How Minting Works

Get a Wallet

Everything here runs through your own crypto wallet -- it's your identity, and it's what actually owns the NFT once minted. If you don't have one yet, MetaMask is the most common choice: it's a free browser extension.

metamask.io ↗

Get Some ETH

Minting itself is free -- there's no price built into the contract -- but you still pay Ethereum's own network fee ("gas") to process the transaction, the same way any blockchain transaction works. You'll need a small amount of real ETH sitting in your wallet before you mint.

You can buy ETH on any major exchange and send it to your wallet's address, or use an "on-ramp" (buy with a card) directly inside MetaMask itself.

This is real money. This runs on Ethereum's actual mainnet, not a free test network -- the ETH you spend on gas is real.

Prepare Your Song

Your song needs to already be uploaded to IPFS (a decentralized file storage network) before you can mint it -- same requirement as the marketplace and PlayTrace. If you've already listed a song there, you can reuse that exact same upload; nothing needs to be re-uploaded.

If you're starting from scratch, a pinning service uploads your files to IPFS and gives you back a CID (a unique address for your file):

pinata.cloud ↗ web3.storage ↗

Once you have a CID, head to the Mint page and use Step 1 there -- it reads your existing files and builds a second, small file (proper NFT metadata) for you to download and upload separately. You're not re-uploading your song or artwork, just this one extra small file.

Mint It

Back on the Mint page, paste in the CID from the small metadata file you just uploaded, choose a royalty percentage (see below), and click Mint. MetaMask will pop up asking you to confirm a real transaction -- review it and confirm.

It usually takes anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes to confirm on-chain, depending on network conditions.

Double-check which wallet is connected before you mint. Whichever wallet is connected becomes the permanent owner and royalty recipient for that song -- if it's an artist's song, make sure it's their wallet connected, not someone else's. Ownership of the NFT itself can be transferred to a different wallet later if needed, but the royalty recipient is locked in permanently at the moment of minting and can never be changed afterward.

After Minting

Once confirmed, the page shows you a link to view the real transaction, plus a direct link to see your new NFT on OpenSea -- the most common place to view, share, and eventually sell it.

Your mint also shows up in this site's own public gallery, and gets posted automatically to the Community feed.

opensea.io ↗ etherscan.io ↗

Good to Know

What does the royalty percentage actually mean, and who gets it?: Whichever wallet actually clicks "Mint" and confirms the transaction becomes both the owner of the NFT and the one who receives the royalty -- permanently, for that song. web3audio never touches the NFT, the royalty, or any money at all; there's no platform fee or platform wallet built into this anywhere. That's why it's important to connect your own wallet before minting your own song, not someone else's -- whoever's wallet is connected at that moment is who this belongs to from then on, including every future resale payout, no matter how many times it changes hands afterward. It's optional to set a royalty at all, and capped at 10%.
Do I have to sell it?: No. Minting just creates the token and proves you made it -- there's no requirement to ever list it for sale. Selling is a separate, later step you'd do on a marketplace like OpenSea if you choose to.
Can I undo a mint?: No. Once it confirms on the blockchain, it's permanent, the same as any other crypto transaction.
Is there a fee to this site for minting?: No -- the only cost is Ethereum's own network gas fee, which goes to the network, not to us.

New to all this? It's normal for the wallet + gas + IPFS parts to feel unfamiliar at first -- take it one step at a time, and everything above only needs to be set up once.