A couple of days ago I wrote up a little thread on Twitter about an idea I had on a web3 music project. This is an exercise in fleshing out the idea a little more in case I decide to build it out on a stream or on my own elsewhere. Here is the initial tweet thread if you want to see my first set of thoughts:
So the idea came to me based on some of my own experiences. I was a very mediocre rapper once upon a time and used to pay a third part service an annual fee to keep my music up on places like Spotify, Itunes etc. The thing is as great as this services are for the consumer they don’t really reward the creator very much. In comes web3 however with some power to propel the creator economy, lets take a look at how this could work in one project for musicians.
Ultimately this would be some sort of music discovery platform. You can check out new and upcoming bands, kpop groups, rappers, singers, whatever and take a listen to some of their music. These artists create profiles for you to look through and discover the material they put out. They would also give you the ability to purchase a coin representing their brand or an NFT representing their brand. Holding these assets could give you exclusive access to meet and greets as well as limited edition merch. Exclusives for you as a fan who supported them from the start of their career.
Let’s pause here and look at how this would work.
A new user navigates to our site and can use a sign in with wallet feature to create an account. Upon creation of the account they can choose from one of two user types:
Fan’s would have less utility on their accounts because they probably won’t care much beyond browsing and supporting new groups they have discovered. Artist accounts however would have additional powers like creating profiles and uploading music/videos/other media.
Now back to the functionality!
How do we make artists “discoverable”. One way is to have a feed of artist activity based on the types of genre’s that the listener is interested in. This could be supplemented by looking at coin purchases like an “upvote” system. Artists receiving more coin purchases and support could be featured for newer fans to discover.
Honestly taking some elements of Reddit combined with Spotify would be amazing here. Further suggestions could be made based on the artist you support, what are some other artists in that genre? As much as Spotify annoyed me as a musician they do have a very robust music discovery platform that occasionally gives me dope songs to listen to.
With artists gaining popularity, getting funding for their music and tours, the value of their coin should also increase as they gain traction. This allows for fans to share in the upside if they can make some of those tokens liquid. Music platform run by fans with the musician and fans who support from the start making funds instead of platforms that take advantage of artists even though it’s them who make them a success.
This is why I love the possibilities that web3 brings for us.
Some possible tech to help build this:
Next JS/React on the frontend
Supported by tools like Ethers JS for interacting with the blockchain (if using Ethereum)
Hardhat/Solidity on the backend if building on Ethereum
Arweave for storage
Maybe LivePeer for some music streams?
Am I going to build this? I have no idea! Will you build it? If you do I’d love to help. Feel free to take this idea change it and use whatever tools you like to build it. I only suggested the above because those are the things I’m familiar with at the moment. This space is always changing and there new solutions popping up all the time that keep getting better and better.