Have you ever wanted to own an animated 3D render of Chris Brown harnessing the energy of the metaverse? If so, you’re probably one of the 297 people who have bought into the singer’s new Breezyverse NFT collection.
Launched on July 1, Breezyverse is a brutal example of celebrity adoption of NFTs gone wrong. Like popular NFT collections Bored Ape Yacht Club or Doodles, Breezyverse is a set of 10,000 NFTs. Each share a similar template — in this case, an animation of Chris Brown standing on rubble before posing heroically — but with different traits. Sometimes the moon is in the background, other times Chris Brown is made of solid gold.
But, unlike Brown’s albums, the NFT collection has not been a hit. Hyped NFT collections regularly sellout in under an hour, many in under a minute. After a week on sale, only 297 Breezyverse NFTs have been sold. That’s about 3% of the total collection.
With crypto in the middle of a dramatic slump, it’s a hard time for new collections to thrive. But Chris Brown and the team behind Breezyverse have made it harder on themselves by pricing each NFT at .35 ether, or $440. Typically, new collections launch at a price under .1 ether ($126). Since the market crash, which has seen the price of ether drop 67% since the beginning of the year, “free mints” have become the done thing, with creators selling NFTs for free in the hopes of making money by taking a 5- or 7% cut of secondary sales.
Breezyverse is aimed at Browns’ fans, with the website promising exclusive utilities for holders like free VIP concert tickets, meet and greets and video calls with Brown. Unfortunately, the NFT market is mostly filled with people less interested in VIP concerts and more interested in flipping NFTs for profit.
The Breezyverse team was contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.
It’s a reminder of the delta between crypto speculators and the mainstream public. Over $25 billion was spent on NFTs last year, a huge pile of cash that many celebrities and businesses have unsuccessfully attempted to get a cut of. Last year WWE tried to sell 500 John Cena-themed NFTs, but only 37 of them were bought — which the actor and wrestler called a “catastrophic failure“. Ubisoft integrated NFTs into its Ghost Recon Breakpoint game, but gamers rejected it en masse.
Chris Brown is one of many musicians to dabble in the NFT space. Snoop Dogg and Eminem in June debuted a new music video featuring their Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, while Pharrell Williams was appointed chief brand officer for the Doodles NFT collection. Madonna teamed up with Beeple, the artist behind last year’s famous $69 million NFT sale, for three pieces that sold for six-figures each.
