As we have been building out our third collection, “The Collages” by Daniel Allen, we have spent a lot of time discovering the ways that we can continually improve the collector experience. The music and cover art are the core elements of our collections, but there are many other surrounding factors that go into how well our collections can be received by collectors, including:

• Presale and allowlist experience
• Minting experience
• Opportunities to interact with the artist and builders
• Involving collectors in future events or collections
• Rarity system
• Listening experience
• Pricing and supply

What went well

In our past two collections, “The Ocarinas” by Shaw Avery and “The Bridges” by Oshi, we have established what it means to release a collection with Beat Foundry. These artists were able to release their music in a creatively engaging format that allowed them to expand their artistic boundaries, reach more collectors, and establish a unique tie between themselves and the collector. Owning a one-of-a-kind piece of music from an artist that the collector cherishes is a very special feeling. Our goal is to continually create new formats with new artists and foster that special connection between the artist and collector.

We also believe that the quality of music and art was superb for these first collections. A huge shoutout to the musicians and the visual artists at Vector DAO, Adam Ho (@omgadamho) and Danny Yasly (@yasly), that put their hearts into this. We certainly will continue to put out beautiful and relatable visual art and music. Check out an example of the music and cover art for Bridges here:

What didn’t go well

Although we’re proud to created and executed an initial format for artists to be tied uniquely to a larger number of their super-fans and collectors, there have been some rough edges that can diminish the power of that connection. Some problems we have encountered are:

• Failed transactions at mint time that required minters to either jack up gas limits or continually retry, wasting their money on transaction fees.
• A hard to comprehend rarity system that relies more on the marketplace platforms that show the traits (Zora, Opensea, etc.) rather than the traits themselves.
• Spending too much time building quietly in the “wood shed” which reduced the amount of personal interactions we could have had with the Beat Foundry community.
• An allowlist that did not capture the value of holding many of our NFTs or the artist’s NFTs.
• Imbalance between the primary sale price and secondary market momentum

How we improve

We have plans that span for years and enough artists lined up and prepared to build with us that we believe our goals can be achieved. Each collection should be an improvement from the last. Starting with our next collection with Daniel Allan, we have introduced some major improvements that should massively enhance the collection:

• A new minting experience that will have no failed transactions. The only reason any transaction should fail is if the minter manually mints from the contract with incorrect inputs or the collection mints out with a few transactions still in progress. These causes for failed transactions are unavoidable.
• A commit and reveal minting mechanism that will allow us to give our full attention to the mint and then enjoy the art and music together separately. For collectors, this means that on mint, all NFTs will look the same. Within a week of the mint, they will all reveal their cover art and music at once.
• A much cheaper minting experience. Our transaction will fees will be even cheaper than they have been before and the mint price is around 50% of the price of our last mint.
• Batch minting to reduce the stress of minting as well as the overall gas costs of minting multiple NFTs.
• A presale that will allow collectors to receive mints proportional to how many NFTs they own from the artist, allowing bigger collectors to be rewarded for their dedication to the artist.
• Every trait will have easily comprehendible names and descriptors. Rather than your song having "Version 3 of Stem 4", you would instead have "Hyper-Syncopated Drums" or "Light-Electro Vocals". This will make the rarity system clearer to the collector and allows us to introduce very noticeable rarities such as a groove that only appears once.
• We will be running Twitter Spaces on the day of mint as well as leading up to the reveal, allowing us to connect with the community and experience the collection together. Keep an eye out for who will be hosting these spaces 👀

Much of these changes are the direct result of feedback from our community. We encourage you all to continue reaching out to us and letting us know what we can do better to improve your experience with Beat Foundry.

Daniel Allen’s first collection with Beat Foundry entitled, “The Collages”, will be releasing publicly for mint on May 31st. If you are a collector of Daniel Allan’s NFTs or one of the Ocarina holders that did not make it onto our previous collection’s allowlist, make sure to sign up for the presale at https://beatfoundry.xyz/list. We look forward to seeing you on our Twitter Spaces at mint time.

♪ ♭f