Warner Bros. Records artist Mastodon to accept Bitcoin for new album

Bitcoin has been making surprisingly deep and substantial inroads into the music business over the last few months, with everyone from anti-war activist indie musicians to 50 Cent embracing Bitcoin and its related technologies to support their music.  Now, another band, Warner Bros.-signed metal group Mastadon, has joined the fold by accepting Bitcoin for their new album entitled Once More Around the Sun.

At first blush, this popularity is surprising – after all, Bitcoin is, by stereotype, the domain of shady libertarian hackers, which is a demographic that you hardly expect to bust out an acoustic guitar or drop a beat. The truth, of course, is considerably more nuanced.

Bitcoin is a financial instrument, and it’s an instrument with properties that are very appealing to musicians. It’s easy to accept, has low transaction fees, and comes with its own passionate community eager to spend it. This situation is uniquely advantageous to musicians, artists who lose the vast majority of their work’s revenue to promoters and middlemen and are always in desperate need of passionate fans.

Mastodon’s Bitcoin sales for their new album, Once More Around the Sun, will be handled through BitPay, the largest Bitcoin payment processor in the world, and (more importantly) a service which makes the process of accepting Bitcoin almost entirely frictionless for the end user.

Tony Gallippi, BitPay’s co-founder and executive chair, said, “BitPay is honored to partner with Warner Bros. Records artist Mastodon. Having a major label artist embrace bitcoin is a definite sign of bitcoin’s growth and expansion into the world of music.”

Mastodon, a band founded in the year 2000, achieved widespread popularity in 2011 after years of critical acclaim, with their album, The Hunter, breaking into position ten of the Billboard Top 200. The band is notable for its unique style that mixes metal-style screaming and distortion with cleaner and more intricate vocals and instrumentals derived from classic rock and punk.

Once More Around the Sun will be available on June 24th, and can be pre-ordered today for 0.018BTC on BitPay.