Quick thoughts about web3 music projects

Most web3 music projects who call themselves "disruptive" and "revolutionary" to the music industry offer basically an internet fan club for the artist:

  • royalty share from the song! (I can't understand why the hell would an artist do it instead of trying to use the revenue for e.g. marketing in form of a video clip)

  • support the artist! - you don't need web3, NFTs, and blockchain for that, merch is doing just that and you get also a real wearable piece of clothing!

  • private communication channels with artists! - again you could simply set up a Patreon page and do just that

  • and so on...

There's nothing new in these proposals, and clearly, you don't need NFTs for that. I think most "supporters" and "propagators" of such projects simply want to speculate on the price of the NFTs (like in 99% of the crypto world lmao)

Yet, there are currently 2 cases that I see that could somehow utilize blockchain (though these are just simple, not thoroughly thought ideas):

  • Lifetime gigs access - you could of course do it without blockchain (save a QR code on your digital storage or even print) but if blockchains are here to stay that would be another layer of persistence

  • Let's say you're a digital content creator (e.g. Youtuber) and want to use a song that is licensed by a label. Maybe if there could be a mechanism embedded in NFT representing the song, the Youtuber would somehow embed this NFT into his video and then do a fair revenue split between the song creator and himself, instead of demonetizing the video like Youtube is doing right now. (IDK if that would be possible at all) I could see this as something between royalty-free music and licensed music, for artists that e.g. self release their stuff and can't afford lawyers/didn't get a record deal yet.