Gm. We’ve onboarded 20 brilliant artists to Sound as genesis artists over the past month.
So far after 20 sellout drops, Sound has generated $200,000 as a community for 20 independent artists, equivalent to 60 million streams.
We launched with a simple hypothesis: that there is an unmet demand for listeners to support the artists they love. Our initial drops have demonstrated that our vision is possible: all twenty drops sold out in under one minute.
This is early validation of one of our foundational beliefs: artists should be able to make a full-time living off their music alone. Tees, tours, and fan clubs can offer incremental revenue for artists, but shouldn’t come at the expense of valuing music. The music itself is what’s valuable. Music NFTs are the first opportunity to value a song beyond the current system.
The secondary market is starting to heat up with an additional 50 ETH in sales in this same timespan,capturing 10% of every resale. Floors get swept when talent gets noticed. Artists are beginning to capture all the latent demand under the demand curve.
Lastly, over the course of these 20 drops, we now have 400 unique Sound record collectors. Sound records enable artists to build a community of fans that they have a direct connection with.
We chose our genesis artists based on who inspired us to build Sound in the first place; dedicated artists in the web3 music community. We highlighted each artist individually over the past month to emphasize that every artist is undeniably special & has a unique story.
…Sound is barely getting started— and this was just the “pre-season”. 😎
Pre-Season Highlights
Here are some more highlights of what we’ve been up to:
- Music First, Ape Second: synchronous listening for shared audio during listening parties.
- Collectors have direct access to Sound artists via a token gated channel. Join us here
- Sound Artists have access to the artist-only group chat to share, discuss, and support one another.
- Kicking things off, Oshi’s debut premiere of Childhood announcing his son Mateo to the world crashed our website due to visit traffic.
- Daniel Allan’s Overstimulated EP premiere had thousands of listeners, selling out 10 ETH in 1 block with 100 unique collectors and quickly reached a floor price of 1 ETH.
- Featured press from Coindesk, Decrypt and Techcrunch
- Fireside chats with each of our genesis artists before their drops
Pre-Season demonstrated what a community could achieve when it has ownership and supports artists together.
Season One: Artist Activated
With every new Season, sound.xyz is challenged to reinvent itself as we find new ways to give artists creative freedom. We want the artists that inspired Sound to show us what inspired them, and to help shape this next chapter together. That’s why Sound Season One will be curated in partnership with our Genesis artists.
Each Genesis artist will be given one invite to bring an artist that has inspired them into the Sound family. They’ll be responsible for hosting and introducing their selection to the community.
Another upgrade that Genesis artists will receive is the ability to mint up to 50 unique editions for each Sound record. Season 1 artists will have a cap of 25, just like the Genesis artists had to start. This ensures that new artists are focused on building tight-knit communities around their music.
In addition to our focus on community through artist curation, we’ll also be focused on expansion through experimentation. Sound will occasionally feature drops with artists we’ve invited onto the platform that don’t confine to the established rules of the Season, and successful experiments will influence the direction of future seasons. We ran our first experiment last week with Daniel Allan’s premiere of Overstimulated, our first EP on Sound. Thousands of people listening simultaneously, 100 new collectors, and 10 ETH to the $OVERSTIM treasury made our first experiment a resounding success.
We’re just scratching the surface of giving artists true freedom, and it’s only possible because of the awesome community we’re creating. We’re happy to have you on board, and excited to build the future of Sound with you all. Until then, happy listening..
Here’s to the beginning of a new chapter: we can’t wait to meet our new artists! Follow us on Twitter to stay updated with Season One.
Respectfully,
David, Matt, Vignesh and the Sound Team.
The preseason is the result of many months of hard work and creative energy with our genesis artists: Thank you Oshi, Grady, Daniel Allan, Marian Hill, Ibn Inglor, Abjo, Allan Kingdom, Josh Pan, Matthew Chaim, Reo Cragun, Iman Europe, TOMI, VERITÉ, SassyBlack, Camoufly, Giraffage, Heno, The Park, Tess Henley, Moruf, Jesse Boykins, and Pat Lok. Thank you as well to all Sound collectors and the web3 music community at large for the consistent support.