Goodbye 2018, you were awesome!
…but we’re leaving you for another year
Wow, that was fast! 2018 was a massive year for us here at Emanate and we’ve experienced some remarkable achievements and challenges. We thought we’d rewind the clock to share the highlights, cover what’s happening now, and take a look at what is on the cards for the year ahead!
First, a HUGE thanks to everyone that has supported the project with time, finances and enthusiasm; your support keeps our fire burning bright!
“Emanate brings super fast, feeless and borderless payments via trusted global collaborations to music creators and lovers. We are driven by passion to create a fair and transparent alternative ecosystem for musicians and the broader industry.”
Emanate, the concept in action.
We started 2018 spreading the Emanate word in South Korea, Vietnam, Austin-SXSW, Puerto Rico, and Los Angeles. Although we started planning in August 2017, this was the beginning of Emanate’s global adventures which eventually took us over to Shanghai, back to South Korea, a week in London and finishing the year off again in the city of Angels.
Our message has always been clear; we are here to evolve the industry, not to disrupt it completely.
Let’s round up the main highlights and accomplishments from 2018!
Partnership with Vampr.me
This was a massive moment for Emanate and a deal that was a long time in the making, and for a good reason. With around 500,000 users and snowballing, Vampr.me is a mobile app connecting music industry professionals.Vampr is all about connecting for collaboration. Songwriters link up with producers who find artists/bands and then have an arsenal of designers, videographers, agents and managers all at their fingertips. Need a session musician? Find them on Vampr; the possibilities are endless.
Bridging the gap
Emanate will offer Vampr users a one-click sign-up solution getting the direct benefits of Emanate’s collaboration technology engine. Full Emanate integration is on the Vampr roadmap for version 3 of the app, making it the first to connect to the Emanate ecosystem.
“We believe that blockchain has the potential to solve some big problems for musicians in protecting their IP and monetising their creative endeavours outside of the centralised music system we currently have — whereby large labels and publishers hold all the power and too often stand as intermediaries between us and our audience or us and our money!”- Josh Simons, Songwriter, Artist, Buchanan and CEO of Vampr.
Block.one spotlight and invitation to London
We committed to the EOSIO software back in late 2017 (yep, before it was even close to being ready). Critical factors for Emanate were high-speed, feeless transactions, ability to scale and of course a distributed ledger. EOSIO ticked all the boxes. Its creator Daniel Larimer holds a stellar track record, creating both BitShares and Steemit giving us confidence his team would deliver the goods.
Since that decision, we’ve been getting busy in the EOS community. Our partnership with block producer EOSphere played a crucial role in helping us connect with the broader community. Special high fives to Charles at EOS42, Dima at MEET. ONE, Michael from eosDAC, Igor and all the wizards at EOS Rio and all good folk at GenerEOS!
A HUGE shout to Ross ‘The Boss’ Dold and wife Shelly for all the doors you have opened for us, we really can’t thank you enough!
EOS Hackathons and community meetups
This year saw Block.one roll out a series of hackathon events all across the globe, the first of its kind. Hong Kong, Sydney, London, South Africa and San Fran. With over 1.5 million USD up for grabs, the series attracted an impressive number of attendees and participants. A different global problem to be solved at each event, with a blockchain solution building on the EOSIO platform.
The events were all class, quality and with high attention to detail. One of our superstar developers, Blake, represented Emanate at the Sydney event joining a team compiled of high-quality Australian talent, including Anya Nova from Power Ledger with Mark Locket and Brendon Ross from the EOSphere crew.
The team placed in the top 10 which we were all extremely proud of. Besides entering, we’ve mentored at 3/5 EOSIO hackathon events in Sydney, London and San Francisco. We travelled to Shanghai for the EOS family day and sat in on several block producer and community meetups locally in Seoul, London. Emanate team stands proud to represent.
You can understand our excitement when we received news that Block.one chose to include Emanate in their spotlight series! For us, it felt a bit like a pat on the back from God.
Another smack in the face with good news followed, again from the folk at Block.one! This time an invitation to London, to join a handful of carefully selected EOSIO projects in the block.one village at the Blockchain Live event!
A massive moment for us, and an excellent opportunity to share, network, educate and most importantly get a stage to talk about our vision, our “why” and showcase our technology.
Thanks again, Block.one, for giving us this opportunity. We are humbled to have been on your radar of projects worth showcasing.
Team evolution and growth
Around our first birthday, we welcomed a bunch of new hires and advisors on our journey. On the technical side, we appointed Ross Dold and Anthony Smith as our new acting CTOs. Alongside them, we also assigned an EOSIO tech team. Igor e Silva, Michael Yeates and Nathan Rempel will help ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.
Back at Emanate HQ, we also made a fulltime EOS c++ engineer hire, Ignatius Widjaja. Iggy is a technical superstar in the making, combining a background in computer science studies with professional experience in top tier companies such as Deloitte and Accenture. He is also rapidly climbing the learning curve of blockchain development. As a musician and passionate blockchain developer, Iggy’s appointment was a no-brainer for us.
“Working with a dedicated team of highly intelligent and talented people has proven invaluable to Emanate’s snowballing success.”
Trent Shaw — Co-founder and chief of operations
Sound Advice
Emanate is supported extremely well technically, however, this is only half the battle. We’ve all heard “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!” and this couldn’t ring truer when it comes to the music industry.
Co-founder Jimi Frew, in charge of industry relationships, has 12 years in just about every corner of the electronic music world. During that time, he’s created an organic and extremely tight network of highly respected artists, managers, tour managers, photographers, booking agents and musicians. These are the guys in the trenches day to day and are overflowing with experience and wisdom.
“Emanate is for the music industry, by the music industry. This is not just another project by Silicon Valley, for Silicon Valley. It’s critical to get organic excitement, influence, adoption and the support from audio creatives both established and developing. I have no doubt our relationships, community and word of mouth will work its magic here.”
Jimi Frew — Co-founder, Industry relationships
We are incredibly lucky to have an amazing crew of territory influencers, advisors and an ever-growing selection of Emanate “official artists”. Between this family, there isn’t an artist (no matter the genre) a phone call away. There are ‘music industry connections’, and then there is genuine respect and relationships. Emanate believe in the latter and this is a significant advantage we hold that will prove itself over time.
Our music team, influencers and advisors can all be found on our website, although there have been a few additions in late 2018 whom we’d like to give a special mention.
“I love being a part of history and projects that can truly change the game like Emanate”
Vivie-Ann Bakos. shEOS/ BLOND:ISH
Vivie-Ann Bakos- Artistic and Strategic Advisor
Vivie founded ABRACADABRA, a lifestyle and event brand which is fast becoming a global creative movement. Famous for: part of DJ duo BLOND:ISH, and founding member of shEOS | EOS Block Producer, a leading EOS Block producer. Vivie has industry connections that span far and wide in both electronic music and the technology space. Emanate is super lucky to have her on board to help with awareness and recruiting and to keep us in check when it comes to sustainable practices surrounding events and corporate growth.
Matt Medved — Music Media Advisor
Matt is a musical chameleon who has never shied from sharing his sound with the five continents he’s lived upon. Late 2018 Matt took a new role as editor in chief at the infamous Spin music and culture magazine.
Before that Matt founded Billboard Dance, Billboard’s dance and electronic music channel. He is also an avid electronic musician and DJ who fuses his songwriting with elements of house, techno and world music.
Ed St John — Music Media Advisor
Ed is a music industry heavyweight, Executive GM of the Ethics Centre here in Sydney, a board member of Music Australia and former executive of Columbia Records, BMG and Warner Music.
Ed wrote as a music critic for Rolling Stone Magazine as far back as 1977. He is the Chairman of Valleyarm Digital and is looking forward to helping Emanate forge a new path for a better, faster, fairer music industry.
Give, and you shall receive!
While we are sharing musical highlights, let’s look at our label partnership with French-based independent Yunizon records. Jimi has been friends with David and Gavin, and while and when the concept of Emanate was communicated, the guys at Yunizon didn’t hesitate to get involved.
Celebrating our partnership with a remix competition, We teamed up with Canadian artist “Ralph” and Canada’s largest independent label 604 Records. Ralph’s single “Tables have turned” was a catchy indy pop record which was given to our growing artist community to make their own in the form of a cover or a remix.
We uncovered so much quality talent, and it was hard to pick a clear winner. Danish-born, Berlin-based artist Dillistone took out the winning spot. Our first and second runner-up were UK based 18-year-old “Kasla” and “Sankt Pauli” with his modern 80’s twist on modern electro-pop.
With all the talent discovered, we were inspired to set up an artist development program to help nurture emerging talent. The recipe for success includes more than just talent alone. You need wisdom, guidance, brand building and relationships to deliver the right opportunities. Usually, all of this would be the job of a great manager, but there are only some many clients they can take on and opportunities get missed.
Emanate will be building on this program in 2019 by announcing the first round of artists that have hit our radar, helping them grow their career and brands, and assigning them mentors to guide them as best we can.
Technology is the game changer
Progressing down the road of emerging technologies takes passion, dedication, thought leadership and trailblazing.
Let’s touch on the underlying engine driving the Emanate machine.
If there is anything we had to get fundamentally right with Emanate, it had to be the business model.
Any project that thoroughly understands the power of decentralised economies realise that their token should not be just a currency but rather an economy.
“How do you create value in the token itself, and reward everyone in the relationship of the business? “ — Mark Roddy, Coin Hunter Research Group.
Emanate teamed up with Coin Hunter Research Group to develop a bulletproof model that solved many of the problems we saw in other projects.
We had to walk new ground here, blending thought leadership with practicality. Since we published our model, we’ve seen a handful of other projects taking it on which is very humbling and further validates and strengthens our concept.
Emanate Two-Token economy
The music industry is made up of many actors, so it was paramount that the token design first encouraged participation and aligned incentives of all those actors. We also required it to be sustainable, adaptable and scalable within the music industry indefinitely.
After many iterations, Emanate put forward a two-token model.
EMT which would be the token used to govern the network. And;
A stable coin that carries value throughout the ecosystem (at the moment we call it MNX)
Our tokens were born!
Nearing the end of the year, our tokens were created on EOS main-net! It was an exciting day for us at Emanate HQ. We took a couple of hours to enjoy the victory and had a toast to celebrate.
So what will Emanate tokens do?
The EMT token that we’re selling and airdropping is the vital asset to own if you’re interested in Emanate. In point summary, the token will be used in all of the following ways:
- Access to the network
- Governance
- Ability to earn
Dive deep in the article below.
2019 and beyond!
As we move into our second year of progression, things are starting to shift. What is happening with the crowd-funding landscape, and at what point do we start to pivot from a crypto-project raising seed funding to a music-tech start-up communicating with the mass market?
Let’s look at what’s ahead:
Marketing and PR
- We have started to work with Web Profits/Zage on our digital growth and PR strategy
- We will begin to pivot our emanate.live website to start talking less to the ‘ico’ crowd and more to the music industry!
- Working with AirDropsDAC a 2nd stage airdrop is coming and we want to get it out to as many people as possible
Platform Development
- The Emanate prototype/demo is nearly done. We have shown it publicly at selected events but will soon deploy live for our community to have a play
- Our search continues for more great developers, with two new team members currently on trial. Contact us if you want to join the Emanate tea, no matter your background
- We will soon release an updated roadmap with a 2019 focus. The main highlight will be our Alpha platform deployment to which will begin onboarding the first pilot artists
- Token dashboard coming soon — a pre-alpha release
Community
- Further airdrops to Artists and EOS token holders
- Our Korean telegram community has just been born (We’re also looking for a team to help us build our China community!)
- More remix competitions
- The first round of Artists announced for our “Development program”.
- Emanate sound initiative excursion #1 — More to be announced shortly.
Growing opportunities
- Accelerator programs and investment — offical announcements to come
- Continuing talks with major music partners and programs
- Commence work strategy with “Rising Digital” — A boutique digital agency specialising in electronic music.
2018 may have been one of the worst years for cryptocurrency investments, but it was the most exciting year ever for blockchain development and progress of decentralised communities. I think we’ll see more of this in 2019. Beyond this year, when the world gets excited about cryptocurrency again it will be because entire industries are being disrupted, entire economies, pure cryptocurrency businesses and business models will be thriving. We look forward to helping shape the future the music industry with Emanate.
Sean Gardner, Emanate CEO and cofounder
Back to it!
A final thanks for an amazing first year! It’s incredible for us to see everything the project has achieved summarised in this article.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the day to day grind and not acknowledge our achievements and milestones. We are incredibly inspired, passionate and determined to change the game with Emanate. Thank you for being a part of the journey with us.
🎧 Team Emanate
Inquiries, Investment, Partnerships?
Let’s chat! get us on: team @ emanate . live
