Before their search to collaborate with the appropriate trading company bore result, Salim Merchant, along with brother Sulaiman, had been prepping to launch his non-fungible tokens (NFTs), for a while. The duo had been investing in cryptocurrency since a long time, and making their art accessible via NFTs was only a natural extension of their investment in digital portfolios.

“It is an interesting space to explore. As an artiste, you can make an exclusive art — be it music, or a painting — and fans can remember you by this work. We know how things in the crypto space work,” says Salim, adding that it was while breathing life into his passion project, Bhoomi 2021 that the brothers simultaneously began work on preparing exclusive content for their NFTs.

“These are exclusive things that fans can own; they are not available anywhere else. There are certain songs, and music pieces that we thought will fit this [investment]. The process has been on since four months. We were going to launch it in Diwali, but are finally bringing it out now, before Christmas.”

Concerns over copyright issues kept them from entertaining the idea of making their film music available as artwork on the platform. What they have dabbled in is pop music. “Some of the stuff is funky, the rest is futuristic. A lot of creative hard work has gone into designing it,” says the musician, who is also eager to purchase NFTs of other musicians whom he considers “my heroes”.

The duo is the latest to join the league of artistes who have been turning to digital currencies as a new income stream. Rapper Raftaar, Ritviz, Nucleya, and Mika Singh are some of the other names who have also reportedly launched NFTs to capitalise on the digital currency boom.