WHITE PAPER – Musiverse

ABSTRACT

Music is a significant part of most people’s daily lives. More than just entertainment, music is an art form, an important medium for cultural exchange. The demand for music consumption has created a major business industry encompassing production, distribution, publishing, live concerts, and album sales. However, there are still a lot of unsolved issues in each of these music fields. Currently, we are on the blockchain paradigm shift. Blockchain has great opportunities to re-imagine many industries, and it holds tremendous potential to reshape the future of the music industry.

Today, the music industry is experiencing a major disruption. There is a sea of change underway in the fundamental ways the music ecosystem works. The world is witnessing a complete revolution in the process of music being created and distributed, as well as a customization in the way bands interact with their fans. At the cutting edge of this movement is blockchain technology and the power it brings back to the artists and cutting out the intermediaries. Through the system of immutable data registration and sharing or selling it directly and transparently to the consumers with no third parties involved.

In this changing landscape, it is the artist that appears to be the big losers, lacking control over their songs and remuneration. The fans also appear powerless and disconnected and with the rise of streaming services, they have traded their ability to support them for convenience and accessibility, and in the process have become increasingly unable to directly promote and fund them throughout their career. Despite attempts to take back control, the whole system of intermediaries needs to be restrustructed to offer transparency and give the control of the music back to the owners… the creators of it and the fans who buy it.

INTRODUCTION

The Musiverse can help artists benefit and gain a huge following by tapping into the major popular platforms that are dominating the current marketplace: Spotify, Soundcloud, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. By incorporating all the major players into the band portfolios and rampage, we are able to maximize their audience and give new artists the best chance of success. Blockchain technology has opened up new ways for artists to monetize their music by allowing musicians to sell their music directly to fans, cutting off the middlemen like record labels and publishers. This is leading to a new generation of blockchain powered on-demand music streaming services as well as new avenues for artists to create and sell different styles of digital art content to their fans.

The distribution of music no longer requires physical records or CDs and a complex web of relationships and distribution channels. Artists can freely distribute their own songs now using digital channels to put their songs into the ears of fans and prospective fans and find new innovative ways to generate revenues from their fanbases. The Musiverse offers a new fanclub style streaming service with added options and more ethical ways for fans to listen to music and for artists to sell their work.

We aim to give the artists and users on the platform as many options as possible to capture the largest possible market share of music streamers and NFT investors. Artists are not typically tech savvy and most do not have the skills or time to put into online marketing and building a fanbase. This has normally been the job of the record labels to throw money at expensive advertising. Through our Fan Club features and tech team with years of accumulated experience, we understand how to bridge this gap.

Too long have artists and musicians suffered for the benefit of corporate giants and the centralized music industry, and now is the time for artists to regain control of their own content and distribution. The Musiverse provides a new path forward for the music industry that is controlled by the creative forces behind the music and the devoted fans that support them.

THE MUSIVERSE BUSINESS SUMMARY

The Musiverse Dashboard iS a blockchain-powered music streaming platform integrated into artist FanPages. In addition to streaming services like Spotify, Soundcloud, and YouTube being integrated into the artist FanPage, both artists and record labels are able to publish exclusive music to the Musiverse platform, create smart contracts, and earn on the trade and purchase of music tracks. Free memberships will be available for anyone to join and listen, but there will also be premium membership offered for ad-free streaming and access to exclusive content. Artists and bands will be able to tap into the Musiverse FanClub Tools and Ad-On Features in order to create new revenue channels to maximize their profitability from their fanbase.

The Musiverse is also a NFT marketplace and database of digital artworks and user experiences in which users and artists can upload content opening the doors to new genres and styles of art and new channels for DJs and bands to interact with their fanbase and avenues to monetize their artwork. This marketplace will benefit from the shared liquidity of the NFT ecosystem with other dominant online marketplaces like OpenSea and Atomic Marketplace for maximum exposure.

The Musiverse uses blockchain technology to track and store the analytics of music track streams and views and to distribute streaming payments of original content to artists. The service will originally be hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, but will branch out into other blockchains to give artists more affordable options by avoiding high gas fees, including development of our own Gasless Ecosystem that will eliminate gas fees altogether.

Although the Musiverse will allow its users to pay for memberships, added features, and buy content with traditional currencies via bank transfer or credit card to maximize its user database to those who are not already invested in crypto currencies. There will also be payment options in a variety of popular crypto currencies integrated into the platform ecosystem. The MUSO token will be the base currency used on the platform in which artists and users will be able to earn MUSO tokens by interacting with band fanclubs, inviting friends, and adding content to the database.

Like traditional streaming models, aim is to allow listeners to stream music tracks and distribute streaming royalties to artists using the MUSO cryptocurrency token. Musiverse uses blockchain technology to track and store the analytics of streams and to distribute streaming payments to artists in real-time. Due to the files being hosted on IFPS, tracks can’t be delisted from the platform or banned due to government restrictions. It also allows for a reduction in storage costs enabling us to provide more profitability to the artist and investors.

WHAT PROBLEM DOES MUSIVERSE AIM TO SOLVE?

The music industry is fragmented and has not evolved it’s copyright management processes since before the invention of the internet. Due to the outdated nature of the music industry, great inefficiencies have emerged to the tune of over $2 billion dollars in lost royalties each year and growing. With numerous inefficiencies and a growing number of middle-men in the music industry, creators are earning less than ever. In fact, creators are bringing home less than $14 on every $100 worth of revenue that they generate. The other 86%+ goes towards record deals, collection fees, licensing fees, and other costs.

Having so many actors and complex interconnections leads to a complete lack of transparency, especially to the artists themselves. As a result, the reality of the actual distribution of music and money is not unfair and unaccounted for. For instance, it is practically impossible to keep track of the songs created and the associated copyrights or the revenues they generate from their redistribution.

Currently, the music industry lacks a verified global registry of music creatives and their works. Attempts to build this have failed to the tune of millions of dollars, largely at the expense of some of the collective management organizations and agencies such as ASCAP , PRS , PPL and SOCAN – whose job is to ensure that songwriters, publishers, performers, and labels are paid for the use of their music by collecting royalties on behalf of the rights owners.

The problems that exist here really come down to transparency and accountability. The major labels and streaming services are operating “like a cartel” that benefits label market share and leaves creators earning next to nothing for their work and with little choice over the terms under which it’s used. There are the music industry’s “Big Three” — Sony Music, Universal, and Warner and the biggest record labels Interscope, RCA, Atlantic, and Columbia which are subsidiary companies of one of the ‘Big Three’ distributors. The music industry has always been dominated by these gatekeepers, and with the internet we have seen streaming platforms like YouTube, Soundcloud, TikTok, Snapchat, and Spotify change the landscape drastically.

These major streaming platforms still leave only small percentages to the musicians themselves. The model of record labels and large publishers has always been payout generously to the world’s most famous artists. This has created a difficult environment for small and independent artists to make a living off their music. When there’s a company building a platform to extract value from the creators that are sharing stuff on that platform, the platform and the creator are always kind of at odds with each other. And that brings us back to the core motivating reasons for why our team is building Audius and why the community that has rallied around new blockchain powered startups and the NFT movement has become so meaningful in the last year.

Artists are angry with small returns from streaming services for their music and having their creative freedoms are being stifled, and they are looking for new ways to retain control over their music and interact with their fans. The combination of blockchain-based platforms and smart contracts plus the artistic community’s standards of inclusion and transparency in deal-making, privacy, security, respect of rights, and fair exchange of value could enable artists and their collaborators to form a new music ecosystem. As an artist, your ability to distribute content should not be something that’s governed by a single set of shareholders whose goal is to maximise their shareholder value. Likewise for the fans, there are few options to support and promote one’s favorite artists as of yet. Fans have no idea of how much the musicians earn when they purchase their music or when they listen to a stream of their favorite band. Blockchain technology could bring some transparency and allow fans to directly promote their favorite artists and also would be able to invest in an artist’s success.

THE SOLUTION

The Musiverse community will roll out new mechanisms for content ownership and give artists streams of revenue never before possible. Backed by blockchain based technologies behind the protocol, the platform offers to bridge the gap between crypto and a mainstream audience prioritizing the connection and enhancing the user experience. The Musiverse has been developed in a way that will retain its users ownership and control indefinitely with community governance continuing to lead the way forward at the cutting edge of the music revolution remaining at the forefront of the industry.

To tackle the challenges that the artists face in the industry and bring the true potential of the music industry to the fore, the Musiverse has leveraged blockchain technology to remove the corrupt middleman from the music industry and connect fans directly to the artists. It allows the fans to pay directly to the artists and also allows artists to distribute their music tracks through the Musiverse platform, and the fans will pay to hear the music tracks on the platform. Artists are now able to retain control over their music and royalty rights by utilizing the evolving blockchain smart contracts which can instantly split and pay the royalties to the rights holders, or even offer the royalty rights of certain tracks or albums up for sale to the highest bidder in buy-outs of the track including the distribution and royalty rights.

By using blockchain technology, The Musiverse will help creators keep track of their content and how it is used throughout the music industry. By publishing their songs or albums as a Non-Fungible Token, it is accounted for on a ledger with a unique ID and timestamp in a way that is effectively unalterable. In essence, this solves the well-known problem of illegal music downloading, copying and/or modification. Each record can store metadata containing ownership and rights information in a transparent and immutable way for everyone to see and verify. This ensures that the rights owners get paid for the use of the content.

MUSIVERSE MISSION

The Musiverse is a blockchain-based digital streaming network and NFT marketplace that connects fans directly with artists and exclusive new releases through Fanclubs which are built by fans.. for fans. Artists will be able to create their official band page to interact directly with their fans enhancing and personalizing the user experience while adding new revenue streams independent of any third party record labels or distributors. The Musiverse provides solutions for a wide scope of industry problems: releasing music, streamlining the distribution model and funneling more of the revenue towards the creators by eliminating fees, imposed by middlemen, between end-users and artists.

Musiverse aims to be the “world’s biggest decentralized music streaming platform and NFT Marketplace.” Musiverse has been designed from the ground up to give musicians and other creators increased freedom, control, and flexibility when it comes to their own musical creations and the communities of fans surrounding them. The eventual goal is to in a sense revolutionise the music industry by giving control back to the artists and to the fans by replacing the centralized distribution platforms which only serve the corporate interests to profit from artists. In doing so, we will foster the artist fan relationship, enhancing the connection and developing new ways for artists to express themselves and earn revenue through digital art and enjoyment of music.

Musiverse was created with a mission to give anyone and everyone the freedom to stream, distribute, and monetize any type of audio content allowing the fans and artists to come together, joined by the node operators that make a community network possible. All are joined by an incentive-based system that allows the different actors to provide a high-quality audio streaming experience that’s guided by the foundational beliefs of the Musiverse founders:

Users should be compensated in proportion to how much value they create for the network
Artists should directly engage with and transact with their fans with new innovative styles of digital art using rare collectible NFTs
Governance power should be earned by creating value in Musiverse and constantly shared between user groups contributing to the protocol within the network
Prices and earnings for participants should be consistent, predictable, and transparent
Access should be democratized; anyone can contribute to Musiverse if they follow the protocol rules, and all information is publicly accessible
Intermediaries should be removed if and when possible; when necessary, they should be algorithmic, transparent, and verifiably accurate

The platform works in a way that rewards both artists and fans through the development of a decentralized music distribution and royalty management system. The features would include a fan-to-artist crowdfunding and a fan reward system that offers exclusive artist content through the sale of NFTs, as well as promotional incentives and cheaper prices relative to other platforms. Our goal is to foster and facilitate the connection between musicians and their fans while opening new channels of revenues of income by selling digital artworks of the band or album covers, special Vinyl LP releases, exclusive video content, early access to releases, customized messages, meet and greet experiences, etc.

Blockchain technology solutions are now enabling shared and decentralized reliable data. The distribution and royalty rights to a track can now be fragmented across different, incompatible systems regardless of date or conflicting information. This is how the Musiverse is able to create a global shared database that brings together information from the recording and publishing sides of the music industry. NFTs are starting to gain mainstream traction in the music industry, as evidenced by the flurry of news in the past few weeks from superstar artists selling millions of dollars worth of the digital assets to their fans.

THE NFT REVOLUTION

The NFT movement has captured the industry’s fascination in 2021 for their promise of fan engagement and a new source of income. After an already difficult moment for musicians, with nearly all touring canceled or at limited capacity due to COVID-19, this use of cryptocurrency became a welcomed and fast-growing opportunity.

Evolution in art is showing that the NFT art movement is a game-changer for the art world and how these tokenized assets are perfect for digital artwork. NFTs are starting to gain mainstream traction in the music industry as evidenced by the flurry of news in the past months from superstar artists selling millions of dollars worth of the digital assets to their fans. We are seeing more and more examples of how artists are harnessing the power of NFTs. It appears that tokens and streaming are helping to support the music industry in the present day when the pandemic is preventing fans from gathering to see their favorite artists in concert.

The ecosystem, including NFT studios, marketplaces, domains, metaverse, infrastructure, and collectibles, is developing fast. Apart from Ethereum, other blockchains have started developing and releasing token standards for NFTs, expanding the NFT market reach to more developers and users. One must first understand the fundamental characteristics of NFTs that are commonly cited when defining the technology as a new form of ownership. Here are the important concepts to understand what an NFT is;

Rare and unique — This is where the “non-fungible” part of NFTs comes in (fungible refers to interchangeable goods). NFTs are wholly unique, and no two NFTs are identical.

Interoperability and trade — Due to the open nature of many blockchain standards, NFTs can be moved across different ecosystems, wallets, marketplaces, and more. As a result, users are able to use NFTs to trade goods outside of their original contexts (e.g., selling video game skins).

Immutability — Once an NFT has been encoded using blockchain technology, no individual can alter its ownership data/history or metadata. NFTs allow holders to prove the authenticity and originality of their asset, verified through whatever blockchain they are stored on.

Ownership — Holding an NFT token can allow people to prove that they are the owners of a unique asset.

Other features include the ability to program royalties into the token, allowing artists to collect a portion of sales thereafter, or include other technical features like fractional ownership.

Artists are able to upload songs freely. Listeners and fans are able to stream full tracks ad-free and also purchase songs from $0.50 upwards. Purchased songs continue to generate revenue according to the number of subsequent purchases for the buyer after being purchased. This conforms each track into an NFT asset comparable to a stock market style trading model rather than paying out artists on streams accrued.

NFTs are also highly fan-centric, offering people the chance to own a digital piece of art which represents their fandom for an artist, while at the same time, making an investment in something they can potentially resell for much more money down the line. In this way, NFT auctions also allow the market to determine an item’s value (rather than the creator or owner), a concept that was previously nonexistent in the music industry. Dedicated NFT marketplaces help individual artists to tokenize their rare artworks and put them up for sale. Unlike the highly centralized stock image websites, NFT marketplaces for digital art impose low fees on digital transactions and high levels of success and profitability in sales. With low cost and more revenue for artists, NFTs will change how fans interact with their favorite artists by giving them.a chance to invest in owning some exclusive and scarce artworks.

DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGY

A distributed ledger of music metadata could track not only who created what, but who else was materially involved. It can be a new kind of music ecosystem centered on the artists, where they control their own fate and receive fair compensation for the value they create. Blockchain technology will not only create new standards for how artists get compensated, it will also liberate them to choose and customize an infinite array of solutions that work for their specific structure, needs, and beliefs. They can give it away for free, sell it entirely, or micro monetize the royalty distribution at their own discretion – not the label’s or the distributor’s. Other significant elements of the new music ecosystem such as basic copyright registration and digital content management system will all be built into the architecture.

The two terms “blockchain” and “DLT” are often used interchangeably and to understand blockchain, it’s important to understand Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) — the framework that underpins it. Blockchain technology enables everyone involved in a transaction to know with certainty what happened, when it happened, and confirm other parties are seeing the same thing without the need for an intermediary providing assurance, and without a need to reconcile data afterwards. The ability to remove middlemen from the process of music sales and streaming. Thus, payment of inclusive royalties that divide revenues fairly according to each person’s contribution to the creative process can be executed automatically. While the skewed distribution is unlikely to be fully addressable, improving conditions for emerging artists can lead to a more diverse market.

Keeping in mind all the solutions the DLTs and blockchain can offer, following this hype and wide adoption of NFTs and accretion of open art trading platforms itself, a small breakthrough is needed in a long-expected understanding that the music industry is capable of honesty towards musicians, transparency, and hence even more impressive prosperity moving into the future.

DLT is a decentralized database managed by multiple participants, across multiple nodes. Blockchain is a type of DLT where transactions are recorded with an immutable cryptographic signature called a hash. In a nutshell, the main and most visible DLT solutions for the music industry are as follows:

A digital rights database. Rich distributed databases can be implemented so that everyone can interact with each other and associate the underlying copyrighted material with all their metadata in the digital ledger for all to see.Tokenized rights management which means the deployment of smart contracts that actually manage rights and maximize the value of publishing, recording, performance, merchandise, and all other artists’ rights. This includes terms and conditions of third-party engagement for record labels and distribution services.

Complete transparency and data protection. Transparent ledgers are distributed hence everyone can see how much revenue a song brings, the timing and magnitude of the revenue streams, and who and what percentage received. New revenue sources for artists. It’s all about NFTs and crowdfunding. Music creators can earn from users via selling non-fungible tokens. There can also be an auction dynamic pricing mechanisms to experiment with promotions and versioning of content.

Monetary incentives for listeners. DLT music platforms can make the whole music experience more interactive and rewarding for the fans. They can reward users not only through exclusive content and lower prices, while also being able to offer listeners rewards for curating personalized playlists, rewarding fans with its native tokens for contributing to the Fanclub database of artist content.

TOKENIZING ARTWORK, ROYALTIES, AND MUSIC COPYRIGHTS

The artist, label, or other third party will now be able to keep full control over their copyrights and revenue generating music or video assets through the Musiverse universal music rights management system.The license holders can connect directly with their counterpart’s music rights and automatically create new music licenses using smart contracts. With smart contracts & licenses, multiple rights holders can get paid in real time as music is distributed and delivered to the consumer by using the latest blockchain technology to verify information to guarantee accurate multiple split payments for the lifetime of a sound recording. Split payments can be set up quickly & easily at the point of creation, revolutionising the way music payments are made and helping everyone claim what is rightfully theirs. The Musiverse platform will handle not just the copyright-associated NFT, but also the subsequent royalty payment flow. This combination of blockchain technologies will prove the Musiverse quickly to be a vital emerging platform in big-money acquisitions of proven evergreen copyrights moving into the future.

NFTs have overtaken the music industry, with artists and executives scrambling to wrap their heads around the emerging art form. These unique digital collectibles bought and sold on the blockchain present a new opportunity for artists to get creative, engage fans and earn revenue. As prices soar, with some single NFTs commanding millions of dollars, artists including Grimes, deadmau5, Ozuna and Shawn Mendes are all getting in on the action.

NFTs’ underlying technology has the potential to rethink the sale of digital artwork or music. One key area of application for this technology is tokenizing copyrights. In cases where revenues from music streaming platforms remain low, more artists will opt to sell partial or full rights to their music as NFTs. With no signs of budging from these streaming platforms, NFT popularity is expected to rise in the future. Creators can now set “smart contracts,” lines of code written for each NFT that automatically execute behaviors, such as giving the creator a cut of the resale total (typically 10% to 25%) each time the token is resold in the future.

In cases where revenues from music streaming platforms remain low, more artists will opt to sell partial or full rights to their music as NFTs. With no signs of budging from these streaming platforms, NFT popularity is expected to rise in the future. For digital artists, the internet has significantly demonetized their works as many users can access and use their artwork for free. Dedicated NFT marketplaces like SuperRare help individual artists to tokenize their rare artworks and put them up for sale. Unlike the highly centralized stock image websites, NFT marketplaces for digital art impose very low fees on digital artists for successful sales. With low cost and more revenue for artists, NFTs will change how we interact with the artwork.

STREAMS OF INCOME

Although the Musiverse platform is free for anyone to create a profile and get involved in the project and stream music, explore the NFT marketplace, and interact with the fan community. They are also able to create their own digital artworks to offer for sale in the NFT marketplace. While artists and the creators who upload new audio files to the platform can set their own payment structures and sale distributions, the fans can get involved by listening, liking, and reposting their favorite content from the platform. Musiverse can be accessed via mobile device, browser, or PC application so that it is available for mass adoption by anyone, anywhere, on any device.

How does the Musiverse make money? Although the Musiverse platform is free for anyone to join, the following identifies the 11 streams of potential revenues that will allow for profitability for the investors and platform operators:

NFT Marketplace Sales- Musiverse marketplace gives both artists and fans the ability to create, buy, and sell NFT music tracks, digital artworks or user experiences. In doing so, Musiverse will earn a 10-20% commission and/or transaction fee of any sales generated on the platform including: New music releases, Band Photography, Video Content, Digital Band Art or Album Covers. This is not limited to art from the Artists, but fans can also create and upload NFT Digital Artworks to sell on the Musiverse Marketplace Art
Premium Memberships – Musiverse streaming services and fanclubs will be free for everyone to use. However, there will be a premium membership to users where like Spotify, users can listen to unlimited ad-free exclusive Musiverse Content from any artists that opt in to the community.
Fan Club Tools – Musiverse will offer to bands a variety of premium service add-on tools associated with the Superfan Club. Utilizing unique features and our team of specialists to collaborate with the fans and artists to help them create and monetize artwork experiences, adding new genres of NFT collectibles to the marketplace. Artists would either pay for each ad-on service or bonus feature or enter into an profit sharing agreement with Musiverse for any additional revenues generated through sales of the content created by our team.
Advertising Space – Musiverse platform can sell targeted advertising space or run online marketing programs. By running ads through free member accounts like YouTube, Pandora, or Spotify, advertising revenue will increase with the amount of traffic on the platform.
Affiliate Marketing – Musiverse can set up Affiliate Marketing Relationships to benefit from driving traffic to affiliates such as domain companies, web development platforms, marketing services, etc. Musiverse can also earn commissions by driving traffic directly to Amazon fan merchandise that is available with Affiliate links. There are many possibilities of affiliate markets that pay high levels and add significant opportunities to the platform to generate additional profits from driving traffic, promotions, and referrals.
Smart Publishing Contracts – Musiverse Band Publishing Platform for Artists can help monetize exclusive smart music streaming agreements as well as allow artists to create and sell smart contracts with specific split royalty agreements or sell rights and copyright ownership completely through royalty buyouts. As many artists start moving in the direction of self distribution in the future, many will want to cash out when they publish a track or album. The Musiverse would stand to make a commission for facilitating these types of transactions.
Transaction fees – The Musiverse platform will offer a payment system in cryptocurrencies and will also be able to accept payments in USD through bank transfers or credit card payments via Visa and Mastercard. In doing so, the user will incur a small fee on the banking charges and purchases using credit cards.
Auction Platforms – The Musiverse will allow for cross integration to the existing Streaming and NFT Platforms. The entire Musiverse NFT Database will also be integrated and automatically merge OpenSea as well as other dominant marketplaces like the Atomic marketplace. By benefiting from shared liquidity in other NFT Markets, our marketplace will have maximum exposure. Shared liquidity means that everything listed on one market also shows on all other NFT markets at the same time.
TikTok Integration – TikTok in itself opens up new doors for artists to gain popularity and earn money from their video content, but the vast majority of bands, DJs, and solo artists have no idea about this as it is catered to auch younger generation. Our Fan Club Tech Team will offer the tools to incorporate TikTok into their content distribution channels and help boost them to the paid highlight reels while getting exposure to a new database of younger audience to increase popularity and build fan base. The Musiverse would take a small percentage of any proceeds earned from the TikTok Ads Campaign.
Content Creation Team – Musiverse can create its own fan profiles and build out band fan clubs and create unlimited NFTs to fill up the marketplace and earn full potential of each sale. This way there is control to ensure the growth of the marketplace and user database and increase the amount of searchable bands and content. The structure of the rampages being created by users and any published copyrighted music is just embedded through streams would help avoid copyright or pirating conflicts and be limitless source of content to attract users.
Token Valuation – Ultimately the biggest revenue generator and return on investment will come with the increased value of the MUSO token coin will skyrocket with the site traffic and popularity of the platform. Investors and owners of MUSO tokens will ultimately stand to reap the financial benefits as the platform gains market share.

From these different revenue streams, the Musiverse will be able to tap into the growth of music industry and the shifting trends as artists begin using fanclubs and blockchain technology to retain the power of their own music as well as the rights and royalties from its distribution. By creating new avenues of income with the assistance of the Musiverse Fanclub tools, they will be able to develop additional revenue streams through the power of Musiverse Platform. With this momentum and explosive expansion, the Musiverse Platform and MUSO token investors will be positioned to capitalize from the investment while enhancing the end user experience.

THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIVERSE

What we are witnessing is rapid development of websites and apps processing information just like human-intelligence. The internet is now gearing up for NFTs to play an integral part in the future. As such, the internet has dramatically improved processes involving information access through digitization. However, It’s fair to say that the internet as it stands today hasn’t done much in relation to digital security and will require changes, opening the door to high levels of digital security that we have not previously seen before and NFTs will play an integral part.

The Musiverse Platform aims to allow artists to set the rate for their own work and capitalise on data that shows them who their superfans are. When payments are able to be exchanged between fans and artists, the platform will keep 10% of revenue to help support itself and the rightsholder will keep 90%. Artists set the conditions on which their content is accessed, they decide how much to sell it for. When payments are able to be exchanged between fans and artists, the Metaverse network will earn up to 10% of revenue to help support itself and distribute profits and dividends to the investors. Because artists set the conditions on which their content is accessed, advertising could be possible in future for artists who opt-in.

The Musiverse Team has recognised that in this Blockchain Revolution, there are several new features of the blockchain business model for the music industry that the existing industry lacks that are providing opportunity for explosive growth and market capitalisation. This is where we are taking an innovative approach and early adoption. NFTs will pave the way for new business model opportunities for a wide variety of industries.

The Musiverse is positioned to evolve into a leading tech platform to offer artists more control and profitability through the use of NFTs in the following arenas:

-Value templates to construct deals that respect the artist as an entrepreneur and equal partner in any venture, integral to value creation. Inclusive royalties that divide revenues fairly according to each person’s contribution to the creative process.

-Transparent ledgers distributed on the blockchain so that everyone could see how much revenue a song was generating, the timing and magnitude of the revenue streams, and who was getting what percentage.

-NFTs will be deployed to such applications to ease transfers and asset authentication. Micro Metering and micro monetizing functionality to stream the revenues, not just the music.

-Rich databases that can interface with one another and associate the core copyrighted material with all their metadata in the digital ledger for all to see.

-Usage data analytics in the hands of artists, to attract the right advertisers and sponsors, organize tours, plan promotions and crowdfunding resources and future creative collaborations with other artists.

-Digital rights management — the deployment of smart contracts that actually manage rights and maximize the value of publishing, recording, performance, merchandise, and all other rights. This includes terms of third-party engagement for record labels and distribution services.

-Auction style and dynamic pricing mechanisms within the architecture of the NFT Marketplace to experiment with promotions and versioning of NFT content.

FANCLUB STYLE OFFERINGS

The Musiverse Fanclub is a suite of blockchain-based tools launched by distribution and services. These tools use innovative blockchain to record full or fractional ownership of recorded music and/or publishing copyrights and split royalty payments accordingly. This structured distribution platform will lead to higher efficiencies and profitability rates and massively reduce the loss of earnings currently experienced by artists.

Through its Funclub Features, the Musiverse platform will allow artists to set the rate for their own work and capitalise on data that shows them who their superfans are. Fan club style offerings differ by marrying the streaming user experience with a fan club offering. There’s a lot more data available to the artists in terms of who they should be targeting and offers around that. But also, our hope is that as a user, you can actually earn your way into that fan club. There’s never been an opportunity for an artist to be able to discover who their superfans are and how they can monetize that group of people more effectively. Our thinking is that by giving control of that relationship back to the artist, and then giving pricing power back to the artists on a per track basis, all of that freedom will create much more interesting monetization strategies.

We believe that the concept of fans building a platform for fans creates a community-operated platform that will be ever growing and expanding, deepening the connection between bands and how they relate and how they connect with their fanbase. Artists connect to the platform and receive a high degree of control and leverage within the protocol, offering them new ways to create and sell digital art and customized experiences. This enables them to adopt highly profitable and newly developed digital arts and expand in creation, distribution, governance, and token mechanics to create a valuable streaming music platform and NFT marketplace.

GROWTH OF THE MUSIVERSE NFT MARKETPLACE

Artists can easily turn your content (such as files, artwork, music, PDFs, images, etc) into new digital art items that can be bought and sold on the blockchain. Digital music tracks or albums can also be created on the blockchain by using smart contracts without the artist having to worry about coding/programming themselves. The Musiverse marketplace allows users to browse and buy digital items that are listed for sale. These items live on the blockchain and when they are sold, – they are deposited into the users wallet. The transaction will have 100% verifiable proof that the buyer is the new owner. All items have images attached – so that you can see them in your wallet and what they represent. Some items have exclusive file content attached and only the direct owner of that item can access and download the file.

NFTs create a huge revenue potential for creators and artists and especially those that already have a following. The Musiverse will help creators to examine the most effective ways to make their projects successful and offer the tool to create and sell digital artworks. Apart from creators, NFTs are opening up to other applications, mainly tokenizing royalty agreements and other publishing assets. These tokens are expected to stay as NFT popularity continues to grow over the coming years.

The music industry’s NFT craze hit its fever pitch earlier this year, it seemed nearly everyone was rushing to mint the crypto collectibles in one form or another. The non-fungible tokens, known colloquially as their acronym “NFT,” have captured the industry’s fascination in 2021 for their promise of fan engagement and a new source of income. After an already difficult moment for musicians, with nearly all touring canceled or at limited capacity due to COVID-19, this use of cryptocurrency became a welcomed and fast-growing opportunity.

The Musiverse has positioned itself to continue the explosive growth and rapid developments of the music space by serving its user-owned base, not only empowering its creators, but also empowers the everyday users and fans since it allows anyone to become invested in the talent, supporting them by owning a piece of their favorite artists work as its value continues to increase.

We encourage all artists, DJs, stand up comedians or any other type of band or singer songwriter to utilize this opportunity to become early adopters of the platform. We also recommend that if you have a favorite artist, band or DJ, that instead of streaming them through Spotify, Soundcloud, or YouTube, that you can do all of these things and also be part of the fanclub community engaging directly and supporting the artists by steaming them and viewing their personalized custom content on the Musiverse Platform.

More than posting tracks to music streams, there are much more creative ways to both create and extract value with our platform, and every artist should benefit from the new artistic opportunity from the fanclub and different styles of digital art that Musiverse can help them evolve into. These are still early days and the revolution is just becoming aware of itself so now is the perfect time to begin sharing in the benefits provided by NFT marketplace and decentralized, community-based music economy.

MUSIC CONSUMPTION AND BEHAVIORAL STATISTICS

The combination of blockchain-based platforms and smart contracts in addition to the artistic community’s standards of inclusion and security, as well as transparency of royalty distribution and fair exchange of value — is now enabling artists and their collaborators to form an entirely new music ecosystem.

Instead of a model centered on music labels or tech distributors, a new artist powered model on the blockchain is emerging allowing artists to produce music and be paid fairly for the value they create. In turn the fans and lovers of music can now consume, share and enjoy what they love and pay the fair value directly to the creators. This model doesn’t necessarily exclude labels or digital distributors, but they would be equal rather than dominant members of the ecosystem.

A blockchain-empowered rights system of payment layers will provide much easier ways for people from all over the world to license, buy, stream, collaborate, and literally invest in music projects with full transparency using smart contract technology.

To Sum Up, Music Industry Blockchain Solutions Are:

A digital rights database implemented on the blockchain
Tokenized rights management
Payment of royalties can be executed automatically
Music creators and producers can earn from users investing in their work via purchasing tokens
Total transparency and data protection

Currently, we are in the middle of the blockchain paradigm shift. Blockchain has great opportunities to re-imagine many industries, and it holds tremendous potential to reshape the future of the music industry.

The Musiverse blockchain backed music platform provides solutions for a wide scope of industry problems: releasing music, streamlining the distribution model and funneling more of the revenue towards the creators by eliminating fees, enhancing the relationship between end-users and artists, and opening new avenues of revenue through digital art forms and intimate possibilities using NFTs.

The MUSO Tokenomics

The MUSO token will eventually allow musicians and other creators to monetize their own creations in both traditional and novel ways. It also incentivises token holders with network fees to participate in securing the blockchain. In the future, token holders will also participate in the governance of the platform, thus gaining access to exclusive features.

Currently, the vast majority of NFTs are built using Ethereum standards, though technically NFTs can be minted on other blockchains, such as Algorand, Tezos, and Polkadot. Unlike other platforms, the Musiverse will allow artists and users to mint items on the Ethereum blockchain as well as other developing blockchains. We believe that this cross integration to multiple platforms will allow for the fast growth and mass adoption of the platform to become an industry leader in tech innovation for the NFT movement within the music space.

The Musiverse uses the MUSO token to align financial incentives with governance in an effort to consistently increase the usage of the protocol and create long-term value in the protocol.

The MUSO token was created with five methods of functionality within the protocol, with each unlocked by staking. These three methods are:

Security
Ease of Access
Governance
Integration
Innovation

MUSO tokens can be staked in order to provide collateral for value added services on the network. In exchange for this the stakers receive several benefits which include access to exclusive features, governance rights, and a portion of the ongoing issuance of all tokens.

Node operators stake tokens to secure and run the protocol, and by artists and creators to unlock exclusive features or services. Each MUSO token staked within the protocol receives governance weight and this can be used to submit proposals and to vote in order to shape the future of the protocol. In the future MUSO tokens will also be used as collateral for artist-based tooling within the network.

Some early examples of this include artists tokens, badges, and earnings multipliers. In future iterations users and fans could delegate specific tokens to artists and curators in order to share in their growth on the platform and the issuance of future tokens.

Artist Fan Clubs are one of the first ways for users to unlock new features and find exclusive content or interact directly with the artist. Node operators are required to stake tokens in order to operate a discovery or content node, and larger stakes equate to a greater probability of being chosen by fan clients. Nore operators are rewarded with additional MUSO tokens and the potential for future protocol fees for actively supporting the protocol. Those who don’t have enough tokens to run their own node are able to delegate tokens to nodes and receive a proportional slice of the rewards.

Through the integration of platforms like OpenSea and the Atomic marketplace, it would be possible for users to purchase NFT Art with hundreds of different crypto-currencies, allowing for the ease of access and payment. Furthermore, adoption of payment systems in USD via bank transfer and credit cards like VISA and MASTERCARD will allow for mass adoption by users who are not necessarily invested in crypto currency space but still would like to own a piece of their favorite artist’s work. This can be integrated through our ecosystem or by integrating payment platforms such as Paypal or Square.

Governance could also potentially allow for artists to create and distribute their own unique tokens through the Musiverse. These artist tokens could give fans the ability to unlock exclusive content. Artists would need to stake MUSO tokens to create the artist tokens, and would be able to reach out to Musiverse based on the best practices for the creation and usage of custom tokens in the Ethereum and other ecosystems.

A community goal is to expand the music space into new innovative genres such as digital arts and user experiences for the fans to purchase and artists to generate revenue. Governance is to ensure that all tokens are always being funneled to the most value-added actors by using onchain metrics as a measurement, instead of staking the most tokens but rewarding those users who are actively participating in the ecosystem.

The Musiverse Team

Musiverse is a team of musical artists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and blockchain enthusiasts. As stated, the mission of the project is to empower a new generation of audio artists on the decentralized web.

Musiverse co-founders

Tridib Nandy – Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Collin Power – Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

Conclusion

The amazing growth of the platform in a short period of time is encouraging. This is the future of competition to the dominance of streaming services like Spotify and Soundcloud because it empowers the entire community of DJs, musicians, and other artists in a way they have never seen before. Trends are moving towards decentralization and community ownership via blockchain technology and the NFT movement is growing rapidly despite fluctuations in valuation of cryptocurrencies. The future of the music industry is at stake and it is now in the hands of artists and their fans to determine who will have control over the content and distribution.

Whether you are an artist, a fan, or an investor, if you are passionate about music and other digital arts, you should become a member of our community. Fans can support your favorite artists through the fan pages and become invested in their success. Artists and bands can strengthen their fan base relationships and maintain control of their musical content while offering new genres of digital art and experienced based NFTs to bring in additional revenue streams. And from an investor’s perspective, this is an early opportunity to invest in a token ICO that is sure to benefit from market trends, and catch the wave of the new music revolution as the Musiverse Platform becomes a dominant music streaming platform and music NFT marketplace.

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(Extra Additional Information – needs to be checked against audius for infringement)

Technical Information (from Audius)

Blockchain Technology behind The Musiverse

How does Musiverse Work?

Technically speaking, Musiverse isn’t only a music streaming platform. Instead, it is a music streaming ecosystem. The Musiverse project gives the power back to the music creators. With Musiverse, music creators have full control over the distribution, monetization, and streaming rights over their music tracks.

There are three players in the Musiverse network. They are the music creators, node operators, and fans. The revenue share of artists depends on the value they generate for the Musiverse network. As for the core segments of the Musiverse platform, it consists of five parts. These are Musiverse Token (MUSO) – Stablecoins – Artist Tokens, Content Nodes, Content Ledger, Discovery Nodes, and Governance.

The Musiverse Token (MUSO) – Stablecoins – Artist Tokens plays a crucial role in the Musiverse network by enabling a shared economy. Content nodes are user-operated, and they manage the hosting of the content and permission to access it. Content Ledger, on the other hand, is made of multiple components. It includes Ethereum blockchain, POA network, and L1 or L2 blockchain network. It is the centerpiece of the entire Musiverse Protocol and acts as a brain that powers the system.

How can an Artist use the Musiverse Network?

Any artists who want to leverage the Musiverse network to distribute and promote their music tracks must agree to the open license of the network. It is crucial as once they agree to the open license, their music tracks will be available for streaming on the broader network.

The next process is handled by the Artist client, which creates pieces of the music track and uses special keys to encrypt them. After encryption, the music track is uploaded to the content node of the Musiverse network. Next comes the discovery nodes, which indexes new content on the network. Then, it makes the music track available widely on the Musiverse network.

How can Fans Listen to the Music tracks?

Once the music content is available on the wider network, the availability of content is managed by the content permissioning component of the network. When a fan wants to play the music track, a request is sent from their client to the selected content node of the artist.

If required by the artist, the client will also send payment proof or other proof to the content node. To service the request, the content node will create a proxy re-encryption. Both the public key of the fan’s wallet and the keys used to encrypt the music tracks are used to create the proxy re-encryption.

Musiverse Tokenomics

At launch, there are 100,000,000 MUSO tokens in circulation valued at $0.01 each.

How Does the Musiverse Ecosystem Work?

In order to deliver high quality audio while incentivizing the use of the platform the protocol was designed with five components that work together to deliver the Musiverse experience:

The following lays out the flow over the lifetime of the content

MUSO token, stablecoins, and artist tokens. The MUSO token is the platform utility token that will power the ecosystem. It will provide incentives that align the activities of all the participants in the ecosystem and will provide the network with governance, security, and access.
Content Nodes. These are the user operated nodes where user-generated content will be hosted, and permission for accessing that content is granted.
Content Ledger. The content ledger provides a single source of truth regarding all the data stored and accessible on the protocol. One of its primary roles is to anchor the references to all the content hosted by the content nodes.
Discovery Nodes. This is another user-operated network of nodes that indexes the entire Musiverse content ledger to provide an interface for easily querying the ecosystem to retrieve metadata.
The governance mechanism might be the most important of the five components since it provides a way to make future modifications to Musiverse, and to suggest and vote on improvements to the ecosystem. Governance is provided by all of those who are holding MUSO tokens. In this way the direction and success of Musiverse is left directly in the hands of the music creators and users of the platform.

Content Nodes

The content nodes are responsible for maintaining the metadata and availability of content on the platform. To do this they utilize the native extension to the interplanetary file system (IPFS). These nodes are run by actively staking node operators, which gives them the opportunity to earn a portion of the network fees. Alternatively, nodes can be run by the artists themselves to host and deliver their content.

Content Nodes interacting with protocol participants.

These self-hosted content nodes give the artists a greater degree of control over their own content and the ways in which it is accessed, distributed, and delivered. It does this in two ways:

Allows the artist to keep control of the content encryption keys;
Allows for custom permissioning extensions not native to the Musiverse protocol

A Decentralized Storage Protocol

All of the files being distributed are required to remain highly available at all times. In addition they must be decentralized and independently verified. These three principles are the keys to ensure that the participation and accessibility of the platform for all users remains democratic.

This includes artists who are sharing their audio and metadata, fans who are retrieving and listening to the content, and node operators. All three groups use the protocol to share information, and all the references to the data remain in the Musiverse content ledger. In addition, the storage protocol is expected to deliver an equivalent user experience to any existing centralized solutions, and it is required to scale effectively as the network demand increases.

The use of IPFS for delivery enables modular object-level encryption of data, global distribution capability, object immutability, and secure content addressing. To ensure that stored files remain highly available the AudSP provides a staking-based incentive system for users who host the content on the network. File references and associated metadata stored in the Musiverse content ledger will be IPLD links. As the decentralized storage market matures, the Musiverse protocol may be extended to include other storage solutions such as FileCoin, Sia, Swarm, or others.

Content Ledger

The content ledger is composed of smart contracts hosted on the Ethereum network, the POA network, and in the future can also include other L1 and L2 blockchain networks capable of hosting content. Different parts of the protocol will continue to run on different blockchain-based platforms, or utilize off-chain scalability solutions, where scalability trilemma tradeoffs can be made on a module and subprotocol-specific basis.

The content ledger contains all the information about content stored on the platform

Today, the content ledger includes:

A consistent audio content and metadata format specification to ensure accessibility
A decentralized process for artists to control:
1. Track content
2. Revenue splits
3. Content ownership structure
A registry of all nodes reachable on the platform
The social graph of all users interacting with the content
Implementations of the token and governance systems

After generating upload artifacts from their content nodes an artist can add their content to the content ledger via a new transaction. The artist can then modify track content/metadata by sharing the modified content and updating the metadata IPLD link in the content ledger.

Once content is listed in the content ledger, it is indexed by the discovery nodes which ultimately makes it easily queryable and discoverable by giving clients access.

Discovery Node

All of this also requires some mechanism for indexing all the content and metadata that is efficiently searchable by users in order for them to discover that content on the network. This is handled by the discovery node, and based on the philosophy and mission of the project this index has the following requirements:

It must be decentralized;
It must also be efficient and straightforward for user clients to use, promoting accessibility and consumption of the content;
It must be provably correct and transparent, eliminating profit incentives to manipulate the results returned to users;
It must be extensible, so that the Musiverse community can explore different ranking and searching methodologies.

Indexing content is handled by Discovery nodes.

Discovery node operators on Musiverse earn revenue by registering a discovery node with an active network stake. This allows them to earn a portion of the Musiverse token issuance and the aggregated fees generated on the network. The fan clients select which discovery node to query from the content ledger’s node registry.

Governance

In order to create a network that is community-owned and operated, all the key actors within the protocol (creators, consumers and token holders) are empowered to modify and improve on the protocol by making changes to the parameters that shape our protocol.

These changes include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Feature Integrations
Royalty Rates
Token Distribution
Fee Pool Allocation
Staking Rewards

Every parameter and feature is subject to governance, and each token issued on the Musiverse platform gains governance at the ratio of 1 token equals 1 vote. There is a difference in Musiverse politicians however in as much as artists and creators are different from node operators, yet it is understood that all participants should be aligned in the growth of the protocol.

In the case of node operators, the governance system acts as a way to empower the decentralized content storage, providing them with a direct incentive for rewards to be earned and amended in line with the costs, value, and consensus of any other provider on the network.

Governance also includes a short-circuit process that allows for proposals to be passed without a broad vote when urgency requires such. This can occur due to an attack on the network or direct exploitation of some vulnerability in the protocol. It can also occur as a veto to a proposal that is not consistent with the philosophy or mission of the protocol.