Where to start with Web3 music? Part 2. Web3 Ecosystem Guide for Musicians

From here on, I have to admit that I’m being subjective, given that I consider my own level to be close to intermediate, but still a beginner in terms of my audience and monetization. This should be enough to share my opinion on what you should join if you are like me, and what you shouldn’t consider due to high levels of curation and increased expectations.

Let’s take a look at the list again, and go through them one by one. I’ll talk about my top choice last to build up some suspense. Also, I will start with the ones that are currently out of my league.

Royal.io features iconic artists and lets their fans invest in buying royalties coming from track or album streams on a variety of platforms. Bolero is similarly investment focused and sells artist tokens like stocks. They take their applicants’ screening very seriously and build a portfolio of successful cases for both the artists and their fans. 

Sound.xyz is similar to Bolero in terms of the application process. They focus on fresh releases and selling music NFTs with great utilities. This platform is a step away from Royal in popularity, although it’s driven by the opposite principles – the Sound team desires music streaming to be free, while Royal’s whole point is to make money on music consumption. And then there is Catalog, which is literally the vinyl shop of music NFTs. A truly awesome quality shop achieved through a lot of manual labor.

If you are a musician or a band with thousands of followers – apply to all 4 of them – application form filling doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes for each one of them. Being published on any of them can bring a fortune.

Now, back to earth, and to the platforms where I am able to participate as a music maker, and not just a consumer.

Audius.co is the absolute winner by search volumes. Just to describe the product in a couple of words, it’s kind of like SoundCloud on web3 steroids + has immense integration capabilities for any outside services, which is the smartest marketing strategy. 

Emanate.live is a close second when it comes to backlinks, their primary focus is a pay-per-stream strategy, kind of like a Spotify replacement, even when it comes to playlist building.

Nina Protocol is beautiful in its simplicity and flawless delivery. That’s where I was able to sell my first music NFT. There could be some editions left of one of my favorite beats – make sure to check, it’s cheaper than your coffee.

OurSong’s specialty is collabs, to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to spend a decent amount of time with it yet, but it’s on my list given that collabs are always great for visibility. 

Melos.Studio is a child of Binance and has some very traditional OpenSea feel to its marketplace, and fun features like creating generative AI music that you can list for sale. They recently launched a web DAW, but not too impressed with it yet, as it’s just about some audio samples editing and combining. It does have great potential if they keep building, and given the parent company’s support – they should.

As I promised, the best for the last, please welcome my beloved Pianity which has a community so active, it will keep you warm in the winter. It is friendly and welcoming regardless of your level. Anyone can upload their track to Pianity toplist where the community votes for music to be released as NFTs on the platform. 

This was a breaking point in my reviews cycle – I have not seen any better platform after I spent 7 days with the Pianity community. I did mention a few things I wish the team added as features (like a mobile app, playlists, liking the tracks, etc.) and a month later I was prompted to write an update as all of my feedback has been addressed. The experience of being a musician on Pianity is very well gamified, while the money artists make from sales of NFTs is very real. 

If we take another look at the list of platforms, you’ll see that Pianity is the 4th in search volumes and only second to Audius when it comes to platforms friendly to beginners, but here’s an additional factor that keeps me returning to Pianity with new releases – it is consistently growing as opposed to most platforms during the bear market. Melos Studio is growing as well, as it also releases new features and opportunities for musicians to express themselves, but if we look at nominal numbers as opposed to percentage growth, we’ll see that while Melos went from 1000 to 2000 organic search volumes, Pianity went from 3500 to 6500 search growth in the same 4 months period. So, although Melos doubled its volumes, Pianity actually went a longer way in terms of growth.