Exploring Muzika

The Future of the Digital Music Economy

What is Muzika?

What exactly is Muzika? Muzika is the next step in the evolution of digital music distribution. More specifically, it is a “dApp,” or decentralized application, which leverages the power of blockchain technology to the advantage of content creators and music fans.

The Muzika dApp will be a community-based music ecosystem that engages and rewards music lovers and compensates artists more fairly than any streaming services available today. Muzika has a focus on giving users the best possible experience, while simultaneously removing the faceless corporate middlemen who have historically taken more than their fair share of profit from artists.

A Brief History of Digital Music Distribution

In the late 90’s, the world discovered peer-to-peer file sharing in the form of programs like Napster. This was a revolutionary new way of distributing digital music, which also proved to be unethical and facilitate theft. Those platforms left artists with no compensation for their work and also robbed music labels of the profits they were taking from the same artists. Peer-to-peer sharing also carried the risk of viruses, mislabeled files and low quality audio.

The technology matured and developed into legally compliant platforms like iTunes, where users would pay for digital downloads. This was an improvement from peer-to-peer as the audio quality was better, the files were virus-free and the compensation was finally going back to the labels and artists. Those platforms had imbalanced pay structures, where users were charged too much and artists paid too little. Once again, the profit was being taken by the corporate middleman.

The next evolution of digital music — the era we are currently preparing to leave — is the era of centralized streaming platforms like Spotify and Pandora, where users pay monthly membership fees for quality, streaming audio. This method is convenient for basic fans, but has serious drawbacks of its own: limited music content, poor algorithms, high fees for users and low payouts for artists.

Since the popularization of the internet, digital music distribution has evolved into better, more efficient forms. Despite those changes, the platforms always have the same problems: they develop massive user bases that are over-charged, while managing to keep artist payouts down to a meager percentage.

The era of unfair payment distributions and over-charging music lovers is gone. We are now entering an era where artists will be paid more reasonably and where music lovers will be not be treated like customers and, instead, will be rewarded for their passion.

We are entering the Blockchain Era of music distribution and Muzika plans on leading the way.

How Does Muzika Work?

Muzika will be a digital music ecosystem that engages and rewards music lovers and musical creators in a way that has never before been possible. Muzika will be delivered as a dApp (decentralized application) built on the Ethereum and Ontology blockchains. The ecosystem will be self-sustaining; it will be driven by artists and music fans through a system of rewards and tokenized compensation. in the form of user Loyalty Points and also the Muzika Coin (MZK).

The ecosystem is community driven and will be supported by fans and artists alike. Fans are rewarded based on levels of engagement in the ecosystem, including performing activities like feedback-sharing, crowd funding, upvoting and reporting illegal content. Users support their favorite artists by sponsoring them, which will reward the user with unique content and access. Artists will be fully compensated for their creations and will also earn additional income from fan sponsors and fund-raising.

The ecosystem will utilize smart contracts to distribute payments and music, as well as to store data on the blockchain. Smart contracts will essentially remove the necessity of today’s corporate business model responsible for taking a majority of music artists’ profits.

What Makes Muzika Special

Muzika already has a user base and they are not simply a company starting from scratch.

Muzika was created by the co-founders of Mapiacompany, the “#1 global instrumental music platform” that already has a user base of over 2 million people. Muzika will be built with the existing user base and it will also represent the next-level technological evolution of the current Mapiacompany ecosystem. The Muzika roadmap is clear and the product will be rolled out in 2019.

In addition to already having a giant user base and pre-existing digital music economy, Muzika is partnered with two powerhouses of the blockchain smart economy — Neo Global Capital and Ontology. These partners speak volumes about Muzika’s potential. They also have advisors with vast experience ranging from top-level execs at Kakao, Samsung and QTUM, among others.