The future of music: web3 as an industry transformation
How to reframe the concept of musical community in this ecosystem
The decentralization aggregated by web3 has already crossed numerous businesses: from the governance models of traditional companies, which faced the famous DAOs, to the traditional finance models, which today end up competing in the world of money with DeFi. In the art world — of course — this would be no different, as we see NFTs innovating galleries (bringing the need for DAGs) and also helping artists to monetize their work.
All these traditional ways, governance, financial market, and art, face the problem of the intermediary or a central authority figure. Preceding the shared governance, there is a CEO. Preceding the self-custody, there is the bank’s intermediation. And preceding the visibility of an artist, there is the curator of galleries. But what stands between the music and the audience? What is the barrier between what plays on my phone and the production of an artist?
The answer is simple! Streaming platforms, record companies, and the traditional music industry.
While we have to pay monthly fees to avoid being bombarded with ads, artists are paid less than cent per stream. Which means that if the artist isn’t the next Michael Jackson, he may be far from one of the most relevant attributes of his artistic career: scalability. Making a living from music is still a very distant reality for many artists, even though this is one of the great goals. This problem related to platforms is not just restricted to music: movies and social networks also have a very large gap between content producers and fair monetization, in which much of it is retained by platforms.
But how can decentralized and distributed music change the direction of the industry?
Web3 is attracting billions of dollars of investment, and indeed, as the music industry doubles down on Web3, the optimism surrounding the music industry in the ecosystem keeps new ideas alive.
Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO of AUDIUS, which has raised about $10 million for its blockchain-based music streaming service, defined a Web3 music service as a “set of tools for artists to use, [to] engage their fans and allow them to have sovereignty over that audience.”
Tokens are also being used to allow fans to join (in an active way) platforms like music services. Blockchain music service AUDIUS, for example, is “owned and operated by artists, fans and developers”. In other words, governance is done by the community! This is something that goes far beyond the retentions of centralized platforms.
At the end of July, AUDIUS fell victim to a governance attack, losing $6M of its native token, $AUDIO. The attacker passed a malicious proposal transferring the funds directly from the treasury before dumping them onto the market for $1M. We’ve seen a lot of hacks recently, haven’t we? But well, this subject (music on web3) is still on fire, and I believe that many innovations related to music are on the radar of the big players in the market.
Last month, we held a Twitter Space with some music names on web3. We count on Boelter, a rap singer from Rio de Janeiro, who ended up attracting the attention of several other good participants. And on Monday we held another one with all the great guests again.
Speaking of music, let’s not forget the power of community: music is and has always been related to a group of people, and it further reinforces the feeling of community that web3 wants to achieve by permeating areas and different businesses.
With that, week 2 of the NFTFY Tour is focused on the NFTFY community. That is, to win the NFT, you will need to join the NFTFY community and answer a short form!
All the action on the NFTFY Tour mixes music and people’s active participation. In addition to NFTFY offering products that can be used in NFT songs — have you ever thought about sharing ownership of a web3 hit? — we are bullish on everything that the music community can still build. This mix of music and NFTs — which is happening in our community — is a brief synthesis of everything we expect from the ecosystem in general: mutual forces generating more and more collective growth!
Decentralization is an important concept (also in music industry) because it emphasizes the dispersion of authority and the attributions of a central figure of power. There is no sovereign decision that puts others at the expense. Nonetheless, decentralization delivers power into the hands of all those who participate in any given process. This means that participation is no longer passive (participation that only experiences the consequences of a decision) and becomes active participation (participation that decides and experiences these decisions).
"After all, the logic behind decentralization is not just about weakening the central authority, nor is it about preferring local elites to central authority, but it is fundamentally about making governance at the local level more responsive to the felt needs of the large majority of the population." — Pranab Bardhan, JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – VOL. 16, NO. 4, FALL 2002
Here is a web3 music guide:
In addition to being able to mint music as an NFT and place it on marketplaces like OpenSea, you can also distribute ownership of that sound on NFTFY. Whether it’s RockPool or CrowdPad, shared ownership can make artists go far!
OPUS
OPUS is a decentralized music hosting, discovery, and listening platform.
BPM
BPM is a music NFT Discord bot that was built by SongCamp.
Async music
Async Music is the music-focused arm of prominent NFT platform Async Art.
Emanate
Like AUDIUS, Emanate is a blockchain-powered music streaming platform.
royal.io
Musicians use Royal to share a portion of streaming royalty rights with their fans and collectors, allowing them to be co-owners of the song or album.
Phonogram.me
The platform gives creators, record labels and investors the chance to profit together.
That's all, folks! Thanks a lot.
Don’t forget we have a Cool Cats RockPool available!
