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HitPiece NFT marketplace is listing music they have no rights to sell

The company is attempting to auction off NFTs of music from Disney, John Lennon and more.

Sam Chandler

February 1, 2022 5:10 PM

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Updated February 1, 2022 at 9:24 p.m. PT: HitPiece has put out a statement on Twitter stating that "artists get paid when digital good are sold". Meanwhile the site has been updated with, "We're listening".

pic.twitter.com/HfqCi0pzzc

— HitPiece - Music NFTs (@joinhitpiece) February 2, 2022

The NFT community is at it again, this time selling music they don’t own. The latest culprit is HitPiece, a site which is currently listing auctions for music from such major companies as The Pokemon Company, John Lennon, and Disney.

News about HitPiece minting music without artists’ permission started to surface online on Twitter on February 1, 2022. It quickly spread among the music community as artists realized that the company was attempting to make money off of their labor without any permissions. When pressed on the matter, HitPiece responded with requests for DMs and claimed that music has made it to the platform via an artist’s “music distributor”.

Yo @joinhitpiece

Someone has minted my work as NFTs on your website without my approval. The content is here https://t.co/QHJtDiIaT6

Please remove these immediately. I did not mint these, I would never mint my work as an NFT, and this was done without my permission.

— Jeremy Blake (@jjbbllkk) February 1, 2022

This claim quickly falls apart when you realize that HitPiece is currently attempting to auction NFTs from companies like Disney. A quick screenshot by Twitter user GlitchxCity shows the Tokyo Disney Sea Theme Song is being auctioned. The current bid stands at $21,474,836.47 by bidder nftsarescams.

To further complicate matters, HitPiece responded to a Tweet stating that it doesn’t “sell or stream music”. Whatever it is that HitPiece is selling without artists’ permission certainly isn’t music or the ability to listen to music.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler