Music legos - the simplest way to explain Web3 music
+ how to mint music NFTs for artists
Gm music fans,
Back in 2020, the concept of “money legos” became popular in crypto circles.
It was a framework for making sense of all the amazing new DeFi tools and how they built on top each other.
I think Web3 music is now building a similar lego board.
But instead of money flowing through all these lego structures, it’s music.
Web3 music education series
This article is the first real ‘education’ piece we’ve published, inspired by our friend Nikki Bean at Decent.xyz who highlighted to me the need for simple explainers and entry points for artists.
If you’re a seasoned crypto veteran this might be simplistic but I would also appreciate your feedback. Does this mental model work?
Alright, let’s get into it.
Background
Web3 is often presented to musicians as some kind of utopia, revolution or ‘fix’ for the music industry.
A place for complete control, true value of your art and promises of $$$.
This is all very appealing for musicians who have historically been treated poorly.
Some of it’s true, but it’s not the right framing in my opinion.
Web3 is not a utopia
Blockchain has no magical powers. It doesn’t automatically give artists control or money.
Really it’s just an open database.
Or, to use a metaphor, a lego board that is open for anyone to build and play on.
Some artists will build grand, incredible projects far beyond what they could achieve in Web2.
Others might be happy in a small corner of the lego board.
Web3 is really just a set of tools and it’s up to you to decide how to use them.
PART 1 - wtf are music legos?
Let’s start with different lego boards
You can think of different blockchains as different lego boards: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana etc.
Generally speaking, they don’t connect with each other very well (apart from a few rickety lego bridges).
They have different values, features, builders, projects and communities.
Bitcoin - a robust and secure lego board… but very difficult to build on.
Ethereum - the most popular lego board where most people are playing and building.
Solana - Perhaps less secure (sometimes it just turns off for a bit). But it’s cheap and fast to build on.
You can choose which lego board to start experimenting on.
(None of them connect very well to the rest of the music industry yet either, so think of the lego board as its own island, for now).
What are the rules?
Blockchains are open and permissionless.
There are almost no rules outside of … you know … actual laws.
The board is open to everyone. It’s enormous and millions of people are already playing on it.
As you can see in our music ecosystem map, hundreds of music companies are already building here.
If you’re adding your own lego pieces to the board, the default assumption is that others might use them and build with them too.
(We’ll come back to this point)
The lego board is open and transparent
You can see almost everyone’s wallets, their balance, their transactions.
In many cases, the projects building here are open source so you can see their code.
You can literally copy/paste their legos (known as “forking”).
People can add their own legos to them and create something new.
“Composability”
This concept of legos in crypto is known as ‘composability’.
Most of the legos can interact with each other.
They can stack on top and create unexpected new things. This is what triggered the DeFi summer explosion of 2020 and kickstarted the last bull market.
This is not like the music industry
The music industry is not open or permissionless.
It’s a closed system.
For example you can’t build something with Spotify’s data without permission (i.e. using a limited API).
And the rules are fixed.
Price rules - $9.99 for a streaming subscription.
Deal structures - 70/30 split, take it or leave it.
Opaque data - very little info about your fans.
Web3 unlocks freedom
The ‘utopian’ part of Web3 is that you now have the freedom to release and monetize how you want.
You get to put your legos on the board and decide what to build.
And you can integrate them with many different other lego projects.
That’s both scary and exciting.
You set the price, you set the supply, you choose the release schedule.
It’s not inherently better or worse… but it is freedom at the very base layer.
And every musician deserves to choose how they release their music.
But it’s not a magic solution
In fact… it can actually be harder because the artist has to make the right choices and actively build something out of it.
Digital scarcity
One final thing before we move onto the process of adding your lego pieces…
We need to talk about digital scarcity.
All the legos on the board have true scarcity (for the first time ever in a digital setting).
BECAUSE EVERYONE CAN VERIFY IT.
If I try to add a lego to the board and pretend it’s a Snoop Dogg 1/1 worth $1 million, everyone around the board can simply check and see that I’m lying.
My lego piece is then essentially worth nothing.
All the players can verify the real Snoop Dogg lego, trace it back to where it came from and who owns it.
This is the entire premise of blockchain … and it’s only possible because it’s open and permissionless.
Otherwise we might as well go back to a central database.
This is why open and permissionless experimentation is an ethos you simply have to accept (for better or worse) if you’re playing here.
PART 2 - Adding your lego pieces
Ready to add some pieces to the lego board?
So, let’s add a lego piece to the board - called ‘minting’ an NFT.
This is where freedom comes in.
You get to choose what your lego piece looks like - does it have music, art or other features?
How much does it cost to ‘collect’?
How many lego pieces do you want to put on the board? An edition of 25? Or a 1/1?
Does it have ‘utility’ like access to streaming royalties?
Do you want to value it like a piece or art? Or do you want to give it away for free and build a community?
You have complete control and there is no ‘right answer.’
Release music whenever you want. Set whatever price you want. Drop it whenever you want. Play around with different types of releases. Get creative.
Choose carefully!
However, it’s important to get this part right.
Once your lego piece is added to the board, it cannot be taken back (called “immutability.”
It will live on the lego board forever with the rules that you set. No pressure!
This is also what makes it harder than the legacy system.
At least with Spotify, the price and release structure is set for you.
Now you’ll have to decide the price and supply for yourself based on the market conditions and your own fan base or collectors. This part can be very difficult.
Collecting
Most commonly, people put a price on their lego pieces so others can collect them.
That doesn’t mean the collector owns the rights to your creative work (the art or music in your token).
It just means they own a claim to one of the legos you put on the board.
Think of it like putting a sticker on the lego that says musicben.eth currently owns it.
On the vast lego board there are plenty of marketplaces.
I can now go to one of those marketplaces and try to sell it.
Add new lego pieces
Over time, you can attach more pieces to your lego.
A free airdrop? Backstage access? Token-gated experiences?
These might add more value to your lego.
Okay, how do I put my legos on the board?
There are two ways you can get started:
1. Do it yourself.
2. Do it through an existing castle on the lego board.
DIY
You can mint your lego straight onto the board by yourself (using no-code tools like Zora, Decent or Manifold).
Your lego now appears on the board in the vast playing arena.
This is the option with the most freedom but you’ll have to do a lot of the promotion yourself.
Apply to an existing platform
You can also apply to one of the curated music NFT platforms (like Sound, Catalog, Royal etc.)
They will help you add your lego pieces to the board and give you some promotional support.
The benefit of a platform
Big music NFT platforms like Sound already have large castles in the lego world.
When you mint via Sound, your lego piece is added to their castle so it gets immediate visibility.
Collectors hang out at the Sound castle all the time and they’re excited to find and collect your music.
The downside?
There might be some rules you have to follow to mint on these platforms.
If you’re on Catalog, it needs to be a 1/1.
If it’s on Royal, you’ll be sharing streaming royalties.
Wait, isn’t this ‘permissioned’?
Yes…
You will always find more ‘centralized’ castles built on top of the ‘decentralized’ lego board.
That’s fine.
The most important thing is that the base layer is open to everyone and permissionless.
It’s also important to note that you still have complete control of your legos once they are minted via a platform.
So you should think of Sound and Catalog more like ‘gateways’ or ‘portals’ to the blockchain rather than a ‘platform’ like Spotify.
Aggregators
Once your lego is added to the board, other players might want to build with it.
In one corner of the board there’s a castle that “aggregates” all the music legos like SpinAmp, Future Tape or Ooh La La.
They want everyone to see how amazing the music legos are, so they build a castle that shows them all in the same place.
Collectors know they can go to these aggregator castles and find cool music.
If there are no rules in your lego piece that restrict this, aggregators can add your legos to their castle.
Collectors might add it to their metaverse galleries.
This can be a good thing. This bigger castles can help give your lego more visibility.
And you still own all the underlying rights.
What does all this mean?
The point I’m trying to make is that blockchains are open and permissionless.
It’s the only ‘ethos’ actually built into the technology.
By adding your legos to the board you are signing up to this experiment.
None of it works without it.
Sometimes that means people will do things with your lego piece that you don’t like. And they might not ask your permission.
Less control for artists?
For many artists this might feel like you *lose* some control in Web3.
Your music will be traded on open markets, appear in metaverse worlds and aggregators.
Over time we will find new ways to capture all the value from this and adopt licensing models but in the short-term this *will* move faster than legacy institutions can regulate and license it.
This is just a trade-off you will have to decide.
Web3 is a playground (an experiment)
All of this means there’s a bigger chance for artists to achieve true creative freedom and unlock more money.
But I think ‘utopia’ or ‘fix’ is the wrong way to describe what Web3 offers.
Instead, you should think of it like being part of a wild experiment, accepting the good and bad that might come from that.
Some more FAQs
Where exactly is the music?
FYI, the music is not (usually) inside your lego piece.
Instead, the lego piece typically contains a link to your music which is stored on an external server (IPFS) or permanent storage (Arweave).
Blockchains are slow and expensive compared to normal servers so it’s expensive to put lots of data on chain.
Law is still law
Although blockchains are permissionless, you still need to abide by real laws.
That includes copyright laws.
You can’t create NFTs with music or art that doesn’t belong to you.
And performance royalties almost certainly still apply to those building streaming tools, radio players and aggregators in the space. This is a storm in the distance that we will have to deal with at some point.
NFTs don’t change human psychology
Bear in mind that Web3 and blockchains don’t magically fix anything about humans.
The laws of psychology don’t change.
There will still be monopolies of power, there are still influencers, trends and forces that move the market.
In fact, these forces can be amplified because it’s a free market with fewer rules.
It creates extremes
On one hand, Web3 can be powerfully democratising and inclusive because there’s no gatekeeping at the base layer.
But it can be hyper-capitalistic at the other end of the spectrum for the same reason.
Just bear this in mind as you explore this world.
Thanks for reading!
This was another long one so if you made it this far I truly appreciate you. If you found this useful please send it to artists that are curious about Web3. See you later in the week for our usual news roundup.
Loved the analogy using Lego’s helped me reframe my approach to educating music creators ✨🧏🏾♂️