Category: Web3
The rise of Web3 and blockchain in all its forms — across NFTs, social tokens, and DAOs — has ushered a new wave of experimentation in the music industry, rethinking traditional approaches to music monetization and fan engagement. As a research community, we are especially interested in analyzing music NFT sales activity, designing tokenized community strategies for independent artists, and examining hybrid Web2/Web3 legal frameworks for music rights.
In response to growing demand and market activity, we’ve updated our music NFT contract builder to include off-chain, IRL benefits around merchandise and access, which comprise some of the fastest-growing forms of utility around music NFTs.
What if we treat the financial rails around music with the same level of creativity as the music itself?
Over the last month, several contributors in the Water & Music community collaborated to analyze music NFT market dynamics, based on data from our members-only music NFT database. This report is the result — an in-depth analysis of 2021 music NFT sales by artist genre, platform/protocol, and label affiliation, covering over $86M worth of revenue, as well as a qualitative discussion of popular and emerging forms of utility that have emerged around the format in the last year.
2021 has seen a flurry of new generative music NFT project launches, but they have yet to see the same consumer demand or financial upside as their immensely popular visual counterparts.
En el año 2021, los titulares acerca de los NFTs de música se han centrado en los números de sus ventas astronómicas… y la pregunta sigue latente: ¿qué es lo que realmente se vende?
The shape of music/Web3 tooling is more exciting and diverse than ever before. New platforms are launching weekly to help artists leverage NFTs, social tokens and DAO infrastructure to create new economic models around creativity and fan engagement.
Despite headlines about big sales and big possibilities for artists’ futures in Web3, a close examination of fan onboarding tactics suggest there will be numerous hurdles before this possibility becomes a reality.
As a follow-up to our myriad studies of fan sentiment around music/Web3 projects in Season 1, we embarked on a survey analysis of how artists and music-industry professionals were feeling about Web3 across its numerous forms, including NFTs, DAOs and social tokens.
This project began as an effort to create a “simple” music NFT contract template, as a follow-up to our high-level research from Season 1 on issues facing the music/Web3 ecosystem. Our modular template guides the user through different paths based on their answers, and outputs a custom PDF file that they can then attach on- or off-chain to their NFT releases.
In this article, we aim to encapsulate the various strategies that music NFT platforms use to attract, onboard and retain their fans, collectors and artists in an increasingly competitive marketplace.