Like many of us, Wes Borland—the Limp Bizkit guitarist, visual artist and aficionado of on-stage black contact lenses—went down some weird rabbit holes during the pandemic.

While some nurtured sourdough starters or learned Italian, Borland developed an interest in “The Lesser Key of Solomon,” a 17th-century demonology text. He created digital art depicting the nine kings of Hell being summoned to dreamy beaches—demons in paradise.

Borland wasn’t quite sure what to do with his work. Then, an industry contact connected him with an opportunity to work with Los Angeles media-production company Strangeloop Studios, making art and converting it into non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, that would be sold on a new marketplace called S!NG.

“I was like, ‘That’s what I’m gonna do with those nine pieces,’” Borland told The Logic in an interview. “They approached me and I just went, ‘OK, that’s super easy.'”

Making it super easy for musicians to make NFTs—and make money from them—is S!NG’s business model. The company’s NFT marketplace launches today, marking its entry into an emerging market with lots of competition and no guarantee of success, but massive potential. The Seattle-based firm—headed by Toronto-born Geoff Osler and with Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida as chief product officer—offers digital works of art from artists including Aloe Blacc and Puscifer, as well as Borland.

“It’s been an absolute whirlwind of interest,” Osler said. “We’re at a very exciting inflection point.”

Osler’s initial vision for the company was to enable inventors to put ideas that would eventually become patents on the Ethereum blockchain, giving them an immutable record of their intellectual property to refer to in the event of an IP challenge. Maida, who met Osler through a mutual friend, broadened the scope to include all creative workers, with a particular focus on musicians.

Thanks to the devastating effects of piracy on platforms like Napster, and the advent of streaming services that are great for consumers but not very lucrative for most artists, musicians are in a unique position to understand and benefit from NFTs, Maida said. Blockchain technology makes it possible to create digital assets with provable scarcity and ownership that an artist can sell directly to fans, with consumers already demonstrating willingness to spend six-figure-plus sums on basketball highlights, works of art and intentionally ridiculous pictures of rocks.

As an example of how S!NG’s intellectual property protection and NFT sales aspects work together, Our Lady Peace is releasing demos of each song on its new album on S!NG Market. People could still put copies of those demos on platforms like BitTorrent for pirating, but since the band minted them as NFTs, buyers will have a record proving they own an original, scarce and collectible version—something that wasn’t possible in the digital world prior to the invention of blockchain technology.

“As a fan of music, my God, if Nick Cave would give me all his demos to his last album, I would flip out,” Maida said. “I would pay a lot of money for that.”

Musicians are far from the only group of people outside the cryptocurrency world exploring NFTs, with Visa recently purchasing a piece of digital art known as a CryptoPunk for US$150,000 and Vancouver startup Dapper Labs signing partnerships with Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, UFC the NBA, the LaLiga soccer league and the NFL. But the concept has yet to become truly mainstream, in part because most platforms require purchases to be made with cryptocurrency.

S!NG has plenty of competition from other platforms angling to be the go-to NFT destination for creatives and fans. In addition to Dapper, there’s electronic dance music artist and producer 3LAU’s recently launched music-investment platform Royal; BBTV’s new NFT division; Toronto-based platform New World; and others.

Boris Wertz, founder of Vancouver’s Version One Ventures, which invests in cryptocurrency startups, said he thinks companies that try to cash in on the hot market by helping artists turn existing work into NFTs are making a mistake—“long term, it’s not really interesting.” He said he thinks the companies that succeed in taking the market to the next level will be those that enable artists to make something new and unique, or build engaged communities of fans and buyers.

With the launch of S!NG Market, the startup is trying to do both. The NFT marketplace is invitation-only for sellers, with the company working hand in hand with well-known musicians that have established fan bases to create new works. S!NG Market will accept credit-card, debit-card and Apple Pay payments, rather than requiring buyers to navigate the world of cryptocurrency wallets and trading platforms in order to make a purchase (although it will accept Ether, too).

Buyers will be able to trade their NFTs on a secondary market within the platform, or port them over to Ethereum’s many other services that allow the digital assets to be bought, sold and even financialized. Thanks to a feature of Ethereum called smart contracts, which allows developers to program actions to execute when certain conditions are met, artists get a cut of every resale, not just the initial sale.

The musicians involved in S!NG Market, of course, could opt to go the do-it-yourself route, minting and selling NFTs on one of many other platforms such as OpenSea, which had more than US$3 billion in monthly trading volume in both August and September. Borland, the Limp Bizkit guitarist, said there’s one simple reason he went with S!NG instead of going that route.

“I went on OpenSea and thought, ‘This is overwhelming,’” Borland said. “They’re good at it and I’m not.”

Not having to think about the technical aspect allowed Borland to focus on the art, challenging himself to write 30-second songs to go with each of the nine images. He said he’s looking forward to seeing how fans respond, and where to take the medium next.

“It’s totally new for me,” Borland said. “It’s challenging me to think in a different way than I did before.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included the names of artists not involved in the S!NG marketplace launch. The company initially supplied inaccurate information. The story has been updated.