b_sconeboy

Posted on Jan 13, 2022Read on Mirror.xyz

From Turntables To Web3

Hi Friends! 👋 🤠

This marks my first official post on Mirror. I’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching a lot of what’s been going on with Web3 development but figured the best way to learn would be to dive into the rabbit hole.

Starting A Record Collection

Thanks to the wonderful events & culture team at PMG I am now an owner of a new Crosley record player. I’m excited to start adding to my record collection & started it off with one of my favorite Texas artist's most recent albums.

Leon Bridges Gold-Diggers Sound

I was talking with a colleague earlier this week & he mentioned I should check out discogs. For those of you who are entry-level audiophiles like me, Discog started in 2000 as a crowdsourced database of information about music releases with the goal of becoming the largest online catalog of electronic music. It has since evolved into a database & marketplace for music from all genres & at the time of writing, has a catalog of over 14M recordings from 7M artists.

That got me thinking about the state of music streaming & the overlap with Web3.

Current State Of Music & Ownership

True music enthusiasts love to show off their collections & it is a key piece of why the vinyl industry has seen a comeback despite the majority of music consumption going digital. During this stage, the end-user was is granted ownership of their individual record, while the record company maintained ownership of the rights to the song.

Vinyl Sales 1995 - 2021 - From Statista

Steaming services on the other hand solve a more complex problem: how to access audio from anywhere on any device. Streaming services like Spotify, Soundcloud & Pandora give music lovers the ability to access music from their favorite artists on any device in almost any location as long as there is an internet connection. In this stage, the streaming service maintains ownership of the medium in which the user listens to the song & the record company maintains the ownership of the song itself.

Enter Web3 Streaming Services

Though they don't offer the same appeal that a physical collection of vinyl does for your local record store hipster, Web3 entrants such as Audius, Rocki, & Catalog do offer something that traditional streaming services do not: ownership.

Each of these platforms is looking to fundamentally change the musician/fan relationship by giving listeners the ability to contribute directly to their favorite artist’s financial success. Artists often lament how little they actually make from music streaming royalties. Spotify for example only pays out $0.00437 per stream, meaning a musician needs to get at least 229 streams to make even $1 from the platform.

ethereum://0xabEFBc9fD2F806065b4f3C237d4b59D9A97Bcac7/7284

Above is an example of an NFT from Oshi on the Zora platform. While Zora works well as a one-off for accessing music, it is limited to one song at a time since it is just an NFT marketplace. A platform like Catalog, on the other hand, allows me to listen to the same song while accessing a library of music from other trending artists. From there I can also choose to purchase a song if I want to add it to my own personal collection all without interrupting the song.

Catalog Main Homepage

A Look Ahead At The Music Industry

It’s quite clear that this concept could fundamentally change how listeners interact with their favorite artists. What remains is mainstream adoption. At the current moment, the majority of artists tapping into Web3 streaming platforms seem to be EDM producers & a number of tech-savvy recording artists.

I wouldn’t be surprised Spotify adds some form of token or NFT compatibility this year considering the emergence of Web3 streaming platforms poses a large threat to their current business model.

Web3