place in the landscape. Medical shows are often some of the most reliable on TV precisely because there's so much drama built in to working in a hospital.

Personally, I've found the medical drama to be deeply comforting for years, even if I have no desire to be a doctor myself. Understanding the stress of people in the healthcare profession is fascinating in and of itself.

Read more