In The DAOJ: 5 - The Music Issue, I break down the top 3 blockchain based music companies, Audius, Royal, and Catalog.
TL;DR (still a long post)
Music is one of those industries where 90% of the revenue accrues to the top 10% of creators and businesses. It’s just commerce. So much so that its basically treated as a commodity.
To a purely business minded individual, all music is fungible. That’s why you’ll find the same problems in the music business as you’ll find in global commerce: too many fee taking intermediaries controlling what we buy.
1. Audius aims to enhance artist compensation by enabling them to directly connect and transact with their their fans. They do so through the use of a number of decentralized applications and public blockchain infrastructures. There are over 5 million users curating and listening to content on the platform. Many compare it to a decentralized SoundCloud, although I think it could turn into its own kind of streaming giant given its $AUDIO token incentives and decentralized governance structure.
2. Royal was only announced a few weeks ago but it involves some big names and will surely be a force in the future. It will be a marketplace for artists to sell NFTs of a select percentage of their works. These NFTs are “embedded ownerships in the master recording, earnings royalties from income-producing activities such as streaming.” Electronic musician, 3LAU founded Royal with a $16 million seed round from Paradigm and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
3. Self described as a record press, an auction house, and an open music library, Catalog has quickly built a name for itself. It’s a platform for musicians to release works as 1 of 1 NFTs. While still in the beta phase, it has enabled fans to pay artists over $400,000. Unlike Royal NFTs, Catalog NFTs do not represent royalty claims.
Every decade or so the music industry seems to get disrupted. In the early 80s it was tapes taking over records; in the 90s it was cds taking over tapes; in the 00s, it was Napster & Limewire destroying the record label’s business models; in the 10s, it was Spotify and streaming; and now in the roaring 20s, its blockchain & NFTs.
I wonder what it will be in 2030.
Article Link - DAOJ
TL;DR (still a long post)
Music is one of those industries where 90% of the revenue accrues to the top 10% of creators and businesses. It’s just commerce. So much so that its basically treated as a commodity.
To a purely business minded individual, all music is fungible. That’s why you’ll find the same problems in the music business as you’ll find in global commerce: too many fee taking intermediaries controlling what we buy.
1. Audius aims to enhance artist compensation by enabling them to directly connect and transact with their their fans. They do so through the use of a number of decentralized applications and public blockchain infrastructures. There are over 5 million users curating and listening to content on the platform. Many compare it to a decentralized SoundCloud, although I think it could turn into its own kind of streaming giant given its $AUDIO token incentives and decentralized governance structure.
2. Royal was only announced a few weeks ago but it involves some big names and will surely be a force in the future. It will be a marketplace for artists to sell NFTs of a select percentage of their works. These NFTs are “embedded ownerships in the master recording, earnings royalties from income-producing activities such as streaming.” Electronic musician, 3LAU founded Royal with a $16 million seed round from Paradigm and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund.
3. Self described as a record press, an auction house, and an open music library, Catalog has quickly built a name for itself. It’s a platform for musicians to release works as 1 of 1 NFTs. While still in the beta phase, it has enabled fans to pay artists over $400,000. Unlike Royal NFTs, Catalog NFTs do not represent royalty claims.
Every decade or so the music industry seems to get disrupted. In the early 80s it was tapes taking over records; in the 90s it was cds taking over tapes; in the 00s, it was Napster & Limewire destroying the record label’s business models; in the 10s, it was Spotify and streaming; and now in the roaring 20s, its blockchain & NFTs.
I wonder what it will be in 2030.
Article Link - DAOJ
