Introducing Emanate
By Emanate co-founder, Sean Gardner
It feels to me now that the Emanate journey has finally begun. After months of planning and pitching, partnering and research we have taken Emanate on the road. I’m writing this on a flight from Austin to Atlanta where we will catch a connecting flight to Puerto Rico to network with key people from the blockchain world. We’re a long way from Sydney where our business and user experience team is based, and just as far from Lisbon, Portugal where our blockchain development hub is being assembled.
Following on from Jimi Frew’s previous post about the life of a professional musician, I will reference a few paragraphs from Pedro’s Steemit post and will add my commentary which will help you to understand where we fit into the bigger picture of blockchain and music.
The pitch:
Emanate is building a blockchain-ready music technology platform with artists, creativity and collaboration at the very centre; aligning incentives for all ecosystem participants to drive transformational change for the music industry.
I’d like to pull a couple of key things from this statement. Firstly, we say ‘blockchain-ready’ because we’re realistic about where this technology currently sits. There are no blockchain platforms completely ready to process millions of micro-transactions a second and none that can do so with a low-enough fee structure to support a platform designed to streamline the financial side of an industry.
Our ‘blockchain readiness’ means that we will progress our business development regarding creating a user experience, hosting great music and connecting with the industry in parallel to the technology development. Creating a truly decentralised ecosystem and keeping as much functionality on-chain as possible is the goal, but it cannot come at the expense of business development or user experience.
The second key point is in ‘transformational change’. Emanate is not seeking to cut out the middle man or radically disrupt the music industry, the music industry has been very good to some of our team members, and we know that while parts of it need to be streamlined for the future, every player has a role.
Our people
Right now we have a small core team, with a highly engaged advisory and ambassador circle. I’d love to see behind the curtain to know if any other advisors or partners are working as hard as ours are right now! Between the co-founders, we cover the technical blockchain development side with Pedro Colaco who built Dsound.audio — the world’s leading cryptocurrency streaming platform. We have deep music industry experience and networks both in the creative production side and the business side through Jimi Frew and Trent Shaw. My experience brings marketing, innovation management, technology production, digital advertising, client services and business management. Between us, we have launched over a dozen small businesses and start-ups.
We will write a separate post on our MasterNode Ventures, Autonomous Group and Coin Hunter partners and advisors, but I must at least mention how impressive it has been to have a group of people work so passionately and cohesively towards a common goal.
Where we fit in
We want Emanate to be the first place artists upload their works in progress for feedback or collaboration, and as the first place they share their completed works for monetisation and to secure their rights over that piece of music.
Where else do we fit? There are some great music projects building on fee-based blockchains NEO and Ethereum so from a technical point of view; Emanate is different in that we’re building on EOS; a DPoS platform which is designed for fee-less transactions and high throughput from day one. Larimer has built two of the most usable and well-used blockchains ever, so his track record is sound.We’re excited about the potential of EOS to deliver scalable business-to-customer application such as Emanate.
Evolution over revolution
This is possibly the biggest point of difference with Emanate regarding our approach. We recognise that it is not realistic for a new blockchain startup to disrupt industry giants, nor do we think it is necessary or desirable. Emanate will have a place for artists, labels, managers, curators, DJs and more. It will function as an alternate music ecosystem that can co-exist within and besides the current industry. Over time, we believe it will demonstrate a better way for music to be created, shared and monetised.
From the bedroom to the big time
The immediate gap that Emanate will fill is a bridge for the amateur music makers to cross and become an established professional. Due to the inability of platforms such as Soundcloud to monetise artists work successfully, there is a gap and DSound demonstrates how well that gap could be filled by a micropayments streaming platform. But as you will read in our white paper, DSound has some inherent limitations that prevent it from being a commercial grade platform. Emanate will let artists earn revenue on their creative output from day one meaning they can start to support their passion and make their way towards being a full-time musician.
A solution to token volatility
In working with our partners and advisors, Emanate is suggesting a unique two-token approach that will kick-in as our product matures. How can a platform distribute an Emanate ICO token that is open for growth and speculation while still playing an active role in a stable and highly liquid ecosystem? We think we have this solved. My next blog post will discuss our two-token economy in more detail. But here’s what you need to know about the phases in our token distribution, platform adoption and token economy:
1) Token sale
2) Artists platform adoption
3) Account airdrop
4) Dual-token ‘mint & burn’ economics via paid listener accounts and paid artist accounts operating in a stable economy
What’s next?
As mentioned, keep an eye out for our token economics opinion post, keep an eye out for an industry airdrop to musicians and true music influencers. We’re about to board our connecting flight to Puerto Rico. We will keep you up to date on progress this week.
Thanks for following our project, we are laser focused on kick-starting a revolution in music collaboration, but we don’t believe there is such a thing as the perfect cryptocurrency project in the world right now, so we invite discussion and constructive criticism:
Website: www.emanate.live
One page overview: https://emanate.live/pdf/overview.pdf
