Store of the week: Midnight Shift. Mintbase speaks with co-founder Debbie Chia. https://ift.tt/3GVciCS

Midnight Shift is a record label and events organisation based out of Singapore and Berlin. They specialise in electronic, techno and house music from both emerging and established producers, and have been recognised as one of Southeast Asia’s top labels.

In their portfolio, there are artists such as Mike Huckaby, DBridge, Secret Cinema, or John Heckle and showcases in venues like Berghain, in Berlin, or Elevator, in Shanghai.

We chatted with founder Debbie Chia about their recent NFT drop on Mintbase.

Tell us a bit about MNShift

We are celebrating our 10th anniversary next year! Over these past ten years, we released over forty records — and we’re just getting started!

We’re from Singapore but have been based out of Berlin for the last five years. Our scene is mainly house, techno and electronic music, but we want to reach out beyond techno and go a bit more experimental, maybe even opera.

And now, NFTs. What drove you to the space?

Outside of Midnight Shift, I work for a company in the crypto space. That’s where the interest came from initially. I have been telling my husband and cofounder Kevin: “There is this NFT thing we should be doing”. Now we’re finally here. Then it was a matter of finding the right platform.

There were a ton of marketplaces coming out but none seemed like the right solution. Mintbase works for us because we get our own storefront — that was important for us. If our artists want to go mint NFTs under their name they can, and wouldn’t need us, our own store allows us to have a consistent presence, tell a story. It was about finding the right fit for us for the long term.

Also, it matters to us that Mintbase is built on NEAR, a green blockchain, as we wanted to make sure we were doing this sustainably.

Tell us about the artists behind your latest drops

We have big names like DBridge from the UK or Umwelt, a french electro producer, also very famous. The first NFT we did for Nico, an up and coming artist from Mexico. Very talented. We sold 300 copies of their vinyl. These are people who are more in the real world music industry and they do not cross over into the crypto circles yet, so that’s what we’re trying to do.

What is your strategy for your future NFT drops?

We are not in a rush — our approach is more long term. Over the next five, ten years we want to build a catalogue with fifty titles that will live for a long time. A sort of archive of our releases that will document who we are, where we come from and showcase all our work.

One million NFTs or 1/1?

We are still experimenting, but we think we’ll focus on 1/1 for now. Each of our NFTs is unique — not just an album cover and the track — we get visual artists to create movements and video. It’s a unique piece of art.

This speaks to your collectors.

Yes, we have some hardcore collectors who want to own every single release from a certain artist and want to meet their needs. 10 years down the road there will be some techno music fan who wants to own their entire catalogue as an NFT or even put it in a museum — that’s the archive aspect of it.

With the new covid restrictions, evens have been quite restricted. What are your plans for when things are back to normal?

When the events evolve, we can do NFTs for ticketing and maybe let people redeem stuff with that like a free track. Maybe even adding a stem, a part of the song that can be combined with a different part. Or maybe even include a QR code whenever we press vinyl, so you can get an NFT with the purchase. Marry both the physical and virtual world and try to make it more interesting, so it’s not just an NFT version of the vinyl.