dopr - The discovery and valuation layer for web3 music

Dopr makes music NFT collecting easy.


Last year, one of my artists sold the streaming rights to a portion of their catalog for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It was a mistake.

Here’s why.

## Why Sell in the First Place?

For an artist to achieve the unencumbered creativity they thrive on, they need optionality. They need the power of saying “no”. All artists need to ‘keep the lights on’ and achieving that option is often easier said than done. Suboptimal deals and ‘cash grab’ opportunities are often necessary to keep an artist’s career moving forward. The new album or the tour costs need to be paid for somehow.

By selling the rights to a previous set of releases, an artist can achieve the sort of cash in hand that makes it easier to say “no” to opportunities geared toward short-term wins. In doing so, they can keep their eyes forward and focus on building a long-term, fulfilling career based on their ultimate vision and goals.

For my artist in question, the cash from our deal allowed them to buy back their publishing rights from an underperforming partner, record multiple new records without relying on an outside label, create rich content, finance long overdue international touring, and personally take home cash when touring revenue unexpectedly came to a halt during the pandemic.

## Democratization of Rights Deals

Some of the largest names in music - such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Taylor Swift, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Mark Ronson, Skrillex, and Shakira to name a few - have sold portions of their catalogs over the last few years. Music catalog hedge funds have paid top dollar for the valuable and uncorrelated assets. These numbers can be astronomical. [Sony recently paid an estimated $550 million for The Boss’ entire body of work](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/arts/music/bruce-springsteen-sells-music-catalog.html#:\~:text=Sony%20Music%20Entertainment%20buys%20the,for%20an%20estimated%20%24550%20million.&text=As%20a%20subscriber%2C%20you%20have,articles%20to%20give%20each%20month.).

While these household names are getting major paydays, there hasn’t yet been much spill-over for smaller or independent artists - the fastest growing sector in the current music business.

### Why Hasn’t the Traditional Deal Translated to Smaller Artists?

Deal sourcing, due diligence, and negotiation for smaller deals are just as time-consuming, while the relative return is much smaller. Why put ‘x’ number of hours into a $100k deal when those hours could have been put into advancing a deal worth $100 million? You need to bundle 1,000 micro-deals for each massive deal. This is also why these buyers want all, or very large portions, of an artist’s catalog for as long a term as possible.

Buyers still need to locate the target catalog, verify its availability and rightful owners, analyze its value, and negotiate fine points of an agreement with artists and representatives.

It simply doesn’t make sense…*unless new methods come along to scale and simplify this process.*

### How About Smaller Investors and Collectors?

Except on the margins, this asset class has largely been unavailable to smaller investors, and even more so, to fans. A lack of access, resources, scaleable analytical tools, capital, and a way to connect seller to buyer have presented formidable challenges. Would-be buyers must purchase a catalog outright, leaving them with limited resources to wisely diversify around enough assets.

It simply isn’t tenable…*unless new methods come along to scale, simplify, and fractionalize this process.*

## Fractionalized Royalty Deals in Web3

A unique opportunity has emerged over the last few months that tackles these issues, allowing artists and collectors of all sizes to partake: **fractionalized royalty deals on the blockchain.** Artists take a share of song royalties, divide them up, and sell them as NFTs. Fans and investors (let’s call them collectors) can own the rights to their favorite songs and collect royalties.

Collectors can resell these tokens on the secondary market. Tokens can become a gateway to a deeper connection between artist and fan.

If my artist in question had sold their streaming rights as fractionalized NFTs, we would have tapped into far more potential, both financial and in fanbase growth.

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/xkc3hMimT6ZisoomtSWgG.png?height=506&width=906)

### The Advantages of Royalty NFTs

**It Brings Fans Into Your Upside**

As an artist, building your tribe is essential to creating a sustainable career. Every successful musician has worked hard to overdeliver for their fans and, more often than not, it has come back to them ten times over. What better way to do this than by turning fans into partners? Who do you want sharing in your successes - a hedge fund or a devoted following? When you win together, it encourages fans to engage deeper, and it becomes contagious for others to follow.

**Innovative Ways to Reward Fans and Build Community**

Fan patronage linked to royalty ownership is still a new concept, and as is often the case with nascent ideas, there is ample opportunity to reimagine what this sort of deal would look like. In this case, your catalog ownership can be viewed as more than just an ‘asset’. It’s going to be something that your investors will treasure as much for the chance it creates to play a larger role in your fan community as for the fiscal reward. To really make the most of this scenario, an artist must figure out ways to deliver token-holders additional value over time; this could be creating token-gated content or events, surprise airdrops, or white-listing for subsequent drops. The more you find ways to reward these partners, the stronger their fanship will become and the more valuable a patron relationship with you will be perceived, creating a genuine win-win scenario.

[https://twitter.com/ImanEurope/status/1506701675796463616?s=20&t=tyxRO2Vn1kmT3fg08gFekQ](https://twitter.com/ImanEurope/status/1506701675796463616?s=20&t=tyxRO2Vn1kmT3fg08gFekQ)

**Creator Share**

Why get paid just once, when you can get paid perpetually? With NFTs, creators can set a ‘creator share’ where they receive a percentage of any subsequent secondary sales. As an example:

* You set a ‘Creator Share’ of 15% on your NFT.
* An initial buyer sells to another collector for $1,000.
* You receive $150 on that sale.

What this means is that unlike a traditional rights deal, the original artist still has ‘mailbox money’ on any future transactions. This is a great way to align artist and listener, as core fans retain real ownership while new collectors just learning about the band are still able to join the artist’s community in a meaningful way.

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/SPg9YauxgVbygum8SDh5G.png?height=506&width=1012)

### Getting In

Where can artists and collectors go to participate in this activity?

There are several new M-NFT platforms doing amazing work in fractionalizing royalty ownership from artists to collectors, such as [Royal](https://royal.io/), [Decent](https://beta.decent.xyz/), and [Anotherblock](https://anotherblock.io/). *(For a full list of platforms, see the [Dopr Directory](https://app.dopr.xyz/nft-directory).)*

As of today, they are all heavily curating their drops and artists must apply to be considered. In the near future, these platforms and others will become much more open, allowing any artist to offer their forthcoming or catalog tracks as an NFT royalty split.

## Discovery and Valuation of Music NFTs

Now that we have a democratizing system that allows for the splitting of song royalties from many artists to many collectors, and the ability to resell these on the open market, we are only left with the problems of discovery and valuation of these assets at scale.

How do collectors find out about relevant drops from a multitude of platforms? Or discover undervalued assets that should be supported?

How do you value the rights? What is past and expected future performance?

How do you track your portfolio and a watchlist?

### Enter Dopr - the Discovery and Valuation Layer for Music NFTs.

At [Dopr](http://www.dopr.xyz), our music NFT predictive analytics are fueled by our founders’ findings of how music preference is formed in the brain ([more on the neuroscience here](https://secretchordlabs.notion.site/The-Science-Behind-Dopr-35fd1f014f8e4f6cb07a57ad2730c9c0)). Our patented methods and resulting data help Dopr accurately appraise the future value of music and uncover hidden gems in the long tail of music.

Dopr offers royalty valuations and performance forecasts at scale, alongside a comprehensive drop feed of upcoming MNFT drops across all relevant platforms, a watchlist, portfolio analysis, buy/sell alerts, and additional analytics.

![](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/7x6Y2KDi_cwX5iWStU53h.png?height=910&width=1013)

### Dopr Season 1 Pass - Genesis NFT Drop

We will be dropping the Dopr Genesis NFT: Season 1 Pass this summer. [Join the waitlist](https://dopr.com/) to reserve your space in line.

### For more information

[Mapping the Music NFT Ecosystem](https://mirror.xyz/dopr.eth/tnmztuqyC04A12A-FAJyr-EE3H5zCP9b50xbbC6vhMk)

[Forecasting a Music NFT Drop](https://mirror.xyz/dopr.eth/0t6ePJYklo98ua4xceE_92GB0jWJYOSK5ujBi-SJ00k)

[Dopr: M-NFT Collecting Made Easy](https://dopr.com/)

Neuroscience. Music. Tech. Education. Yoga.

David resides in Philadelphia, PA with his wife, daughter, dog, cat, and basses. 

The Future of Music Royalties is Fractionalized

## The Science Behind Dopr

**Why do you like the music that you like?** This is the question we set out to answer in our music neuroscience research. The results show that *Familiar Surprise* plays a big role.

We have spent years investigating what it is about music that leads to a pleasurable dopamine response in the brain. A major effect that we have found that contributes to the formation of music preference is what we call *Familiar Surprise.* This effect is robust, and importantly, it can be quantitatively measured and modeled.

![High-performing popular music songs feature increased levels of harmonic surprise (the use of statistically rare chords) in sections preceding choruses, and lower levels of harmonic surprise as tension is released in the choruses themselves. We coined a term for this effect between song sections: 'contrastive surprise'. ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/ZFDnqGpl9q0XbmbtDTNta.png?height=1080&width=1920)

Creativity can be understood in terms of the ideal interaction between order and chaos. All great works of art seem to have found that sweet spot between tradition and innovation, between appropriateness and novelty, between established structure and risk-taking... between *familiarity* and *surprise*. *Familiar Surprise*, by the definition of its two components, is a metric that optimizes for pushing boundaries and breaking the rules in innovative ways, but within a context that makes it work.

### How Music Leads to a Pleasure Response in the Brain

In our award-winning 2017 publication, [we were the first to model and quantify](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00263/full) optimal patterns of tension and release in music, and we showed that they predict the dopamine pleasure response of music enjoyment.

When you listen to music, you are perceiving it through bottom-up, unconscious (implicit) and top-down, conscious (explicit) brain systems, which are shaped by your culture and experiences.

Through statistical regularities in your environment and culture, you develop unconscious, rigid expectations about how sounds go together. Although there is some debate, music cognition experts generally agree that your music expectations are set at a fairly young age (by the time you turn 7 years old). When patterns within music deviate from these rigid expectations, your brain attends to this ‘surprise’, and it works to *learn* from this new information, updating a prior schema. Dopamine is not only the pleasure molecule. It is also the *learning* molecule, and when done right, **optimal surprise leads to music preference and increased dopamine release**.

Not all surprises are equal, though. Through information theory, we have been able to calculate and model the magnitude of surprise, and found ideal ranges in specific contexts.

When you develop expectations, and when you get surprised as they are deviated, this process happens largely under the surface. It’s the chaos, the innovation, the novelty, the risk-taking... all processed without conscious thought. And because the expectations you developed as a child are so rigid, the effect of surprise leading to pleasure works even if you’ve heard the song many times before. In fact, it can be *even more pronounced* with familiar songs. How is this possible?

Music can be understood quite simply as an auditory stream of information transmitted through sound waves. It has a unique power, however, to tap into your emotional core. Music is a universal language that can emote and express at a deeply primal level of your consciousness. The emotions music conjures are often explicitly linked to memories of significant events, people, adventures, revelations, triumphs, or tragedies in your life.

Music is an associational cue for some of your strongest memories. **Nostalgia and familiarity with specific songs can also lead to music preference and increased dopamine release.** Unlike surprise, your processing of familiarity happens consciously. It’s the order, the tradition, the appropriateness, the established structure... all processed in full awareness.

You tend to get the most pleasure from music when it is statistically surprising, yet explicitly familiar. After discovering this effect in our research, we came up with a name for this neuroscientific principle of music enjoyment: *Familiar Surprise.*

### How can Music be Surprising and Familiar?

*Familiar Surprise* seems like an oxymoron. It makes sense, however, when considering that *two distinct types of information* are processed by *two separate memory systems in your brain*:

**System 1 -** Bottom-up, implicit. Procedural memory. Responds unconsciously to novel or unusual deviations from rigid, set patterns you’ve learned across many examples. (Surprise)

**System 2 -** Top-Down, explicit. Declarative memory. Responds consciously to things you explicitly recognize and have experienced before. (Familiar)

![The implicit system responds to 'surprise'. The explicit system responds to 'familiarity'.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/a6hCFn2C8C9wrnOj-L_ia.png?height=1780&width=2230)

Familiarity and surprise are not, despite how it might seem, on opposite ends of a spectrum. **They are actually on *two different* spectrums.**

This is because they are processed by the two different memory systems of your brain. These systems are related to different modes of cognition, perception, and decision-making, as detailed by Nobel-prize winning cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky, in their groundbreaking research on decision making in economics.

![Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, summarizes a large body of work covering two distinct cognitive modes and systems. System 1 (unconscious, implicit, fast) and System 2 (conscious, explicit, slow) are the same memory systems that underlie music preference. ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/9oDOL_eQZZYRSKJxz1Nn0.png?height=2096&width=1400)

At [Dopr](https://dopr.xyz/), our ongoing investigations into music preference formation build upon and leverage previous research from the fields of decision-making, aesthetics, music cognition and psychology, music information retrieval, and neuroscience. This interdisciplinary approach allows us to have a firm understanding of precisely how *Familiar Surprise* is perceived in the brain and to quantify how it leads to music enjoyment.

**The brain likes explicit familiarity - *you know it.*** (System 2)

You tend to like songs that are explicitly *familiar* to you. This might explain why, at a concert, people head to the bathroom or to get a drink when the lead singer says, “This next song is from the new album we’re working on…” You want to hear what you've already heard before.

This is the 'familiar' part of *Familiar Surprise* at work. The explicit, conscious memory system in your brain responds favorably to songs you've explicitly heard before.

**The brain likes implicit surprise - *it's interesting*** (System 1)

Even among the songs that are explicitly familiar, you tend to like songs that feature statistically improbable, or *surprising*, elements that violate the rigid rules you learned as a child. Clear examples of this is would be a key change when the third chorus drops after the bridge, or a false cadence that refuses to resolve how you expect it to end. You want to hear something implicitly novel.

This is the 'surprise' part of *Familiar Surprise* at work. The implicit, unconscious memory system in your brain responds favorably to statistically unusual features in a song.

### How Familiar Surprise Leads to Dopamine

Dopamine is released when you *know* something *interesting*, because it's like you've *learned* something *valuable.*

The combination of optimal familiarity and surprise in music, as processed by your two different memory systems, plays a little biological trick on your brain, a sort of 'hijacking of evolution'.

Your brain rewards you when you ***know*** something ***interesting***, because it is as if you have successfully ***learned*** something ***valuable***. Like with Pavlov’s dog salivating when hearing the bell, music featuring optimal levels of *Familiar Surprise* triggers the 'learning molecule' - dopamine - to rush through your brain.

![Who hasn't salivated during a peak music experience? When you’re listening to music, you’re not so different from Pavlov's dogs. Both humans and canines implicitly learn associations between stimulus (bell/tension) and response (food/release - leading to pleasure). This is classical conditioning. ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/YuTGXgIOyQ809xscmnqiT.png?height=414&width=630)

In fact, to take things to a 'meta level', if you already intuitively *knew* about this *interesting* effect before reading the above explanation, you might be experiencing a little dopamine rush right now!

### Modeling Optimal Familiar Surprise in Music

By measuring and modeling *Familiar Surprise*—the robust effect that reliably leads to music enjoyment—it is possible to predict the future enjoyment of a given song for a given audience.

How is this possible?

So it’s pretty straightforward to measure *familiarity*. You're familiar with songs that you've heard before. [Previous research](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0027241&xid=17259,15700023,15700186,15700191,15700256,15700259,15700262,15700265) has shown that dopamine reward centers of the brain are activated more when listeners are presented with a song they have heard several times before, than with a song they have never heard.

But what’s the best way to measure *surprise?* And what is the best way to determine the optimal level of *surprise* for music enjoyment? Our patented methods use information theory to quantify surprise and model it within music. In one of our earlier neuroscience studies, we analyzed harmonic surprise using this approach, focusing on chord rarity / entropy in Billboard-charting songs (from 1958 to 1991). This study established that harmonic surprise predicts music preference.

The original methods are presented in our 2017 *Frontiers in Human Neuroscience* publication, [“A Statistical Analysis of the Relationship between Harmonic Surprise and Preference in Popular Music”.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00263/full)

![This paper presenting our early research was voted by Frontiers in Neuroscience to be a 'Top 10 paper of 2017' out of 3,350 articles.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/l7GPCjX95VlbfDs5T9Qwg.png?height=1884&width=2972)

**The optimal level of *Familiar Surprise* is not constant**. Since that initial study, we have published work on the [over-time effects of harmonic surprise on music preference](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.578644/full) (Miles et al., 2021). In that study, Dopr analyzed the chords of over 6,000 Billboard-charting songs released between 2000 and 2019. Not only did the effect of surprise predicting preference hold on more recent music, but over time, there was actually an increase in the gap between surprise in top-performing songs and bottom-performing songs. This ‘*inflationary-surprise effect*' is key to understanding and modeling what future successful music might look like in terms of how it will take advantage of *Familiar Surprise*.

> *“Baseline harmonic expectations that were developed through listening to the music of “yesterday” are violated in the music of “today,” leading to preference. Then, once the music of “today” provides the baseline expectations for the music of “tomorrow,” more pronounced violations—and with them, higher harmonic surprise values—become associated with preference formation. We call this phenomenon the Inflationary-Surprise Hypothesis*.” (Miles, et al., 2021)

![Over 20 years, top-performing songs were shown to increase their level of harmonic surprise at a faster rate than bottom-performing songs. ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/BiJEZ2mdpsIw2UDeR1EX8.png?height=1404&width=3572)

The desensitization to reward from drug use or gambling, over time, is a relevant analogy here. Many pleasurable sensations from drugs and gambling operate on the same dopaminergic brain systems as music pleasure. Similar to tolerance built up in the case of drug use and gambling, your brain can require more and more surprise in music over time to elicit the same amount of reward.

In these previous publications, our focus has been on *Harmonic Familiar Surprise,* focusing exclusively on the chord structure of popular music. At Dopr, we have worked to expand our models to include *Familiar Surprise* data for other features of music as well:

* **Melody**
* **Rhythm**
* **Timbre**
* **Texture**
* **Dynamics**

Dopr’s analyses have gone far beyond those documented in these neuroscience publications. Dopr has analyzed millions of songs. We have gained countless insights into how genre, artist size, and other factors influence which *Familiar Surprise* features are most predictive of preference for a given track.

### How does Dopr use neuroscience?

At [Dopr](http://dopr.xyz/), our music NFT predictive analytics are fueled by our founders’ findings of how music preference is formed in the brain, by incorporating *Familiar Surprise* data into our forecasting models. Our patented methods and resulting data help Dopr accurately appraise the future value of music, and allow for models that dynamically evolve and learn over time, aligning with ever-changing musical tastes.

**Alongside many other data points, Familiar Surprise allows Dopr to accurately forecast the future performance of released and unreleased music, at scale.**

![Dopr's models incorporate our patented neuro-derived data along with many other inputs, which are constantly updating.  ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/tFaS9P_7FuvvpTT5nQUpW.png?height=1080&width=1920)

> *In order to onboard the next 100 million music NFT collectors, **there need to be better valuation and discovery tools to make M-NFT collecting easy**.*
>
> *Dopr is a sector-focused and platform-agnostic aggregator of the music NFT landscape - a single access point for collectors to discover, track, and value their music NFTs.*

In an earlier article, we detailed the process of ’[Forecasting a Music NFT Drop’](https://mirror.xyz/0x0ac073bAB13cFacd44A5Dc7b063035E43A223014/0t6ePJYklo98ua4xceE_92GB0jWJYOSK5ujBi-SJ00k). We believe it is important for music NFT collectors to have a better understanding of the underlying financial value of the NFTs they are purchasing. If song royalties are to be a core utility of certain NFTs, there needs to be more transparency and information available about the corresponding streaming economics for a given drop. Dopr provides these predictive analytics. We offer a 5-year stream and earnings forecast for music NFTs, as well as a tokenized recoupment calculator for token holders.

***In Dopr’s closed beta, some NFT forecasts showed high recoupment times, sometimes in excess of 100 years in our best estimation.***

Although financial incentives are only one of many layers of value for music NFTs, the current high valuations are problematic and restrict the growth of the space. Collectors are telling us these forecasts have altered their purchasing decisions. Pricing being driven by hype, speculation, and short-term trends in secondary markets is not sustainable. Everything is so new. There is a lot of excitement by those of us who have already bought in. Unfortunately, many people remain skeptical and associate NFTs with potential scams, rather than acknowledging their potential to support artists.

**High NFT valuations and the lack of price discovery tools are major points of friction for new collectors.**

![Dopr provides 5-year stream and earnings forecasts, as well as a recoupment calculator for music NFTs.  ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/13p_peWiANd1UqTrwv7ob.png?height=1530&width=2370)

Dopr will make it easy for collectors to find creators and NFTs that interest them. To start, we provide collectors with performance forecasts for any royalty-bearing music NFT. These drops have been sporadic so far, but drop rates have been increasing on platforms like Royal and Decent over the past few weeks. In the coming years, we expect millions of music creators to offer royalty-bearing NFTs to fans and collectors when uploading their music via distributors, like Distrokid, Tunecore, Ditto (who started Opulous), and others. As the space grows, there will be an even greater need for predictive analytics and automated valuation tools because the sheer volume of music will be unwieldy, as it is in web2.

**To achieve the best version of music’s web3 future, Dopr will shine a light on the hidden gems in the long tail of music that would otherwise go unnoticed**. Using insights from our understanding of how the brain forms music preference, we will make discovery far better in web3 than it ever was in web2, connecting artists and collectors in a way that drives real, tangible support to artists.

In web3, we can harness findings from neuroscience, and leverage technology to have the most direct and tangible impact on artists’ careers, by helping bring about an economic paradigm shift in the music industry.

Creating on the intersection of music and tech. 

Chief Research Officer at Dopr, using neuroscience to understand music preference


Why do you like the music that you like? 

## Making sense of music’s web3 future

A new economic paradigm in music is here.

Music NFTs connect artists and collectors directly. Artists gain capital and community. Collectors earn financial rewards, showoff their fandom, and unlock unique experiences and collectibles.

But, collecting isn’t easy. How do you discover or value music NFTs? What platform is worth signing up for? Who offers the experience I want? Where are my favorite artists releasing NFTs?

It’s hard. Wallets, contracts, utility, platforms, exchanges, currencies, transfers, gas fees...

If NFTs ever have a chance of becoming the dominant structure in music, music’s web3 future needs to be as attractive for collectors as it is for creators.

## Make music NFT collecting easy

This is why we created the [music NFT resource directory](https://app.dopr.xyz/nft-directory) - covering the organizations and platforms in the space.

The directory is open to everyone interested in music NFTs. It is intended to be a useful and free-to-all mapping of this space to help *improve discovery and reduce friction* in the music NFT ecosystem.

The initial directory includes 136 organizations, broken down into 14 primary utility-types.

![A view of the directory filtered by Editions. ](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/H3JNoGgBtfiZA7QE_0tc1.png?height=2474&width=2708)

This is the most comprehensive and easy-to-navigate resource providing information on the space we know of: any platform, organization, or resource that directly touches music NFTs is included, alongside links to websites, Twitter, and Discord, descriptions, and the blockchains they work on.

Search for the platforms you’re interested in or filter by utility type.

More organizations will be added as they pop up. [Submit them to us here](https://dopr.typeform.com/to/YYc88zh9).

## Utility is Everything

Most NFTs and surrounding organizations aim to offer different utility to collectors.

We assign each organization a primary utility type. This was no easy task - as many platforms touch on multiple utility types and many more will emerge.

We had to make some tough calls. Many of the utility types focus on different categories of NFTs: 1/1s, avatars, editions, generative, royalty, ticketing. Other utilities are more broad to the music ecosystem as a whole: community/social, grants, label, marketplace, research, and streaming/radio.

![The utility types used in the directory.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/BSrvTEr7i568r7PdScO99.png?height=550&width=1100)

\**Note: Marketplaces where music is included, but not necessarily the focus, are tagged as marketplace. If music is the primary focus, it can likely be found in Editions.*

Let’s get deeper on NFT utilities and touch on some examples.

### Editions

A limited collection of digital assets. Think of it as an extension of the merch table. It is 1/n, varying in scarcity. It’s a digital version of that numbered tour poster, but now it’s embedded with audio and a way to show off your fandom in the digital world...or maybe even still comes with the IRL poster!

*e.g. →* [RCRDSHP](https://app.rcrdshp.com/) is dropping curated, digital packs (music, mixtapes, video clips, etc.) exclusively from electronic artists. [Sound](http://sound.xyz) artists debut new music as a limited set of NFTs. Artists hold ‘Listening Parties’. Drops are events. At [Pianity](https://pianity.com/), users can earn a passive income from their collections thanks to their profit-sharing token.

### 1/1s

A single edition. Exactly what it sounds like. Maximum scarcity!

*e.g. →* [Catalog](https://beta.catalog.works/) artists mint a single NFT edition of a track. On [Oneof](http://oneof.com), you buy and sell highly curated, single-edition NFTs from the biggest names in music, using 5 tiers of scarcity that range from unlimited to 1/1. [Noizd](https://noizd.com/) focuses on unreleased tracks, videos, stems, and more as downloadable NFTs

### Community / Social

Participate in a community and earn benefits. Token distribution and benefits vary and may include: governance, financial incentives, exclusive event access, rare NFTs, and more.

*e.g. →* Owning a [Chillpill](http://chillrx.io) NFT means you get to vote on all artist, manager and label decisions. 1,500 [Afterparty](https://afterparty.ai/) Utopians have access to world-class experiences, such as an exclusive music festival in Las Vegas. [Rally](https://rally.io/) helps artists launch their own social tokens to build communities with their fans.

### Generative

Algorithmic music, art, and more that recombine a predefined set of elements into unique AI-generated creations. Many projects include audio and visual components.

*e.g. →* [SoundMint](https://soundmint.xyz/) uses 3-10 sound traits using stems to generate unique 30 second musical art pieces. [Pixelbands](https://www.pixelbands.io/) have 4 types of characters: guitarists, drummers, piano players, and bassists that combine to create a ‘Band’ and make unique ‘Songs’ with 8-bar stems. [EulerBeats](https://eulerbeats.com) offers limited edition digital packs that include digital art and beat NFTs generated on-chain.

### Marketplace

Locations to buy, sell, and (sometimes) mint NFTs that do not focus exclusively on music and often include digital art, video, sports, photography and others categories of NFTs. It can be hard to discover worthwhile projects due to less curation or a focus on music.

*e.g. →* [OpenSea](https://opensea.io) is the largest NFT marketplaces for primary and secondary sales, where music is one of nine categories. There are more than 136,000 music assets. [Rarible](https://rarible.com/explore/all?category=music) also features music and video NFT editions and more via timed auctions.

### Royalty

Own the copyrights to your favorite song and collect royalties. Artists take a portion of song royalties, divide them up, and sell them as tokens.

*e.g. →* [Opulous](http://opulous.org)’ security NFTs (S-NFTs) are the only ones that are currently SEC-compliant via a partnership with [Republic](http://republic.com). Their first drop was an unreleased track by Lil Pump ft. Soulja Boy. [Royal](https://royal.io/) was founded by electronic music artist and web3 pioneer, 3LAU. Their first drops were previously released tracks from Nas, Vérité, and a 4-track EP by Ollie.

*This is a partial list and does not cover all utilities.*


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## Discovery and Valuation Tools

In order to unlock the full potential of music NFTs, we need stronger discovery and valuation tools. NFTs should serve more than just the ‘incumbents’ or known artists. How do we discover new artists, creative projects, boundary-pushing sounds, and the most intriguing platforms?

**This is why we are building Dopr - the discovery and valuation layer for music NFTs, sector-focused and platform agnostic.**

We have spent our lives as independent musicians, artist managers, and music cognition researchers. And, we have all seen first-hand the gross inequities that have permeated the music industry for far too long. We are constructing this piece of infrastructure for music’s web3 future because we believe this is the path with the most direct and positive impact for artists around the world.

Our mission is to use our music neuroscience research to empower artists. We will help creators and collectors connect and tip the scales in their favor, with both sides sharing in the rewards.

Join us on our mission to advance the music NFT community and propel the web3 music renaissance.

Check out the directory and sign up for dopr’s early invite list [here](https://dopr.xyz).

Also, if you are interested in following some great resources in the space, please check out [Coopahtroopah](https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa), [Water and Music](https://twitter.com/water_and_music), [BlockchainBrett](https://twitter.com/web3brett), and [Kaspar](https://twitter.com/_Kaspar__).

https://www.dopr.xyz

https://www.twitter.com/dopr_ai

Mapping the Music NFT Ecosystem

## Vérité - “He’s Not You” via Royal

*(scroll down to view forecast)*

In music’s Web3 future, everyone can be an investor, backing their favorite artists and projects. This shift towards an open and democratized support system between creator and collector has the potential to change the economic structure of the music industry and the artist-fan relationship — for the better. Much better, if things unfold properly.

With each passing day, more artists are coming up with creative ways to offer non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Since June 2020, there have been 1.68M music NFTs sold, generating just under $100M in primary sale revenue (*Water & Music, Jan 2022*). It would take \~23.7 Billion streams to generate that same revenue for artists.

![Music NFT primary revenue total and number of streams for artists to accrue this revenue (Water & Music, Jan 2022).](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/XIpsoNER3OxSx6Dqa5E9V.png?height=347&width=805)

## Royalty-bearing NFTs

One type of NFT offering with real disruptive power is the royalty-bearing NFT (sometimes referred to as S-NFTs); those in which artists offer a portion of their royalty share to collectors. This mechanism allows collectors to own a fractionalized portion of a song, album, or even catalog, and share in its future success. For artists, this atypical influx of capital can jumpstart their careers, fund their creative projects, build community, and detach them from the traditional, often predatory, economic structure of the music industry.

Royalty-bearing NFT drops have been met with intense excitement recently as the earliest drops from platforms Royal (Nas and 3LAU) and Opulous (Lil Pump and Soulja Boy) sold out in minutes.

On Monday, Royal announced their next drop: 39% of the streaming royalties in Vérité’s single “He’s Not You”*.*

![Ownership royalties and benefits by token level for Vérité's 'He's Not You' NFT drop (Royal.io).](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/DtfNDTwlcukP3O5RKcLmx.png?height=1510&width=2206&&&&&&&&&&&&&size=medium)

## Discoverability

Thus far it seems only established artists are being featured in these early S-NFT drops. This makes sense as it’s early days — but in order to empower creators of all sizes with these resources, we need new tools for discovery and understanding value.

***If music’s Web3 future doesn’t solve discoverability, then NFTs will only enrich artists with preexisting name value and community. This isn’t the future we believe in.***

We are building data-driven ai models that look at audio patterns and incorporate insights from our research on the neuroscience of music enjoyment$^1$ to find songs that push boundaries optimally and are positioned to over-perform expectation if given the right attention. As the space becomes flooded with more S-NFTs in the coming years, we believe this technology will shine a light on the hidden gems and connect them to supportive collectors, so that all sides can fairly share in the rewards.

***It is difficult for collectors and creators to understand the future royalty value of these NFTs***. We have created a platform that fills this need — [dopr](https://www.dopr.com/) — where collectors will be able to value, discover, and track music NFTs.

## Vérité Forecast

dopr provides 5-year forecasts for streaming and royalty earnings (by quarter), cumulative stats, and a recoupment calculator which breaks down the number of streams and length of time needed for a token-holder to break even.

To view the full forecast and get early access to dopr click [here](https://www.dopr.com).

![Five-years streams and earnings forecast for Vérité's drop.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/mJyUrri_XUrp3NSdJ-wFg.png?height=1634&width=2270)

### In the five year period dopr predicted:

* On-Demand Streams: **2.5M**
* Total Earnings: **$10.2k**
* Gold Token Earnings: **$5**
* Platinum Token Earnings: **$23**
* Diamond Token Earnings: **$88**

The drop offers Gold, Platinum, and Diamond tokens, which all have different costs, royalty shares, and additional benefits. dopr shows the expected royalty earnings for each token over a five-year period. dopr estimates that the tokens wouldn’t be recouped through royalties for more than 200 years (Gold), 125 years (Platinum), and 80 years (Diamond).

![The recoupment calculator estimates the time and streams needed for token owners to breakeven, along with other details for each offering.](https://images.mirror-media.xyz/publication-images/Qzwe4EmycvNzPUdZdjSOa.png?height=426&width=2270)

The recoupment calculator displays the costs associated with each token, cost per 1%, royalty share, and streams and time needed to breakeven. On its face, the tokens’ pricing and expected revenue to be generated for ‘he’s not you’ don’t seem to align.

However, much of the craze resonating among music S-NFT collectors isn’t focused on the royalty payouts. For a portion of collectors, their value is realized through fandom, social badging, scarcity, and even private experiences, such as the 1:1 video chat Vérité is offering the five Diamond token owners. Each token level has additional benefits beyond the % royalties owned:

* **Gold**: Signed Cassette Tape, Exclusive Access to Vérité NFT Collector Discord channel
* **Platinum**: Exclusive "He's Not You" Vérité Discord access, Plus all Gold Extras
* **Diamond**: 1:1 Video Call with Vérité, Plus all Gold and Platinum Extras

For her biggest fans, the chance to have a 1:1 video chat may be priceless. This is in addition to the value these tokens may maintain on the secondary market (attached to royalty value), or in the intangible value of supporting, community, and collectorship.

Ultimately, supporting artists and the platforms aiming to empower them in this space has much value in its own right.

## What’s Next?

We envision a future where the 50M worldwide music creators are funded directly from supportive collectors, with all sharing in the rewards. Help us make this a reality.

Get early access [here](https://www.dopr.com).

[www.dopr.com](https://www.dopr.com)

[www.twitter.com/dopr_ai](https://www.twitter.com/dopr_ai)