NFT Market, NFTs Explained

Here's How Web3 Is Transforming The Music Industry

The buzz around Web3 suggests this new version of the Internet is coming – and fast. It has the potential to change the music industry. Here’s how…

May 20, 2022

Web3 refers to the idea of a new kind of internet service that is built using decentralized blockchains — the shared ledger systems used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper, but rather by users, who will earn their ownership stake by helping to develop and maintain those services.

Web3 is still in its infancy but it is already beginning to transform the music industry. The metaverse plays a crucial role in opening up a vast new horizon of possibilities for musicians – not only creatively, but also in terms of how they connect with fans.

What is Web3?

Web3 is truly decentralized and a more democratic version of the current internet where the services that we use are not hosted by a single service provider company, but rather they’re sort of purely algorithmic things that are, in some sense, hosted by everybody. The idea is that all participants contribute a small slice of the ultimate service. Thus, no one really has an advantage over anyone else.

The key technology behind Web3 is the blockchain. It is mainly associated with the cryptocurrency bitcoin. The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger of activity of the bitcoin network. We know that bitcoin is not owned by a single company or person and it is not issued by a central authority like a central bank. It is decentralized and maintained by a global group of people running specialized computers.

The “trustless” model is the basis of Web3. Nowadays, we have to trust companies to deliver the service they promise. But Web3 products and services are decentralized and built on blockchains, so you’d only have to trust the underlying algorithm to deliver that product, which carries its own risks, too.

Web3 Streaming Services

Although lots of people still use Spotify or Apple Music for their audio needs, there have arisen a few incredibly powerful Web3 streaming platforms and NFT marketplaces that have taken the world by storm. These platforms offer powerful new ways for independent artists to create community, share music, and even get paid in crypto on the blockchain.

The decentralized infrastructure of Web3 streaming services increases peer-to-peer interactions allowing artists to regain control of their art without a middleman.
Here is a look at some of the Web3 streaming services to be aware of.

1. Audius Music

Audius was launched towards the end of 2019. The aim of this Web3 platform is to put power back into the hands of content creators. This is intended to give artists better insights into who is streaming their music and better control over their tracks and how they are distributed.

The team states it is and will always be free for artists to distribute their music. Moreover, unlike other music streaming services, Audius doesn’t take a cut of artists’ revenue. The mechanics of Audius consists of:

1. Audius’s token economy is powered by the Audius platform token ($AUDIO), 3rd-party stablecoins, and artist tokens
2. A decentralized storage solution and ledger for sharing audio and metadata
3. It has a track encryption scheme paired with a programmable mechanism that unlocks user-specific proxy re-encryption keys for content
4. A discovery protocol for users to efficiently query metadata
5. A decentralized governance protocol that enables artists, node operators, and fans to be enfranchised in decision-making about protocol changes and upgrades

This platform pays artists $AUDIO for placing on the Audius charts. Musicians receive 90 percent of the revenue, and the other ten percent goes to stakes that support the Audius network. You may start uploading music immediately as it is free to create an account.

Audius is one of the main places that Web3 and NFT communities listen to music. Though the platform doesn’t allow artists to mint music NFTs, you may display your NFTs after collecting 100+ $AUDIO.

2. Emanate

Emanate is a blockchain-powered music streaming platform built on EOSIO and uses its $EMT token for payments. The main difference between Emanate and Audius is that Emanate pays artists in its native token per stream, while Audius only currently employs the rewards system for artists to earn crypto.

Musicians can either upload and promote tracks themselves, or they can use Emanate Distro. When uploading music with Emanate Distro, artists have the option to push audio and data to services like Spotify and Soundcloud.

Emanate plans to provide a wide range of services, for example, soon any label will be able to create a profile and start managing their artists. In addition, Mau5trap, Black Book Records, World Famous HQ, and more are current partnerships.

3. OPUS

This music streaming platform uses the Ethereum blockchain, and tracks are stored on the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). This system allows the platform to deliver thousands of tracks per second in a way that’s fully decentralized. Users listen to music through smart contracts that contain the decryption keys and file hashes. These smart contracts provide a way for users to compensate creators for their music.

OPUS enables artists to receive 90% of the money they take in. There is no central server and so the storage costs are drastically reduced. This allows for more of the revenue to go directly to the artist, in a more secure, transparent way than ever before.

This platform allows fans to receive a financial benefit, too. Users may receive a share of royalties in exchange for creating playlists that help spread music throughout the platform.

4. BPM

BPM is a music NFT Discord bot that was built by SongCamp. This music streaming bot can be installed into a Discord server to play music NFTs minted via Catalog, Zora, Sound, and other services.

BPM is not a traditional streaming platform and requires that a track already be minted as an NFT to stream it. However, it can be a useful tool when it comes to getting your music heard by the right crowd.

To sum up, we may say that being an early adopter of Web3 has its benefits for artists as Web3 is a fast-growing technology. By looking beyond the traditional music industry, artists can build and engage their own fan communities, tap into unexplored spaces, and, more importantly, successfully live off their art in ways not possible before with new business models and ownership concepts.