Jack Antonoff, MUNA and Clipping call out HitPiece for listing songs as NFTs without permission

Last night (1 February) a long list of musicians hit out at NFT marketplace HitPiece, with some threatening legal action after finding out their songs were being auctioned off as NFTs without their consent.

The FAQ section of the HitPiece site claims fans can "collect NFTs of your favorite songs", and even has auctions for NFTs of songs by The Beatles, Taylor Swift, Bob Dylan, and more.

After discovering the auction listings, artists including Jack Antonoff, MUNA, Clipping, Sadie Dupuis (Sad13, Speedy Ortiz), Backxwash and more united on Twitter to share their disapproval. Antonoff wrote, "any bleachers NFTs are fake. at the moment i do not believe in NFTs so anything you see associated with me isn’t real. and thanks to M for sending me this bullshit :) i’m on one today!"

any bleachers NFTs are fake. at the moment i do not believe in NFTs so anything you see associated with me isn’t real. and thanks to M for sending me this bullshit :) i’m on one today!

— jackantonoff (@jackantonoff) February 1, 2022

MUNA asked HitPiece to "kindly take our shit off your site" with an image featuring numerous statements about hating NFTs.

kindly take our shit off your site @joinhitpiece pic.twitter.com/tdWSPa1ZRl

— MUNA (@whereisMUNA) February 1, 2022

Clipping responded to news of their music being listed on HitPiece by saying they're looking to see what "we can do to get it taken down. Fuck this scam shit." Clipping also wrote that the site seems "super legit" as "every bid on every auction is for the same amount of money."

They added, "Is the plan to get artists to think they’re actually selling NFTs for millions of dollars so they’ll join up officially?"

I love that every bid on every auction is for the same amount of money. Seems super legit pic.twitter.com/I7VH69pLCU

— clipping. (@clppng) February 2, 2022

Looks like all our musician friends are on the scam site too. I’m just happy to be included

— clipping. (@clppng) February 2, 2022

Sad13 and Sspeedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis responded to someone on the HitPiece team, writing, "related question, how do we all get you to remove our music that you're illegally hosting on your bullshit NFT site."

related question, how do we all get you to remove our music that you're illegally hosting on your bullshit NFT site https://t.co/p7edGuOwLt

— speedy ortiz ÷ sad13 ÷ sadie dupuis ÷ haunted guy (@sad13) February 1, 2022

Dupuis also asked, "how do we all issue takedowns from the random NFT website that we all seem to have just now discovered is illegally selling our music," and added, "I already asked our label who's asking its lawyer but in case one of you has ideas."

I already asked our label who's asking its lawyer but in case one of you has ideas

— speedy ortiz ÷ sad13 ÷ sadie dupuis ÷ haunted guy (@sad13) February 1, 2022

The Sad13 musician also responded to a HitPiece tweet from last year that read: "Live music, music box, vinyl records, cassettes, compact discs, downloads, streaming, NFTs." Dupuis wrote, "illegal theft take down cease & desist lawsuits fines incoming dumbass NFTs."

illegaltheft take down cease & desist lawsuits fines incoming dumbass NFTs https://t.co/WJjF6jiAEZ

— speedy ortiz ÷ sad13 ÷ sadie dupuis ÷ haunted guy (@sad13) February 1, 2022

As well as sharing information about the HitPiece team and how to report them, Dupuis wrote, "hey you stupid fucks HitPiece we don't have any deal with you or any NFT site and there SURE DOES LOOK like an active auction going on for a speedy ortiz song hope everyone's reporting this garbage to copyrightcomplaints@godaddy.com as a few folks have recommended Go Daddy."

hey you stupid fucks @joinhitpiece we don't have any deal with you or any NFT site and there SURE DOES LOOK like an active auction going on for a speedy ortiz song

hope everyone's reporting this garbage to copyrightcomplaints@godaddy.com as a few folks have recommended @GoDaddy https://t.co/VFg4gq5wVK

— speedy ortiz ÷ sad13 ÷ sadie dupuis ÷ haunted guy (@sad13) February 1, 2022

In a statement posted to their socials last night (1 February), HitPiece wrote that they "have struck a nerve and are very eager to create the ideal experience for music fans." HitPiece also claimed that artists do "get paid when digital goods are sold on HitPiece."

pic.twitter.com/HfqCi0pzzc

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

It's currently unclear how HitPiece have been able to list NFTs of the tracks without permission, but one person pointed out on Twitter that the artist and album images are "pulled from
Spotify's CDN".

All their artist/album images are pulled from @Spotify's CDN at i․scdn․co and it looks like their GraphQL search is just a thin wrapper to the Spotify API. Their artist IDs are all Spotify IDs. pic.twitter.com/Kk67siRzMX

— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) February 1, 2022