HitPiece Misrepresented Musicians Long Before Launching to Lure Fans and Raise Money

HitPiece, the NFT platform that planned to auction music-themed NFTs largely without rights holders’ permission, was deceiving investors and fans about artists’ involvement even before it launched the beta version of its site.

One artist manager, who had been friendly with HitPiece co-founder Rory Felton for over a decade and spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity, says he was approached by Felton last fall, asking if he could sign a “letter of intent.” That document was supposed to be for Felton to show potential investors, but the manager says it was signed as a favor — not to actually commit his artists to work with HitPiece. “I thought, you know, why not? I could lend my name for [Felton] to, behind closed doors, show investors that artists would be willing to work [with HitPiece],” he explains. It likely helped, too, as HitPiece went on to secure $5 million from investors, according to Felton’s interview with the Business Builders – Boise podcast last month.

“But almost immediately afterwards, without my permission,” the manager continues, “they started using my band’s name in bizarre ways to promote HitPiece.”

First, the manager caught HitPiece using his band’s name to promote the NFT company in an email sent by “Emily@1morecollab.com” (a website that does not exist), claiming to be with the band’s team. The email was promoting “a private digital collectible marketplace … to let fans get their songs as collectibles.” It continued, “As a fellow fan, I thought you might be interested in getting one for free. The only thing you’d need to do if you are interested is to answer ‘Yes’ to this email and I’ll get you on the waitlist immediately. Let me know!”

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Felton “owned up to [the email] immediately,” says the manager. “He apologized and said that won’t happen again.”

On Nov. 9, another promotional email went out that exploited the band’s name, promoting forthcoming NFTs for artists signed to The Militia Group — a now-inactive indie label which Felton co-founded in the early 2000s. (The band was never signed to the label.) Other bands listed on the promotional email — including Copeland, Cartel and Rufio — were also not official partners of HitPiece and didn’t know the email was being sent, though they were previously affiliated with The Militia Group.

Copeland lead singer Aaron Marsh says his band left the label in 2006 and eventually got its masters back in 2015 after “years of unpaid royalties.” He adds, “We never discussed NFTs with Rory.” The band also noticed the Nov. 9 email touting Copeland’s participation with HitPiece and Marsh says they “kept an eye on it, waiting to see if we’d be part of the platform at launch, since he didn’t own our masters anymore. When it launched, it was not only all the Militia Group albums, but all our albums.”

Similarly, Cartel members “were never contacted” about HitPiece, says drummer Kevin Sanders. Rufio did not respond to Billboard’s request for comment.

The address the email was sent from, info@feltonemusic.com, is also a prior start-up of Felton’s. Feltone is a multi-faceted artist management company and label which previously featured folk-pop outfit The National Parks on its roster. The band’s representative told Billboard they split from Feltone “towards the end of 2021.”

When the manager approached Felton about the Nov. 9 email, Felton wrote back, “nothing should have gone out without your review. I have an overzealous young marketing guy who jumped onto ReverbNation to send out a newsletter to an old label email list in an attempt [to] grow the waitlist.”

The next month, the HitPiece website launched, promoting auctions for NFTs of “every song,” using Spotify’s API to gather information on artists of all sizes. But it wasn’t until February that the music industry widely caught wind, sparking uproar as artists and their representatives discovered that their work had been listed on HitPiece without their knowledge or permission.

“I remember thinking after the full site launched I remember I was like, ‘How is nobody talking about this?’ It was already such a crazy thing,” says the manager, whose band’s songs were also listed on the site.

On Feb. 4, the RIAA sent out a demand letter to HitPiece on behalf of the major labels. “As you are no doubt aware, your clients, through the Hitpiece website, have been engaged in the systematic and flagrant infringement of the intellectual property rights of the Record Companies and their recording artists on a massive scale,” wrote RIAA senior vp, litigation Jared Freedman in the letter to Hitpiece’s attorney Douglas Mark, of Mark Music and Media Law.

Neither Mark nor Felton responded to Billboard’s requests for comment.