A Fan’s Perspective on Sound.xyz

“I was making enough on streams to get by, but selling my music directly to my community has made me more money, this quarter, than all of last year.”

Fighting The Streamer Economy

While this isn’t a direct quote, it follows a trend. The way creators are going to distribute to their fans is changing. But, why and (maybe more importantly) how is this happening?

On Spotify, to make $6000, a song would need to get 1.5 million streams. For up and coming artists, that’s a really big number and can takes months of promotion to even get there.

With consumers wanting to support and have a better connection with their favorite artists, they’re looking for other platforms to do so. In some sense, we want to go back to buying records. But this time, digitally.

Sound.xyz, a platform that enables artists to sell their songs as NFTs, has sold out every song they’ve posted on their site. And, every song has sold out within a few minutes. Most under 60 seconds.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be a part of this process.

The Sound Experience

After my morning coffee, I saw that one of my favorite artists was dropping a song on Sound. Of course, as a massive fan-boy, I stopped everything I was doing in anticipation of the release.

After watching the countdown clock for something like 8 hours… I hopped on the release party’s twitter space, and got to hear the song publicly for the first time.

After the public debut, it was available for purchase. It, like the all of the Sound releases before, sold out in less than 60 seconds. The track made over $6 Thousand in 60 seconds.

Fortunately, I was in early enough, and purchased the 21st of 25 editions of Jutes’ Over U.

The Aftermath

I spent around $350 (including gas) for the NFT. Once I told my IRL friends about it, they thought I was crazy. Why would you ever spend that much money on one song?

Buying this NFT means I have an asset to prove I supported the artist. It acts as the personal memento that’s infinitely better than any instagram story I’ve ever shared. It also allows me to be a part of a community that has similarly supported artists through buying their NFTs.

I’ve been a fan of Jutes since finishing my senior year in college, 2017. But, I had nothing to prove I was a fan… just my word and memory.

I bumped Cocaine Cinderella back in the day, had Start Over on repeat when I was getting over my past… Vibed with Here We Go Again when my substance abuse caused problems with my partner, friends and family…

You get the picture. By owning this NFT, I get to wear my support on my digital sleeve and be like “yeah, I’m a f*cking fan.”

It’s odd, and some can call it selfish, but it’s a feeling that I think more people are going to experience. I know more fans are going to buy music NFTs as they move further into the mainstream.

People want to have a direct relationship with their favorite artists. That’s why they go to concerts, buy merch, etc. But, labels and streaming services have disrupted the way we’ve been able to interact with artists’ music.

Sound is one of the leading platforms that solves this problem. They believe that artists should be able to make a living solely of the music they create.

“The one metric that matters at Sound is how many artists make a full-time living off their music alone.”

Hot off a recent seed round from a16z, they’re new onboarding artists every week. Artists collectively have earned nearly $500,000 since its recent inception.

With this momentum not letting up any time soon, the value of the Sound ecosystem will explode. Artists will be attracted to truly earning a living based on their art, fans will experience ownership for the first time, and even more people will be onboarded into Web3.