Part 1: 3 Cryptocurrency Platforms Providing Relief For Music Artists

Last article covers: Musicoin, Ujo Music, & Musiconomi

I found the Quora question above on the platform and decided to help out a struggling musician with some sources! Only hoping that this spreads to help other musicians and is found valuable to you — whether a musician or not. :)

This article will cover:

Muse

Opus Foundation

Viberate

Voise

Muse

Muse had a refreshing look, but similar features to the others. At the same time, I mentioned earlier that brand is very important when building a music ecosystem, especially one geared up to help musician artists monetize on the brand they created. Token/brand symbol = awesome! Colors are on point and it looks like an inviting place to me d[^_^]b

Then we take a look above at their model comparison to the traditional record label. Clean model explaining the decentralization properties along with the fact that the artists actually own the platform and essentially control whether or not it survives — in the sense that an ecosystem cannot thrive without a certain number of parties and volume of activity. Gosh, the cryptocurrency space is so exciting because the entire industry is using the blockchain/cryptocurency technologies to innovate and redefine what we know as value today in 2017.

I didn’t dive too deep into each platform, but it looks like Muse allows you to sign into multiple music curation platform accounts. The data is pulled from the musicians’ alt platform data and is monetized for Muse artists. On top of this, Muse is a curation platform — like an ultimate music platform. Now, I wonder who is going to create a platform to sign into the 7 cryptocurency music platforms I will have written about in these two articles? d[^_^]b

Opus Foundation — Live ICO

Upon arriving at the Opus website, it seemed similar to the others, but I immediately noticed the focus of helping “playlist makers” monetize on their work creating playlists of tracks. Kinda makes sense here, right? Think of 8tracks. It’s a crowdsourced music platform where people create their own playlists from existing music on YouTube, I believe. The thing about 8tracks, you are not compensated for your work as a music curator — something that is changing VERY quickly in the art industry.

Despite my lack of tech-savvy-ness, I appreciate models a ton! Even if I don’t totally understand the model, it’s still a visual representation of what the team has created or is creating for their company. This model looks like it was well thought out and has very specific contract creation, storage, and monetization principles. Excited to see it in play!

Opus Crowdsale is still live and has a discount! Contributors get 8,000 OPT/ETH instead of 7,000

Now to the fun part — the Opus ICO! The ICO is still live and is giving a 1,000 coin bonus per ETH spent. So instead of 7,000 OPT, the contributor receives 8,000 OPT per ETH. If you’re an artist and interested in throwing $20 into this for instance, you’re looking at receiving around 800 OPT. 1 ETH currently worth $200–230, $20 = about 0.1 ETH. 0.1 x 8,000 = 800 OPT. Not sure what their cost model looks like, but OPT will be utilized within their ecosystem to encourage community building and ecosystem growth!

Viberate — Upcoming ICO

Viberate looked very pop-ey when I first arrived. It looked like it could be a major music label in Hollywood or Los Angeles type branding — definitely a must-have when it comes to art! Personal brand is almost everything and it’s already exciting before I looked into anything else upon arriving. d[^_^]b Brownie points!

Diving into it, I had to share the fact that this platform truly serves nearly all, if not all stakeholders in the music industry. Touche Viberate! Remember, this is a very surface level view of all the platforms in both this article and Part 1 which was posted yesterday. I would really try every single one of them — Viberate also has a pretty interesting reward program too for users on the platform. It rewards them with Vibe Points and users can accumulate these and use to buy swagger or concert tickets. Cryptocurrency truly is innovating so many industries. Happy to be covering the cryptosphere and industries I’m not super familiar with, but appreciate!

Adding an artist looks like a pretty awesome function too! After making an account, I decided to experience this feature of the Viberate platform! I’m a business dude, but not super familiar with the music industry and licensing, etc. so I’m unsure why Spotify is a ‘must-have’ in order to be an artist on their platform, but at the same time it makes sense to use an anchor-platform to create a standard for artists on the platform.

Still pretty cool that there are so many different platforms you can link to, but ALSO add different links. I’m always a huge fan of this feature on really any sort of platform because, in 2017, there are sooo many different platforms to use, it doesn’t make sense to limit your platform user. For instance, I would recommend artists creating and adding a Medium publication link to their Viberate website to use as their own content hub! Something I see far too little of in my musician friends is their marketing strategy. It’s really as simple as getting a Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn account; creating a Hootsuite account to automate the next 30+ days of posts for your social media; and before you know it you’ve built a small fan base FOR FREE!

Voise

Voise put up their BitcoinTalk.org ICO page in late late March of this year so the token is relatively new, but is trading on exchanges already. The Voise platform was very similiar to the others and in tune with the theme of democratizing music ownership and payment with 100% of funds earned going to the artist. I gotta say, I do appreciate the 100% theme — that’s amazing.

Voise.it Features above are really the same as on the other 6 cryptocurrency music platforms I mentioned. In fact, despite being one of the first to markets, Voise seems like they don’t have a very large team, but their Twitter account is up to date and looks to being updating the community daily — this is something I place a lot of value on for the community because there are many token communities that simply ARE NOT updating their community…yes, they are lacking the updates to the same community that paid them — Voise is doing a great job of community communication.

This expanded view of current features is nice to see because it shows a bit more detail of what the inside of their platform is like. Having your own radio station, as a musician, like Pandora? That seems like it could be very cool! Again, I haven’t signed up to every platform or used it — I’m not a musician and am just sharing platform features so musicians have something new to try! So take my articles with a grain of salt!

Voise’s future features are pretty enticing to me as a non-musician, though. Vote for the next song…woah! So, theoretically, your fanbase can come onto the Voise platform, support you, and ultimately help you gain more exposure as a musician on the platform. NICE! This is cool because it requires some sort of community coordination, usually led by the influencer musician. Justin Bieber may not be able to take this one over unless he can get his fans to swiftly move and act on those votes — possibly. Very interested to see what happens to the Voise.it platform moving forward!

This was a long 2-part article series, but well worth it! I truly hope this helps you in your cryptocurrency or artistic journey and please share to help empower others. I write these articles to help others and sharing is a major way to get them to see this.

Below are some resources for beginning cryptocurrency enthusiasts or others interested in something new: