The world’s largest music company has created a band of four virtual apes.

If that sentence makes you question your sanity — or the state of western civilization — you aren’t alone. Universal Music Group NV is combining two hot digital concepts that you’ve likely read about in the past year: nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse. Thanks to the appreciation of  cryptocurrencies and some very famous boosters, such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, they have gone from esoteric to ubiquitous in just a few months.