HitPiece, A Music NFT Platform, Received A Demand Letter From The Recording Industry Association.

February 8, 2022 - Around 2 mins mins to read

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) submitted a demand letter to HitPiece’s lawyers, demanding that the platform stop selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

HitPiece, A Music NFT Platform, Received A Demand Letter From The Recording Industry Association. — *HitPiece*

A demand letter is a letter sent by an attorney demanding the receiver to take a certain action. The RIAA asked that HitPiece stop violating on musicians’ intellectual property rights and take accountability for selling NFTs of music without the authorization of the original artist.

The letter accused the platform of nothing more than a hoax aimed to capitalize on fans’ love of music and desire to engage more directly with artists, use buzzwords and language to obscure their utter failure to get required rights.

Fans were made to assume they were acquiring an NFT that was legitimately affiliated with an artist and their work, while in fact this was not the case. While the companies appear to have taken the main HitPiece site offline for the time being, this move was required to ensure a fair accounting for the harm HitPiece and its crews have already caused, as well as to ensure that this site or copycats do not simply resume their scams under a different name.

As previously reported, music lovers and artists have chastised HitPiece for selling NFTs of artists’ work without their permission. The company eventually apologized to its customers and removed its marketplace from its website. The company said in its apologies that it would appropriately reimburse artists in NFT sales, however the platform did not clarify how artist payment worked.