• 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Fans’ Wants – Our Products – Nonessential
• 👸 Artists’ Wants – Onboarding
• 🥊 Guild – Action Items – Monthly Metrics
• 📘 Social Music Protocol – Reference – Meeting Notes

A Practical Guide to NFT Memberships for Creators

In 2021, Chris Dixon wrote about how creators can use NFTs to their "1,000 true fans." Since then, NFT use-cases have multiplied. Case in point: The rise of NFT memberships, which require fans to hold a specific NFT to join a private community and enjoy its perks.

future.com

A. WHAT OUR FAN-CUSTOMERS WANT

1. The fan-customer wants access, updates, and more access

• Fans want to get updates and interact with artist if they purchase NFT, and artists can’t do that on Spotify
• Online, want community with artists more than a web3 platform to show off to each other in “hubs,” or spreading the gospel, or new streaming platforms to buy/sell NFTs. DAOs can enable people to participate (“managers” voting on creative and business decisions, like single choices, artwork, merch or brand partnerships) but access will be the main driver
• In-Real-Life (IRL), Afterparty looks very promising; artists can sell all-access tickets or tickets for multiple events or even ones that haven’t been scheduled yet; loyal fans can get perks for early or frequent attendance. Fanaply offers tickets, afterparties, dinners with artists for winner of NFT auction

2. Like Games vs. GameFi, we shouldn’t muck up the appeal with money and gamification

• Pixelbands has a clever studio, but the music that comes out is lousy and is clearly to drive NFT sales to buy an “instrument”
• Establishing provenance on web3 platforms seems only like a minor perk: artist attention/access is likely much more major. (Still, on legacy web2 platforms where primping still matters, integrations like Mintsongs with the Koji app store will be key.)
• Just like gamers have different psychological utilities than GameFi degens, music fans may want royalty participation to justify their spend, but not as a primary driver as stock investors or card flippers; too many failed music web2 startups gamifying sharing to mention)

3. Maybe don’t even mention a wallet

• TikTok isn’t a wallet. It’s a quick-hit streaming of entertainment (content) and engagement
• App should have wallet features but primarily be about the engagement, with a tab to pay for more engagement

4. Fiat onramp may be necessary for an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

• https://thehusl.io/ had Busta Rhymes and still, nothing
• https://blockparty.co/, https://www.oneof.com/nft-oneof/, Foundation (Rime is on)

B. OUR OFFERING TO FAN-CUSTOMERS

5. Digital Perks and 1/1 ideas are the scalable sauce which will align with desires of “100 true fans”

1. Videos or 1/1 videos of first performance
2. 1:1 exclusive meet and greets; content and experiences
3. 1:1 video thank-yous - Bundles of media files like photos, lyrics, jpeg, wav, mp4, mov, mp3, gif, pdf, txt files
4. “Golden Egg” sweepstakes winners of 1/1’s
5. Early access to ticket sales by gating websites
6. Token-gated discord (we publish playbook) and even music nft discord bots
7. “Boxed set” blind bundles
8. One-time payment of $1k to access all and future music.
9. Distribute/gate/scavenger hunt apps
10. Song with different verse as opposed to something the same as is on Spotify
11. Minimal NFT is fan’s name, artist name, date, hashtag - album art instead, any photo
12. Minimum content: 30 second rendition of favorite song, or related to the artwork, like a tiktok - personal, desirability, scarcity - cameo, or any audio or video, personal message or snippet of live show
13. Subscription access to news or artist community
14. Maybe giving them livestreaming like Bandcamp or a metaverse concert through two of our partners can be a perk of selling a certain amount, or charge artists for it - Feels doable - tokengate zoom or youtube
15. Since fan psychological utility is engagement, like Audius/Solana, we should track and reward engagement with unlockable perks and not just purchase, to make it sticky - Audius “implemented a Solana based engagement system to log and track users' interactions and create a social graph to reward fan relationships”. If our app includes streaming platform we can even incentivize artists for engagement. Momenthouse has livestream engagement with artists and breakout chatrooms. Even Bandcamp rolled out ticketed or free live streams

6. Our artwork tech (partnered) can be a premium experience for musicians and fans

• We can use accessories to represent perks: similar to how Hoodlums can be (manually, alas) upgraded by the Somehoodlum team with VIP wristbands
• Making 3-D animated album art could help artists get paid providing fans with premium experience: Landscaped static art with play button is unimpressive; even Formfunction has songs split up into verses or choruses with brief animation; or AI-driven or animated version including album art (like DistroKid’s drop but animated), or Fanaply on Polygon.)

C. THINGS INESSENTIAL TO AN MVP FOR FAN-CUSTOMERS

7. Live events are very doable, but not necessarily an MVP

• Most bands don’t tour
• Merch tables are chaotic               
• CD Baby / DiscMakers merch program showed big uptick only by the top tier of touring artists
• kandikids.io got publicity, but aren’t blue chip
• We can offer livestreaming or metaverse concerts instead and be democratic and cool and innovative at it
• For live events/tickets, though, we could partner with someone like Brown Paper Tickets to offer people NFT QR codes, get after-show perks, souvenirs, content               
• Fanaply allowing you to add NFTs to your Apple Wallet for live events, meets, parties is interesting

8. Physical bundles is doable, but not MVP

• It may not be huge – Pledge Music rugged and Topspin folded and Ditto Music abandoned the offering and Billboard stopped showing album sales for merch-ticket bundles - but it’s still popular with larger artists
• Physical bundle of merch, vinyl
• Physical NFT printing
• Dropshipping may be pricey (Merchly; Zazzle; Printful integration) but perhaps a deal can be cut
• Physically signed album covers
• Through partnerships: QR code scan to print with Disc Makers or vinyl replicator or merch for tokenized physical goods
• Chips in hoodies in tags sealed in an IP-66 rated enclosure https://www.iyk.app/

9. A marketplace may not even be necessary for an MVP

• CD Baby’s store shut down in 2020 when people were only consuming music on Amazon; and streaming services Royal launched without a searchable one and just uses OpenSea as external secondary market

10. Offering stems/remixing/online DAWs, Kanye players may be too niche to scale as much as we need

• OMGKirby, Async Art, Arpeggi, Wobblebug

D. OUR OFFERING TO ARTIST-CUSTOMERS

11. Our artist-customers often want the same thing as fan-customers…

• Fans want engagement more than investing, and artists want fans. 1/1 companies like MintSongs have pivoted; S!ng does open editions for limited times
• Spotify integration would be key: pre-save song to get free NFT
• Delayed-reveal NFTs to generate excitement around a release date

12. But artists also want revenue generating more than fans want royalty participation, so this will take careful messaging/UX

• Artists need crowdfunding (see Mirror and Royal and Decent)
• Audius lets artists each set their own revenue and subscription model
• Royalty distribution is nontrivial, but splits through 0xsplits will be easier

13. Artists will require significant customer service

• DistroKid/Nifty Gateway offering took fiat, and still had more customer service issues than they wanted
• If we need to set up a wallet for them, we can like Royal does here
• We’ll need a customer service approach, willingness to engage with high-touch larger clients, or make a seamless minter
• Most projects that stay mechanical-Turked projects fail: https://www.pixelbands.io/ (floor of $10); Topspin
• If we curate NFT artists we need a clear roadmap to a self-service model

14. Our music player may require 30-second samples to avoid triggering an ASCAP/BMI/SESAC licenses

• Royal plays 30-second samples, as does DistroKid
• Still, we could investigate whether we can get direct licenses from artists, or blanket licenses for larger ones

E. HOW WE CAN ATTRACT ARTIST-CUSTOMERS EN MASSE

15. We may need the long tail, and we may need the bigger boat of an aggregator to get it

• Contra Ted Gioia and Greg Kennelty, most web3 artists are unsigned, and it’s often for legal reasons.
• Even https://fantiger.com/ raised 5.5M; Roar Studios raised $7M with a solid team and niche premise                
• Given the valuation of aggregators (DistroKid and CD Baby at >1BN, even OneRPM was >100M) one could buy a huge bulk our tokens and make us their in-house blockchain

16. Capturing the long tail will likely take a three pronged approach

• Distro partnership
• web2 marketing / blogger outreach
• massive artist attached for publicity

Team Planning

Guild

• 4-people (1 product, 2 eng, 1 biz): 🦒Brian, 🌀Bruce, 🎸Jenya, 📖Devin
• Biz support: 🚜Demetre, Adrian, Danny, Sammy, Mikey
• Dev support: 📱 Tejassvi Kaushal, 🐙 Sergey Karasev, 🚎 Artem Kolodko, 🌻 Yuriy Menkov, 🧑‍🍳 Victa Phu, 🐈 Semar Martins

Action Items

1. 🦒Brian: Expert validation
1. Coopahtroopa (his Music NFT Newsletter)
2. 📖Devin: Streaming in metaverse (cryptovoxel)
• On Tuesday 7/12, host 100 people cryptovoxels event with $1k total transactions - thru Twitch, 3 artists - $1k budget?
• Giving them livestreaming like Bandcamp or a metaverse concert through two of our partners can be a perk of selling a certain amount, or charge artists for it - is it basic to the offering? tokengate through zoom?
• If our app includes streaming platform we can even incentivize artists for engagement. Momenthouse has livestream engagement with artists and breakout chatrooms. Even Bandcamp rolled out ticketed or free live streams
• Streaming services Royal launched without a searchable one and just uses OpenSea as external secondary market
• We can offer livestreaming or metaverse concerts instead and be democratic and cool and innovative at it
3. 🚜Demetre: Partnership: Distro
• July: 3 artists each with 1k Twitter followers, 10 fans each will buy NFT for an exclusive virtual event access / content - Sammy? Devin?
• Given the valuation of aggregators (DistroKid and CD Baby at >1BN, even OneRPM was >100M) one could buy a huge bulk our tokens and make us their in-house blockchain
4. 🎸Jenya: Mirror for crowdfunding
1. Artists need crowdfunding (see Mirror and Royal and Decent)
2. Royalty distribution is nontrivial, but splits through 0xsplits will be easier
5. 🌻Yuriy: Port Lens (the best Web3 social project) for Fan Access
• Gated content (with music player, like sound.xyz) page
• Subscription access to news or artist community.
• Token-gated discord (we publish playbook) and even music nft discord bots
• Enable people to participate but access will be the main driver.
• Establishing provenance on web3 platforms seems only like a minor perk: artist attention/access is likely much more major.
• Early access to ticket sales by gating websites
6. 🐙 Sergey: Engagement
1. TikTok isn’t a wallet. It’s a quick-hit streaming of entertainment (content) and engagement
2. App should have wallet features but primarily be about the engagement, with a tab to pay for more engagement
3. Since fan psychological utility is engagement, like Audius/Solana, we should track and reward engagement with unlockable perks and not just purchase, to make it sticky - Audius “implemented a Solana based engagement system to log and track users' interactions and create a social graph to reward fan relationships”.
7. 🌀Bruce: Randomized packs (Verifiable Randonness Function, VDF)
1. “Golden Egg” sweepstakes winners of 1/1’s
2. Delayed-reveal NFTs to generate excitement around a release date
3. “Boxed set” blind bundles

Monthly Metrics

• Jul:
• Aug:
• Sep:

AVOIDs for Now

• Integrations: Spotify, Marketplaces, 1Wallet
• Niches: Stems, Generated arts
• Chores: Events, Merchandises, Customer services, Shipping
• Pains: Wallet setup, licenses
• Wishes: Celebrities
• Tech: Royalities, Machine learning

Lens: Social Music Protocol

Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social graph, ready for you to build on so you can focus on creating a great experience, not scaling your users.

ideas.lens.xyz

VIBE LIVE TOGETHER

FAN CONNECTION

CREATOR MONITIZATION

Reference

Sellouts NFT #15 - Amor by Carlos Ambrosio

Sellouts is a collaboration with thousands of independent music creators to mint NFTs.

distrokid.com

Decent Beta

beta.decent.xyz

RCRDSHP

Blockchain technology has recently made it possible for artists to bypass existing music industry structures and engage with fans more directly. We believe that music is valuable, so we curate and mint beautiful digital collectibles that you can purchase to support DJs, producers, labels, and other creators.

app.rcrdshp.com

Meeting Notes