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Glozal aims to launch NFT marketplace for music: ‘We’re looking out for the artists’

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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The music-tech startup moves into a 20,000 sf office in Brickell

Glozal, a Miami music technology startup, is creating what it calls the first NFT Music Player and an NFT Music Marketplace to provide artists with new revenue streams while enabling their fans to discover and buy one-of-a-kind content.

Founded this year, Glozal recently announced it has moved into a 20,000-square-foot headquarters office in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. The NFT Music Player is now in beta and will likely be launched this fall, said  founder and CEO Tarek Kirschen.

Tarek Kirschen, CEO of Glozal

“The pandemic changed everything for the better for technology especially in the crypto space, and I know a lot of artists and one thing led to another and boom, here we go,” Kirschen said. “It was a crazy idea, and now we’re doing it.”

Kirschen said the popularity of streaming has slashed revenue opportunities for artists because fans liberally share their files, and the artist sees no royalties from that. Glozal’s one-stop-shop solution for all NFT music needs aims to solve that.  

“With today’s technology, we can track the ownership rights on the NFT’s smart contract on the blockchain and with the player we can protect against anyone making illegal copies,” he said. As in the art world, an NFT owner could trade the asset for money. However, because it’s tracked on blockchain, the music artist behind the NFT receives a royalty every time it is sold – all in real time. “We’re looking out for the artist,” Kirschen said.

The encrypted platform will only accept payments in cryptocurrency and will pay artists in crypto, too.

Glozal currently has 20 employees, but is on a hiring spree for sales and marketing, customer service support, tech support as well as crypto and NFT engineering talent, Kirschen said. ”We already have 20,000 square feet – we’re ready for action.”

Glozal also announced it added two  music industry veterans to the executive team as EVPs: J.C. Losada, aka Mr. Sonic, a Grammy-award winning producer and songwriter, and Cesar A. Ochoa, a former VP at New York-based Sony Music Entertainment.

Kirschen, a serial entrepreneur who has been involved in a number of companies in Miami over the last 25 years, is also the CEO of a medical equipment company, V12 Health, that makes gloves. He founded the company just before the pandemic. It’s doing well, but basically it’s on auto-pilot, he said. “The music business is a lot more fun, great people, it’s been a  hell of a ride the last four or five months.”

Glozal is one of a string of crypto and blockchain focused companies – including trading platforms, finance firms and funds — that have recently moved to Miami, encouraged by Mayor Francis Suarez’s quest to make the Miami a crypto hub.

“Crypto art and NFTs are here to stay and as we push to become the global epicenter for crypto, art, and music we are honored to have companies like these in our city transforming industries,” Suarez said in a statement.

Adds Kirschen: “We told the mayor we are going to make this happen. We are bringing in a lot of talent in from New York and California. Everyone loves Miami and you are seeing a lot of growth in other industries like fintech and I think Miami is going to be a different place in a few years.”

Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email her at [email protected]

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