Music & Token-Gating

The global music industry continues to thrive, with revenues rising for the seventh straight year to $25.9 billion. Paid subscription streaming has been a key driver of overall growth, accounting for 65% of recorded music revenue. Even so, the industry relies on record labels to control the distribution of an artists’ music, their tour dates, and decide their marketing budgets. They take a lion-share of their signed musicians’ earnings, making the top record labels wildly profitable. For example, Warner Music group, the second largest record label, profited $2.76 billion in 2022 a 21.02% increase year-over-year.

Global music industry revenues from 1999 to 2021 ($US billions)

However, music artists have been particularly critical of the unfair power dynamics between record labels and musicians, leaving the artist without rights to their own recordings. The label controls where the music is played, when it’s played, and how it’s used commercially, making it the quintessential element of a musician’s career. Artistic expression in the music industry has thus become a thing of the past, with record labels even deciding the tone of an artist’s music for maximal revenue generation.

Artists from across generations and genres including Prince, Meek Mill, Taylor Swift, Johnny Cash and Nipsey Hussle have had high profile feuds and battles with their record labels and contracts.

NFTs have the power to democratize the music industry, offering access to new means of distribution that enables artists to take control of their intellectual property, cutting out the middleman entirely.

Token-gating

Let’s say an artist wants to sell their album as an NFT, so that any holder of that NFT can listen to the audio files of the tracks within the album, transfer the token to another wallet, or sell it on the secondary market. Unlockable content, such as exclusive tracks an also be included while releasing an album through NFTs, which incentivizes secondary market activity. That album becomes an asset in itself; since secondary royalties are written into a smart contract of the token, the artist can consistently profit off their music. Italian X-Factor finalist Violetta Zironi recently released her debut NFT album, partnering with with multi platinum songwriter Michael Ochs.

Violetta Zironi’s ‘Moonshot’ was released as an NFT collection, with Zironi retaining 10% in royalties off every secondary sale. (Contract address: 0x70be4e3761188d0a8c525e54bb81c4ea97712de4)

SimpleHash’s NFTs by Contract endpoint can retrieve all the metadata associated with NFTs in the ‘Moonshot’ collection.

Here’s a snippet of the response containing one ‘Moonshot’ NFT when passing its contract address into the NFTs by Contract endpoint:

{
"next": "[<https://api.simplehash.com/api/v0/nfts/ethereum/0x70be4e3761188d0a8c525e54bb81c4ea97712de4?cursor=ZXZtLTEuMHg3MGJlNGUzNzYxMTg4ZDBhOGM1MjVlNTRiYjgxYzRlYTk3NzEyZGU0LjAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDA0OV9fbmV4dA>](<https://api.simplehash.com/api/v0/nfts/ethereum/0x70be4e3761188d0a8c525e54bb81c4ea97712de4?cursor=ZXZtLTEuMHg3MGJlNGUzNzYxMTg4ZDBhOGM1MjVlNTRiYjgxYzRlYTk3NzEyZGU0LjAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMDA0OV9fbmV4dA>)",
"previous": null,
"nfts": [
{
"chain": "ethereum",
"contract_address": "0x70bE4E3761188d0a8c525E54bB81c4Ea97712de4",
"token_id": "0",
"name": "Moonshot #0 - Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always - ULTRA-RARE DIAMOND EDITION",
"description": "This rare, 1 of 1 token can only be obtained by collecting 9 Moonshot tokens with each of the different frames.\\n\\nMOONSHOT is a music NFT collection based on 5 songs written by Violetta Zironi and 2500 unique, hand-drawn artworks by Giuseppe Zironi (Violetta's dad), a renowned Disney illustrator for over 30 years.\\n\\nThe songs were co-written by Violetta with multi platinum songwriter Michael Ochs, and produced with 2x Grammy winning producer Matt Rollings.\\n\\nFind out more about the music here:\\n[Violetta Zironi](<https://www.violettazironi.com/>)\\n\\nEach song was inspired by a real life situation that occurred in Violetta’s life. Each artwork was inspired by the songs.\\n\\nThe music will take you somewhere you’ve never been, but yet feels familiar.\\n\\n---\\n\\nA Nifty Music drop.\\n\\nFind out more about us:\\n[Nifty Music](<https://niftymusic.app/>)",
"image_url": "[<https://cdn.simplehash.com/assets/2cdbb1c976ad0b2513c391ce251289202241ea6fad982ee710ff1638a492b60c.png>](<https://cdn.simplehash.com/assets/2cdbb1c976ad0b2513c391ce251289202241ea6fad982ee710ff1638a492b60c.png>)",
"video_url": null,
"audio_url": "[<https://cdn.simplehash.com/assets/778115db83d0df76da9cf0ff1e60dd769b92da4c31f0201168f3babeb6d68a10.mp3>](<https://cdn.simplehash.com/assets/778115db83d0df76da9cf0ff1e60dd769b92da4c31f0201168f3babeb6d68a10.mp3>)",
"model_url": null,
"previews": {
"image_small_url": "[<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=s250>](<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=s250>)",
"image_medium_url": "[<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ>](<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ>)",
"image_large_url": "[<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=s1000>](<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=s1000>)",
"image_opengraph_url": "[<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=k-w1200-s2400-rj>](<https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/KATGyF9UcyOkOXkhIghahtVfZMiEp_FKYnkE849bDHPjWyOWt0oRCGveqSfv6tw0eiOJ0C_VMMnb3syS8-T22acVuQ3Na91yUQ=k-w1200-s2400-rj>)",
"blurhash": "UGK-I3=*loMyvOr_XSjEF%OU#mw3y:TDrqR*"
},
"background_color": null,
"external_url": "[<https://niftymusic.app/violetta-zironi/moonshot>](<https://niftymusic.app/violetta-zironi/moonshot>)",
"extra_metadata": {
"edition": 0,
"date": 1650810633069,
"attributes": [
{
"trait_type": "Frame",
"value": "Diamond"
},
{
"trait_type": "Background",
"value": "OG"
},
{
"trait_type": "Signature",
"value": "None"
},
{
"trait_type": "Song",
"value": "Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always"
},
{
"trait_type": "Artist",
"value": "Violetta Zironi"
}
],
"image_original_url": "ipfs://QmQY8H8ESYs9mYWaBSpV88NrSxRnMUjYNqXJ7yWpecVUki/0.png",
"animation_original_url": "ipfs://QmUWKwkBRTJcSLN7FmpBuyiKPK1n1XYmsx3eB4HmEwTg9g/01%20Never,%20Rarely,%20Sometimes,%20Always_RH-6*%28eq%2011-18%29%2096Khz%2024Bit.mp3"
},
"created_date": "2022-04-15T17:01:01",
"status": "minted",
"token_count": 1,
"owner_count": 1,
"owners": [
{
"owner_address": "0xd8F5bA4b9b6f29b9b4AcA3cDc3b46BF5BCc9B7eD",
"quantity": 1,
"first_acquired_date": "2022-04-28T08:51:00",
"last_acquired_date": "2022-04-28T08:51:00"
}

As you can see, all NFT metadata, including the original audio URL, as well as the album art with different image preview sizes are laid out for any developer to easily integrate within their applications.

Artists like Zironi can create immersive token-gated experiences that showcase contents of their NFT albums, using SimpleHash’s infrastructure.

More-so, the artist can choose to provide further value to their holders with perks, such as presales to their events (physical or virtual), discounts towards merchandise, or special access to locked content.

A simple use case could be a website portal. Through the musician’s website, they can allow for token-gated access using one of their NFTs. Once the website verifies that a given wallet holds the token, the holder will be granted access to any perks chosen by the artist.

While it may seem complicated to put into practice, SimpleHash makes it easy to integrate token-gating features into any website or application. Using the Ownership Summary by Wallet(s) endpoint, any developer can pass specific wallet addresses, and get back a summary of the NFT contract ownership of these addresses.

The endpoint supports querying multiple networks and wallets simultaneously; to supply multiple values, provide them comma separated in the query params, (e.g., chains=polygon,ethereum&wallet_addresses=0xa12,0xb34). (As of June 2022, we’re currently live on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum and Solana).

Here’s a quick example of a request using Violetta Zironi’s ‘Moonshot’ on the Ethereum network, using Zironi’s wallet address:

curl --request GET \\
     --url '<https://api.simplehash.com/api/v0/nfts/contracts?chains=ethereum,polygon&wallet_addresses=0xC01A0311708476E586fc194eB433979FF904E6Dd&contract_addresses=0x70bE4E3761188d0a8c525E54bB81c4Ea97712de4>' \\
     --header 'Accept: application/json' \\
     --header 'x-api-key: <API_KEY>'

The API checks if Zironi owns any tokens from the ‘Moonshot’ contract, and the response is as such:

{
  "wallets": [
    {
      "wallet_address": "0x0c4956cAA320ced206049ff8dB698644a2d22769",
      "contracts": [
        {
          "contract_address": "0x70bE4E3761188d0a8c525E54bB81c4Ea97712de4",
          "token_ids": [
            "28",
            "29",
            "30",
            "31",
            "32",
            "33",
            "34",
            "35",
            "38"
          ],
          "chain": "ethereum",
          "nfts_owned": 9
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

So, Zironi owns 9 NFTs of her Moonshot collection! The number of NFTs owned can be particularly useful for ranking holders, or tiered incentivisation (i.e. the more NFTs you own, the more perks you get).

For example, if an artist is holding an in-person event, where a ticket could be claimed for every NFT held, using this endpoint would output everything needed! The endpoint verifies ownership by outputting the number of NFTs owned by an end user and their respective token IDs. Although large music artists haven’t implemented token gating into their websites yet, many projects and retailers have already developed innovative products around the technology. Here are a few examples:

Locked Content: Stoner Cats

Mila Kunis’ production company, Orchard Farms, developed an animated television series called Stoner Cats. Those that hold a Stoner Cat NFT can watch show, which is token-gated on their website.

Similarly, musicians can control the distribution of their tracks using the token-gating method.

Membership, Discounts and Exclusive Products: Coolman’s Universe

Coolman’s Universe artist and digital creator, Danny Casale, first took the internet by storm with his animated video Snakes Have Legs, and built an NFT project surrounding his beloved ‘Spesh’ character.

The Coolman’s Universe developer team built a token-gated web portal that allows holders to access exclusive limited merchandise at discounted prices, and raffle opportunities for NFT project whitelists. They took it a step further, by introducing a rarity-based raffle system; holders that own rarer NFTs in the collection have greater chances to win giveaways.

Using SimpleHash’s NFTs by Wallet endpoint, rarity-based applications can be developed by indexing specific traits in the metadata of an NFT collection owned by a given user; simply pass the user’s wallet address and the collection’s contract address. You can learn more about this endpoint in our last blog post.

By applying similar token-gating systems, musicians and bands can reward their fans with exclusive access to events, products, communities and more.

Innovative experiences using NFTs as access tokens are limited to the creativity of the creator. The opportunities are endless. The music industry isn’t going anywhere, and token-gating makes it easier for artists to engage with their fans, while continuously generating revenue from their music, and taking control of their intellectual property.

At SimpleHash, we offer dozens of ways to query NFT data in addition to the mentioned endpoints — you can read the API docs for an in-depth documentation with live example curl widgets of our endpoints, so you can them out yourself!

Before you start building, you’ll need to grab an API key here.

Looking to create a music-based application using the SimpleHash API? Let us know on Twitter! It’s also the best way to stay up-to-date with new feature implementations and optimizations. Stay tuned to this blog for more explanations and deep dives into NFT data and infrastructure.