🗺 The Beginner’s Guide for Musicians to Web3

Intro (TLDR!)

Before diving straight into the step-by-step tutorial on how to register and mint music NFTs on various platforms, we would like to provide a brief intro of what ‘web3’ really is, and a short glossary of the basic terms you need to know as a web3 musician.

We admit that the term ‘web3’ itself has been engendering controversies; even some of the people working in the blockchain industry say that the term was created and has been emphasized by large VCs, solely for their marketing purposes. That may well be true, but we believe that at least it has successfully begotten additional economic and cultural layers to the industry’s narrative, generating a new body of its lore and the communities that resonate with it.

When the whole dynamics of the web3 ownership economy is applied to the art space, it stretches another branch: what does ownership mean to artists and their fans? What should they have owned? What are the technical and structural limits that have been hampering them from exercising control over their artwork? To what extent fans can be involved in the art production and distribution? While the main ethos of the crypto industry revolves around data ownership and privacy, the idea of web3 successfully brought forth another perfect product-market fit, by taking Silicon Valley’s strategy of incentivizing valuable contributors and building up network effects to the art industry.

The web2 contents and social media platforms have drawn an increasing number of people to create and post their original work online and contributed to the rise and prosperity of the creator economy. However, their economic interests often are poorly aligned with their users who mainly drive their success. Therefore, the idea of web3 aims to democratize the ownership model by providing a new form of content creation, distribution, and monetization. The whole experience becomes communal — anyone (including fans) who participates in creating a collective value will take the financial and social profits it creates.

But despite its grand vision, the crypto industry overall is still in the second phase of the adoption in the Diffusion of Innovation Theory, and there still is a vast chasm to be crossed between the early adopters and the early majority. Opting out of the comprehensive and convenient services provided by the web2 platforms to exercise ‘full’ ownership over their assets, identities, and data — It may sound absurd and vexatious to the normie users. Maybe it may take longer than expected to fully stabilize the infrastructure and finally deliver what it promises to the mass public.

However, an expedition into a terra incognita can be undertaken only by the bravest and most adventurous spirit, and these are qualities that are inherently engraved in artists’ DNA. NFTs have been criticized for being infected by rug pulls and spammers (remember how Sirens lured adventurers to destruction with their beautiful voices!), but we believe that we are in the process of learning how to coordinate values/people in the new digital era and dealing with each iteration of problems. There’s nothing to lose for the artists to do experiments with the new techs and tools, as long as they equip themselves with thorough research and instincts of self-preservation (remember why Odysseus tied up himself to the mast!).

That was a long intro. 🤐 Let’s get down to the practical parts now..

Glossary

Personally, when I first stepped into the crypto rabbit hole, I learned the most from listening to the a16z podcast series and this episode has been so far the most robust source of material to learn the nuts and bolts of NFTs: “All About NFTs by a16z”. I highly recommend you read through all the articles mentioned in this one too: “NFT Canon”.

Plus, here is our glossary to help musicians learn about the fundamental concepts of NFTs and gear up for their first progression into this emerging market. Continuous learning is a must for your professional development in the crypto industry that is changing at a break-neck speed. So please make sure that you are staying on top of the tech trends and do not fear getting your hands dirty with new tools, to survive and win this Great Online Game.

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. “Non-fungible” means that each token is unique and irreplaceable, and therefore, it can be paired with a media file like a painting, photograph, video, song, and even an AI virtual human to represent your ownership of the underlying asset. (Read More) NFTs usually work as a certificate of authenticity by allowing you to track and verify the original creator from blockchain, or proof of ownership by allowing you to track and verify the history of ownership via a public ledger. Therefore, trading NFTs means that you are trading the right to claim ownership of the NFTs.

In the music sector, NFT can also serve as proof of fandom. You can easily create a token-commissioned communication channel or a token-gated community with various asset-verification tools, or provide exclusive content or airdrops for your early supporters and superfans.

Ethereum is the first general-purpose blockchain, and is ‘programmable’ ― unlike Bitcoin, of which the primary purpose is to run a payment network, you can build apps on the decentralized network via smart contracts. Its open-source nature allows you to use existing software components when building new apps and adding functionalities. The interoperability of software components is called “composability”. Ethereum and Ethereum compatible chains (=EVM-compatible chains) have been taking the lion’s share in the NFT market.

Metadata is a set of data about the key properties of your NFT, including its name, description, or link to the original file. The smart contract of your NFT collection will contain the URI of its metadata (example).

Smart Contract. Lawrence Lessig first coined the phrase “code is law” in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace in 1999, and it has become a catchphrase in the age of blockchain technologies. A smart contract, a program that is run on a blockchain, is similar to a traditional legal contract in the sense that you can set up the terms of agreement between two or more entities, but it can be executed and enforced automatically via the code. With a smart contract, musicians also can set their royalties (which usually vary from 5 to 10%) and the system will automatically pay out the money they made in the secondary sales. However, once deployed, a smart contract cannot be deleted, and it will start recording your transactions (=interactions with the contract) into a decentralized, public ledger(=blockchain). That being said, your transactions are open to the public, and they are irreversible by default.

Gas refers to the fee you need to pay for every transaction on the Ethereum network.

Minting an NFT means that you are creating a token that represents your artwork. You will first need to upload your artwork to a storage system and then create a link that points to the original file. Many web3 applications and platforms provide services to make the process easier for the artists, and we will provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to register yourself as a musician and mint NFTs on each platform in the latter part of this article.

Burning a token (or an NFT) is a frequently used tactic to control the amount of overall supply and its price in the market by permanently destroying the token from circulation. It can be a clever way to design economies (=tokenomics), or create a bonding curve to control the price/value of your NFTs.

DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. DAOs are “digitally native communities that center around a shared mission”. With smart contracts, DAO can set up a hybrid system of humans and computers to manage the community’s shared treasuries, values, and rules and build up a capacity for its collective actions by mobilizing and coordinating its workforce. In the web3 music sector, there are already more than 30 online communities that are identifying themselves as DAOs, and their experiments vary from a decentralized music label, a music NFT investment fund, and collaborative research, to a curatorial program.

How To Mint NFTs Then?

There are many other service providers aside from the ones listed below (To learn more about the status quo of the web3 music ecosystem, head over to this article). However, currently, Ooh La La supports only these platforms (but we are talking with other teams to integrate more!), and if you have minted or are planning to mint with a custom smart contract, please fill out this form to be listed.

(Muchas gracias to Jay, our Artist Relations Manager (and a talented artist himself 😎), for trying out these platforms and writing up this tutorial part!)

Sound.XYZ

Step 1. To mint on Sound.XYZ, you first need to fill out their application form. If you wish to reach out to their community, we recommend you hop in their Discord.

Step 2. Fill out the application form.

It requires you to provide your name, email address, a link to your music & bio, and the details of your contractual status.

Step 3. Wait until they reach out to you.

After completing and submitting the form, you will see this ‘Your request was successfully submitted’ message in the top right corner. Please be patient, because the team is manually dealing with the surging requests.

Catalog

Catalog is also a curated platform, which means that you need to meet its criteria to be onboarded to the platform.

Step 1. Fill out their submission form.

Before submitting your application, please read through this guideline to properly complete the form.

Step 2. Wait for their reply!

Catalog team is also processing the applications manually, and it will take a fair amount of time until they reach out to you. We would recommend you join their discord server and raise awareness in their Discord community. If you have a question regarding the overall procedure, please use its support channel.

Noizd

Step 1. Visit the website.

Step 2. Click on the ‘Join’ button to be a collector/artist on the platform.

Step 3. Read through the ‘Guidelines for Submissions’ and create an account.

Step 4. Upload your music and cover art. Fill out the track details to help them learn more about you.

NOIZD is onboarding only a small number of artists each month. Once your song is accepted, you will receive a ‘verified artist’ badge, and collectors will be able to start bidding on your music.

Zora

Anyone can mint immediately on Zora!

Step 1. Visit https://create.zora.co/.

Step 2. Connect your wallet (please make sure that it’s your creator account!) to mint on Zora.

Step 3. Click on the “Create” button in the dropdown menu of your account.

Step 4. Select the contract type. (You can only choose ‘Editions’ atm.)

Step 5. Fill out the form for your customers.

Step 6. Click on the ‘Create’ button. You will now be able to see your artwork on ‘Your Collections’ page. 😃

Nifty Gateway

Step 1. Go to the website.

Step 2. Sign up using Metamask.

Step 3. Go to https://www.niftygateway.com/become-creator.

Step 4. Join as an Artist or a Project Creator.

Step 5. Fill out every blank, then you will see this notice. Wait until they respond to you.

Mintsongs

Mintsongs has two versions. Mintsongs v2 (the current version) is a curated platform, so you need to apply as an artist and get accepted to list your NFTs on it.

However, the v1, called Mintsongs Factory, is an open platform. There are already other platforms like Sound and Catalog that are specialized in curation, so here we will provide a guideline for creating NFTs on Mintsongs Factory, to help you explore the web3 industry with lower barriers.

Step 1. Sign up using your Metamask.

If you haven’t added Polygon Network to your wallet, please follow this guideline. FYI, Polygon is a L2(layer-2) chain built on Ethereum that aims to improve its scalability.

Step 2. Click on the “Create” button.

Step 3. Fill out the form and upload the files of your song and cover image.

Step 4. Click on ‘Mint Song,’ and you will see your song has minted on your collection.

Releap (Coming Soon!)

Releap team actually provides a very detailed step-by-step guideline for their users, so please check this out too!

Step 1. Create a Phantom (a crypto wallet for Solana chain) account.

Step 2. Visit Releap, and sign up with your Phantom account. Then you can find the ‘Create’ button on the main page.

Step 3. Click on the ‘Create Collection’ button.

Step 4. Upload your track and fill out the blanks.

Step 5. Upon the payment of the network fee, Releap will upload your file to Arweave (the storage system).

Step 6. Releap team will review your submission to verify its authenticity. The process will take approximately 1~2 days. After the collection is created, you will be able to add more NFTs to it!

Hope this article improved your understanding of the web3 music industry! 💃🏻

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