Web3 Music Experiment: Let Musicians No Longer Create for Love

Author: HashKey Capital

Abstract: The Web 3 music sector has attracted attention from both capital and the community. According to incomplete statistics, the financing amount for Web 3 music projects has exceeded 200 million USD from 2021 to now, and the ecosystem is becoming increasingly robust. In this research, we interviewed Chen Huanyin, the first Chinese musician to release an NFT, and explored why we need Web 3 music from the perspective of the traditional music industry. The main reason is that artists' compensation is too low under the traditional music model, and the industry chain is complicated and opaque.

The entire Web 3 music ecosystem includes: upstream music creation and generation, midstream trading platforms, and downstream streaming media. In addition, there are other directions including copyright and record DAOs. Finally, we discussed potential issues in the future development of Web 3 music, including the complexity of on-chain royalty distribution, a relatively short commercial chain, lack of visual impact and application scenarios, insufficient IP and traffic, and weak token economic models.

1. Why do we need Web 3 Music? - Reasonable distribution is not resolved

On the world's largest streaming platform Spotify, artists earn royalties of 0.003-0.005 USD per play. The founder of the streaming royalty collection agency Audiam stated that despite the increasing number of Spotify users, the royalties paid to artists have significantly decreased, with the decline starting in 2013.

• Severe polarization of royalties. There are 8 million musicians uploading songs to Spotify, with about 60,000 new songs uploaded daily, and 3% of artists earn less than 10,000 USD annually.
• Low artist income. This 10,000 USD cannot all flow into the artist's pocket; the music industry chain is extremely complicated and opaque. After passing through the downstream streaming media, there are major royalty-sharing entities such as record production companies, record distribution companies, artist management companies, and agents, resulting in very little royalty reaching the musicians.
• Black box royalties. Due to the lack of synchronized disclosure of relevant entities in the music industry chain, approximately 5.5 billion USD in black box royalties are generated each year. ++Chen Huanyin also pointed out that people have come to view music as a free product in recent years. Additionally, royalty income often does not reach the core creators, with over half of musicians earning below minimum wage.++

Music NFTs can solve the worries of artists regarding income, expenses, and fan community building:

• NFTs generate direct revenue. Imagine an obscure independent musician selling a music NFT worth 1 ETH on a platform, which is equivalent to 67,000 plays on Spotify—an unreachable number for niche independent musicians. This money can serve as income for musicians, allowing their creations to no longer be just for love.
• Establish follow-up startup funds. Additionally, selling music NFTs can be seen as fundraising for future music products and plans, saving time and effort compared to traditional market research and marketing costs in the millions.
• Form positive interactions with fans. Artists can create better works in return for investors and the community, forming a closed-loop effect between fans and artists. ++Chen Huanyin also pointed out that fans often support not just the music, but the artist themselves.++ Artists previously uploaded their music for free on streaming platforms, gaining a broad fan base that was unquantifiable and indiscriminate, creating a one-to-many model. With NFTs, "loyal fans" who invest in music can share in the artist's growth and receive recognition and rewards from the artist, transforming the relationship into a one-to-one dynamic.

2. Web 3 Music Industry Chain - Complete and Traditional, in an Exploratory Stage

The main tracks of Web 3 music include: 1) upstream creation; 2) midstream trading; 3) downstream streaming; 4) other areas include music communities, record DAOs, copyrights, and fan economies. The entire sector is still relatively early; for example, in April, the monthly trading volume of OpenSea's music section was around 4 million USD (with the most active 40 music NFT addresses). Currently, the largest market cap is Audius, valued at around 320 million USD, with an FDV of about 500 million USD. Financing activities are mainly concentrated in the seed round, with some projects not having raised funds.

2.1 Streaming - Directly Facing Fans as a Traffic Entry Point

As mentioned earlier, in the traditional streaming model, streaming acts as a third-party platform between artists and fans, with relatively meager compensation for artists. Web 3 music streaming has a strong decentralized flavor, incentivizing artists through tokens to create content and generate revenue, with Audius being the most representative project.

2.1.1 Audius - Decentralized Music Portal

Low entry barrier: Audius retains the shadow of traditional Web 2 music streaming, making it relatively friendly for internet users entering Web 3. The platform does not require users to have a decentralized wallet; they can log in with an email. Moreover, if users log in without MetaMask, the platform automatically assigns them a Hedgehog AUDIO wallet address. The entire web usage process is quite similar to traditional players, such as liking and sharing songs, creating playlists, uploading music, and following favorite creators, providing a smooth user experience with low barriers and all features being free. This is one reason why Audius can accumulate a relatively large user base in the Web 3 music sector.

Content attracts users: The platform's music mainly consists of electronic music, hip hop, and rap, with relatively rich music resources. IPs include RAC, deadmau5, 3LAU, Skrillex, kennybeats, etc. Last year, it also announced a partnership with TikTok. The number of active users peaked at 4.83 million last October but has declined in recent months, currently around 2.54 million, with about 25,000 wallet addresses, indicating that most users come from traditional Web 2. Additionally, the project has opened its API, allowing other applications to call Audius's data, with API calls exceeding 100 million this month. It is also possible that a common ecosystem will form between Audius and other third-party applications.

Strong ecosystem, weak token: The token AUDIO mainly serves to maintain content nodes and search nodes stored on IPFS and for governance voting. Additionally, there are some basic incentive activities, such as rewards for creating playlists or releasing tracks. Currently, creators on the platform have no effective revenue streams apart from meager rewards, and uploading music does not require review. The token has not established an effective content creation incentive mechanism, which is a major issue for the platform.

However, the advantage of Audius is its decentralized vision, strong traffic, low barriers, and the accumulation of what can be said to be the most users among Web 3 music applications, especially attracting traditional Web 2 music enthusiasts. In the future, it will also introduce stablecoin payments for content purchases and models for artists to issue personal tokens to generate revenue, and the team plans to distribute 90% of revenue to creators and 10% to nodes, with zero platform fees.

Source: Audius

2.2 Trading Platforms - Differentiated Empowerment

The model of music NFT trading platforms is basically similar to selling other NFTs, so the other differentiated empowerment of trading platforms is key for users to compare different platforms, such as competition for traffic IP and the design of token economic models.

2.2.1 Sound.xyz - Emphasizing Social Attributes

Every song on Sound.xyz can be listened to for free, but only a few users can purchase it, with prices varying, generally around 0.1 ETH, based on a "1 of many" fragment model, with low barriers. Users can choose to support the artist after listening to the complete song. One standout aspect of the project is its social attributes. As shown in the image, after users purchase music NFT fragments, their avatars can be displayed in the Audience, with those higher up being earlier supporters. Additionally, each user can comment at a specific moment in the song, and artists will embed Easter eggs at certain times; if users leave comments closest to the Easter eggs, they will receive a special NFT from the artist. An interesting aspect is being able to see the early supporters of each song.

Currently, Sound.xyz only has first-level market releases, with the secondary market requiring access to OpenSea. Notable investors include a16z, FlamingoDAO, and The LAO. In terms of business data, artists have earned over 2.1 million USD on the platform, with a total of 124 artists and 8,660 NFTs, among which Snoop Dogg contributed 2,000 NFTs, issuing 2 series, accounting for 23% of all NFTs, raising a total of 200 ETH. The platform's first release was in December last year, with the monthly new release quantity continuing to grow, reaching a record of 3,463 new releases in April.

Source: Sound.xyz

Sound's music NFT supply and new series situation

Source: Dune Analytics

2.2.2 Catalog - Returning Revenue to Musicians

Catalog is a 1/1 music NFT trading platform based on the Zora protocol, where all NFTs have no mint copies and support auctions. So far, total sales have reached 3 million USD, with 1,311 NFTs minted, and 373 artists have minted on the platform, with 73% of artists selling their works at an average price of 3,450 USD. Trading volume peaked at 600,000 USD in October 2021 and is currently around 200,000 USD, still in the early stages. The Catalog platform takes minimal fees, allowing artists to receive the revenue from the first sale, and artists can decide the revenue sharing for secondary sales. It mainly supports independent niche artists who understand cryptocurrency. A report from Delphi indicates that the popularity of artists on Spotify is not strongly correlated with their sales on Catalog; for example, Barbadian rapper Haleek Maul sold over 100 ETH worth of music NFTs on Catalog, while his monthly traffic on Spotify is only about 4,000, which confirms that NFTs can effectively solve the income problem for musicians.

Catalog monthly trading volume

Source: Dune Analytics

2.2.3 Pianity - Unique Economic Mechanism

Pianity is a music NFT trading platform based on Arweave, with both primary and secondary markets open, allowing for instant buying and selling as well as auctions. Pianity's highlight is its token incentives; to encourage trading, Pianity also adopts trading mining, but not in a simple volume-boosting manner. Instead, it uses liquidity subsidies, rewarding the top three users who purchase the most NFTs, buy the most NFTs in the secondary market, spend the most, bid most frequently, and invite the most new users within a week with PIA tokens, with rewards divided into 2,000 PIA, 1,000 PIA, and 500 PIA tiers.

Additionally, other users who purchase NFTs on the platform will also receive rewards, with the amount of PIA rewarded being the total value of the user's NFTs on Pianity divided by the total value of all NFTs on the platform, multiplied by the number of PIA distributed weekly, thereby incentivizing players to buy and collect. Currently, PIA cannot be traded, priced at 0.1 USD. Besides cashback for purchases, another function of PIA is that token holders vote to decide which songs to be listed; the community determines which song in the waitlist can be listed, and the top song each day can be minted as an NFT, with the review power delegated to the community, effectively reducing infringement issues on decentralized music platforms.

Source: Pianity

2.2.4 One Of - Built-in Traditional Traffic

OneOf is an NFT platform based on the Tezos network, with a founding team that brings its own traffic, including renowned producer Quincy Jones. It has established partnerships with Warner Music, the Grammy Awards, and iHeartRadio, signing a three-year agreement with the Grammy Awards to issue NFTs for the 64th, 65th, and 66th Grammy Awards. The platform's most notable release was an unreleased recording of Whitney Houston at age 17, priced over 1 million USD. The NFT offerings on OneOf are diverse, allowing musicians to issue NFTs with various functionalities, including fan benefits, blind boxes, levels, collection exchanges, and synthesis, essentially following the logic of selling collectibles, without a player. The platform requires KYC, and all NFTs are priced in USD, supporting credit card purchases.

Source: OneOf

2.2.5 Mint Songs - Strong Investor Resources

Mint Songs is a platform built on Polygon that helps creators mint music and album poster NFTs for free and establish Web 3 fan communities. After artists mint music NFTs for free, they can sell them in the platform's marketplace, receiving 95% of the revenue from the first sale and 10% from secondary sales. All music NFTs are stored on IPFS. These posters and music NFTs can be airdropped for free to the artist's community, and there is also a dashboard for artists to analyze their works and community situations, helping them manage their communities. Currently, the platform's business model mainly revolves around simple minting of songs and trading, and community building between fans and musicians is still in its early stages. The top-selling artists on the platform generally have Twitter follower counts of no more than 1,000, representing relatively niche musicians.

Mint Songs completed a 3 million USD seed round of financing last December, led by Castle Island VC, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and IOSG Ventures. This round of financing will be used to continue expanding the team and developing community management tools for artists.

Source: Mint Songs

Overall, each music platform has its highlights: including Sound.xyz's strong social attributes and fragmented model; Catalog's complete 1/1 single selling format; Pianity's token incentives; Mint Songs' investor resources; and OneOf's music resources and traffic.

2.3 Secondary Creation/Generated Music - The Creative Source of Web 3 Music

Secondary creation allows users to create based on existing music resources uploaded by the platform or other users, with the platform providing creative tools. Generated music is also a branch of upstream creation in Web 3 music, where players can purchase or collect individual tracks to create different music. The introduction of music units can increase the leverage of the entire music creation sector, referencing the gameplay and diversity of PFP NFTs, bringing more imagination to the music sector.

2.3.1 EulerBeats - Focused on Algorithm-Generated Music

The algorithmic music platform EulerBeats has developed three series of music NFTs: Genesis, Enigma, and Futura. Here we mainly discuss the third series, Futura. The first two series, while also algorithmically generated music, have some interesting gameplay in terms of Web 3 music copyright.

Futura's model first issues 4,040 Mixpass NFTs, where each Mixpass NFT holder can generate two Mix NFTs, each with a randomly generated cover image and music. There are a total of thirty attributes for the music, with varying rarity. The maximum number of Mix NFTs is 8,080, and 5,423 have been redeemed so far.

Additionally, the EulerBeats team has created 11 Master NFTs, all of which are for future users to remix. The remixing process will take place in the Remix Studio (which has not yet launched, and specific remixing tools and methods are still unknown). In the future, EulerBeats will also introduce Clips representing different Stems in the Mix music; users can purchase individual Clips, and if a Clip is used in a remix, the Clip holder will receive a share, but this has not yet been launched, and the specific sharing model is still unknown.

Other similar secondary creation projects include Melos, where users can modify and create based on music NFTs uploaded by other users, forming Gen 1 music NFTs (the original author's version is Gen 0).

Source: EulerBeats

2.3.2 Async.Art - Highlighting the Composability of Music

Async.Art divides music into different tracks (i.e., Stems), combining the gameplay of PFP generative art. Buyers can purchase a single track NFT and choose the state (Variant) of the Stem, after which the state of the master music presentation depends on each Stem owner. As shown in the image, MozartBeats has four types of tracks, each with five states, allowing for 625 different combinations of music. Other participants can purchase blank record NFTs to record different states of music, with records categorized into platinum, gold, and silver, differing in rarity but serving the same function, and can be sold in the secondary market. Composable music may introduce elements of rarity and secondary creation in the future, offering more diverse gameplay rather than just selling single music NFTs, and collecting single tracks or layers may also be another collection strategy.

Source: Async.Art

2.4 Royalties/Fan Economy - Positive Interaction Between Musicians and Fans

The main gameplay of Web 3 music royalties includes issuing limited edition rare original record NFTs similar to vinyl records, where original record holders can continue to profit during the replication process. Another aspect is proportionally distributing artists' offline royalty income to fans, which is the logic of crowdfunding for artists, equivalent to fans investing in artists and sharing their results. This also introduces the concept of fan economy, where fans transition from traditional consumers to investors, forming a cooperative relationship between them, and artists gain more effective fans. In addition to sharing royalties, there are also other benefits that need to be fulfilled.

2.4.1 Eulerbeats

The first two NFT series of Eulerbeats, Genesis and Enigma, have certain reference significance for the copyright gameplay of music NFTs. The core idea is that original record holders have commercial usage rights for the music, and minting and purchasing replica versions is equivalent to investing in the original record. The more people purchase copies, the higher the value of the original record and early copies, ultimately forming a community of shared interests between the original record and copy holders.

Both Genesis and Enigma original records (also called LPs) have 27 copies, with metadata and music files stored on the Ethereum chain. The price of Genesis original records is around 0.271 ETH, while Enigma original records are auctioned on OpenSea, with Genesis original records capable of being copied 119 times and Enigma original records 160 times. 8% of the royalties from the copies of Genesis and Enigma belong to the original record holders. The prices of the two series of copies are related to the supply quantity of the copies, with the bonding curve formula being f(x)=a(b+x)+cx+d, with different values for a, b, c, and d in the two series. From the price and supply curves, it can be seen that the initial cost of replica versions is very low, and by the time the last copy is minted, the price of Genesis is expected to reach around 721 ETH, while Enigma could reach around 53 ETH. For example, in Genesis, only LP01 minted 61 replica versions, with a mint price of around 4.7 ETH, while the other LPs minted around 30 copies each, with prices around 1 ETH. The total royalty income for Genesis is 1,184.68 ETH, while for Enigma, it is 136.42 ETH.

Source: Eulerbeats

The original record holders of the two series have commercial usage rights for the music and can engage in a series of commercial activities based on the original record's music, with potential profit and appreciation space. The replication of copies is equivalent to investing in the original record, and the appreciation of the original record will drive up the market price of the copies, while more people will mint copies of that LP. It is also easy for original record holders and copy holders to form a community to jointly manage and make decisions about the development of the LP original record, such as reverb and other commercial uses, ultimately forming a community of shared interests.

2.4.2 Royal - Solving Royalty Distribution

Royal sells artists' off-chain streaming royalties on Spotify through NFTs to players, allowing players to earn future royalties from the artists. Different tiers of NFT holders receive different percentages of royalties, equivalent to collectors investing in the artist. In addition to sharing royalties, different NFT holders can receive other benefits. Currently, the platform has 10 songs, including Grammy-winning DJ and electronic musician Diplo's single "Don't Forget My Love." The project founder is renowned musician DJ Justin Blau, also known as 3LAU, and the platform has relatively rich music resources.

Source: Royal

Artists decide how much of their royalties to share with players and the NFT tiers. For example, the NFT for Nas's song "Rare" is divided into three tiers: Gold, Platinum, and Diamond, each corresponding to different royalty shares, prices, supply quantities, and exclusive rights. However, some offline benefits, such as VIP concert tickets and merchandise, require certain delivery capabilities. The process is akin to artists receiving streaming payments and sending a portion of those payments to a smart contract to pay fans holding NFTs, treating fans as investors and record companies, with the crowdfunding process resembling a management company DAO. The music itself is not the NFT; the copyright of the music is.

Similar projects include Opulous, which also generates NFTs from artists' off-chain royalties, allowing investors to purchase these security NFTs to earn 50% of the artist's future royalties. This model enables artists to raise funds for music production, resembling a Music + DeFi model.

Other fan economy models include the band Avenged Sevenfold issuing 10,000 Deathbats NFT collections, where NFT-holding fans can enter an exclusive community, connect with the band, and those holding rare Deathbats can enjoy additional benefits, including offline meetups, lifetime free tickets, and spending a day with their favorite member. The secondary market sales for Deathbats have reached 345 ETH. Additionally, Snoop Dogg released a music album on Gala Music through a blind box method, with each blind box containing a random song from the album's 17 tracks, potentially leading to airdrop rewards and opportunities to attend concerts in the future.

If a player collects all 17 songs from the album, they can attend a DJ Snoopadelic concert or spend a night at Snoop Dogg's house. By utilizing the form of music NFTs, the relationship between artists and fans shifts from a traditional one-to-many model to a one-to-one model, where the few "effective loyal fans" who contribute more value to the artist deserve more attention and rewards from the artist. They gain a higher status, and the community between artists and fans forms an effective value closed-loop relationship (fans invest funds to crowdfund artists, and artists return benefits to fans).

Source: OpenSea

2.5 Web 3 Music Community - Decentralized Exploration, Drawing on DAO Models

Music inherently has the cohesion to form communities. Record DAOs and music communities are important talent incubators in the Web 3 music sector. Although they are still immature, they are effectively nurturing talent, creating communities, and innovating business models in a Web 3 manner.

• Songcamp

Songcamp is like a hackathon for Web 3 music creation, launched in March 2021, with two events held each year, totaling three events so far: Camp Genesis, Camp Elektra, and Chaos. Here we mainly discuss the latest event, Chaos.

Chaos, as the third event of Songcamp, has a broader scope than the previous two events and started in March 2022. It is an eight-week music creation experiment where 80 participants come to the Songcamp Discord to create music and form a headless band. Chaos includes seven teams: music, visuals, operations, development, radio blogging, economic model design, and cross-functional teams.

Source: Chaos Twitter

45 creators are divided into bands of three, totaling 15 groups, each equipped with a singer, producer, and one other musician from a different function. The eight-week period is divided into four nodes (as shown in the image), allowing for random creation and collisions, with some groups (alumni from previous Song Camp events) required to base their creations on the inspirations of other groups. The final output is 45 songs, which will be edited into 20,000 NFTs for sale based on the rarity of their covers.

Eight-week schedule

45 songs packaged into 20,000 NFTs

Source: Songcamp

2.5.2 Good Karma Records

Good Karma Records is a Web 3 record DAO. Before signing any artists, Good Karma Records will hold live showcases in Los Angeles to present potential signers to members, providing exclusive access for $KARMA token holders and genesis NFT holders. Artists need to onboard through crowdfunding on Mirror, and DAO members can use $KARMA tokens to directly vote for their favorite performances and artists.

After signing, artists will receive $KARMA tokens, with the amount allocated to each artist determined by DAO voting at the time of signing, granting artists governance rights within the DAO. Members earn $KARMA rewards by signing artists, engaging in record production work (such as production, graphic design, etc.), and contributing to the daily operations of the DAO. Services the DAO can provide for artists include: setting up wallets, creating and distributing NFTs, and answering all Web 3-related questions; recording and producing songs; and promotional work. However, a potential risk is that DAO organizations may not have very professional operational and production capabilities to promote artists and their records.

An artist is currently crowdfunding an album on Mirror

Source: Mirror

3. Web 3 Financing Concentrated in Seed Rounds, Indicating the Industry is Still Early

Below, we summarize the financing situation of major Web 3 music sector projects, with most projects concentrated in seed round financing.

4. Thoughts on the Development Prospects of Web 3 Music

4.1 Web 3 Music can strengthen the closed-loop economic ecosystem between fans and artists, but the current commercial chain is too short

Fans' investments in artists become quantifiable, and their relationship shifts from one-to-many to one-to-one, allowing artists to pay more attention to their loyal fans, who deserve different benefits as they are the artists' investors. Artists' financing becomes simpler and can directly generate revenue, making music creation no longer just a labor of love. However, the entire commercial chain of the fan economy in Web 3 music is relatively short; most singers leveraging Web 3 music still rely on the logic of selling merchandise, viewing NFT sales as another means of increasing income. The connection between fans and artists is not close enough, and merely relying on the logic of trading merchandise and collectibles makes it difficult to form an artist community through music NFTs.

4.2 Music NFTs can make the industry supply chain more transparent, but practical implementation is challenging

As mentioned earlier, there are a large number of black box royalties in the traditional music industry, and minting music as NFTs can automatically allocate royalty income. For example, in an event where Sound collaborated with the label Soulection, after a listening party, over 300 NFTs were sold to buyers at a price of 0.1 ETH, which were then automatically split using 0xSplits technology among the label, planners, and artists.

However, the traditional music industry supply chain is quite complex, including upstream creators and singers, midstream record companies, and downstream streaming media. If the entire industry chain and business model are moved on-chain, the legal risks and practical complexities involved need to be considered. In reality, just considering the upstream creation layer involves lyricists, composers, artists, stylists, visual designers, photographers, producers, and directors, among others. Often, it is not as simple as recording the earnings of all parties in the same percentage format as off-chain in a smart contract. If there are very few and streamlined participating entities, it may be feasible to use on-chain income splitting protocols like 0xSplits to divide income.

4.3 Music NFTs have more application scenarios waiting to be explored compared to PFPs

Compared to image NFTs, music NFTs lack strong visual impact; people need at least 10 seconds or more to listen to music before deciding whether to purchase, which makes having a player particularly important for Web 3 music applications. In terms of application scenarios, the most intuitive applications for image NFTs are social media avatars, games, and metaverse avatars, which have inherently strong social attributes. However, apart from collectibles, where will the broader and more communicative applications for music NFTs be? Will it be on Twitter personal pages or as background music for game characters? However, Gala Music under the Gala ecosystem is also attempting to use music NFTs on its platform as background music for its ecological games, with music traffic coming from games, while music NFT holders, nodes, and artists will all receive rewards when the music is played. Additionally, regarding the social attributes and communities of Web 3 music, sound.xyz's visual social features and listening parties provide a reference example.

4.4 Traditional Web 2 Music Resources Cannot Be Ignored

Early project teams need to acquire as many well-known musician IPs as possible; relying solely on long-tail or niche musicians cannot attract traffic. Although Delphi's research report indicates that the sales of Web 3 artists on Catalog are not correlated with their traffic on Spotify, and Twitter followers are generally only a few thousand, most singers on Web 3 platforms are independent and have received early support from collectors.

However, for most projects, having traffic and IP is the best way to launch a project. Independent musicians' works on platforms without good music resources and operational capabilities are likely to become neglected zombie music. Looking at teams like Royal, Emanate, Audius, Opulous, and OneOf, the founders or investors undoubtedly have strong backgrounds in the traditional music industry, and the music resources on the platforms are noteworthy, such as Grammy winner Diplo and rapper Nas, known as the "King of New York rap," on Royal. Referring to the explosive path of small images, while people's acceptance of crypto-native things seems higher than traditional art works on-chain, it is undeniable that NFT works by artists who have already achieved success in traditional art fields, such as Takashi Murakami and Spanish humorist Joan Cornellà, remain very popular.

4.5 Innovative Models for Music Dissemination and Promotion are Worth Exploring in Web 3 Music

As mentioned earlier, the result of Web 3's zombie music may ultimately be neglect. The realm of music NFTs is also reserved for those with certain accumulations in the traditional music industry. While Web 3 provides musicians with platforms, it essentially does not solve the exposure problem. So how do niche musicians achieve cold starts? We can refer to the decentralized music distribution platform Sonorus, which collaborates with local players in Vietnam, allowing track links and SDKs to coexist. Users can share music on social media through the platform, and third-party apps can call the project's music library and data for promotion, with promoters receiving token rewards, thereby gathering individuals with strong dissemination capabilities. Promotion and dissemination are precisely what niche independent musicians urgently need.

Spotify's promotional operations for independent musicians without labels involve placing their songs in popular libraries and playlists for overall promotion. Additionally, platforms like TikTok allow artists to promote their music and cultivate musicians, but these platforms heavily rely on upstream copyright holders, requiring the copyright holders' music libraries to be available in the app for creators to use. Moreover, most musicians have exclusive agreements with labels and cannot use other promotional channels. Therefore, referencing Sonorus's model, from the perspective of promotion, dissemination, and exposure, the cold start of long-tail market musicians in the Web 3 world seems no longer so difficult.

4.6 Token Empowerment and Economic Model Design Need Improvement

Most Web 3 music platforms focus their tokens' main functions on staking and governance, with few other empowering functions such as in-platform trading, token payments for music, and more token incentive models. Regarding many people's envisioned music NFT platforms' "listen to earn," "create to earn," and other models, there may also be issues such as script farming and the creation of large amounts of junk content and copyright infringement, among others. If tokens do not have other effective empowering functions, platforms may fall into a vicious cycle of mining, withdrawing, and selling.