Music NFT: Access, Social, Livestreams
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Music NFT: Access, Social, Livestreams

Top Goals: 1) Finalize a Minimum Viable Product and 2) Set future offerings. Here are some thoughts from my traditional music industry experience and from looking at music NFTs, that could help guide these top goals. Since these thoughts haven’t yet been tested with direct user research, I’m calling these thoughts “hunches” and am happy to be proven wrong. – 🦒 Brian Felsen

🌿NFT Mints (Fiat Fundraising) via Events & Merchandises

🪘Market-Product-Team Fit with Utility NFT for Creator Economy

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)

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

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

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

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

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
  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

NFT Mints, Fiat Buys, New Users

  • 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

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Imagine new social media musical experiences that enable you to connect, share and listen together.

The Lens social graph has the power to revolutionize the music experience for both fans and artists. Fans will have new ways to discover music, find like minded fans, and experience music together. Artists will have new ways to deepen their fan connection, and new options for commercializing their creations.

VIBE LIVE TOGETHER

How might we use Lens to make collective live experiences?

There are many things in the Web3 that we experience live together. We collaborate live in files and presentations, we code and merge together, but most of today’s media apps are broadcast only. Imagine if listening to music was a collective live experience, where we build and curate playlists together ad-hoc, with our music collections. Using the Lens collect module with new collaborative front-ends could enable us to experience media together new, engaging ways.

FAN CONNECTION

How might we provide creators with tools and resources to better understand their fans, deepen their relationships and release the full value of their fanbase? Engagement drives growth, but because social features on today’s platforms are limited, interaction with followers is fragmented across platforms, making it hard to build dialogue and community. Building tools that tap into the social graph, would give artists 360 insight of their fans’ tastes and likes. Artists could even create a fanship score, by which to identify their top fans, and recognize them with rewards and perks, or build deeper community.

CREATOR MONITIZATION

What if we could create greater control and better tools for how artists commercialize their content, so that they might thrive financially and creatively?

Most artists struggle to make a viable living on today’s platforms, due to the highly competitive nature of being seen on those platforms, and the debilitating fees involved, with $0.88 of every revenue dollar going to stakeholders other than the artist. Releasing content on-chain opens up new possibilities for monetization. Imagine dashboards to track content and royalties across Lens Apps. Or, perhaps artists could even define their own membership programs, with tiers of access, perks and rewards.

Reference

Meeting Notes

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