Music NFT platform raises $20m in a bear market (+ opens to all artists)
Plus the biggest music drops this week.
gm music fans,
I wanted to start with a huge thank you to anyone that collected our first ever music drop last week. Each of the three live sets sold out within hours which is insane. Which city shall we take this live concept to next?
This week, the leading music NFT platform Sound.xyz opened up to all artists (and raised $20 million) and there’s huge progress in the Web3 foundations that could be crucial to the future — including wallet-to-wallet messaging and a new token standard that could unlock NFT albums.
Listen to all your music NFTs in one place. Spinamp pulls music from lots of different platforms to give you a simple experience for listening and playlisting music.
Ziggy Ziggy Daily - Our favourite music in Web3 updated every day.
Create your own playlists - Find music you love and make your own playlist.
1. Sound.xyz is open to all artists
The leading music NFT platform just opened the floodgates to all artists.
Until now Sound has operated with a curated model, giving it time to refine the product and maintaining the careful balance of supply and demand. I think they’ve done the right thing by taking their time, but now I’m excited to see fresh new music come onchain!
To top it off, the company raised $20 million in a Series A led by a16z crypto.
Artists: get started by going to Sound and hitting the ‘For Artists’ page.
Opportunity: The biggest opportunity I see now is curation. The amount of music is already increasing on Sound and we need trusted voices to cut through. Who’s going to establish the best hip-hop brand in Web3? Who’s highlighting the best Latin music?
2. Wallet-to-wallet messaging is here, starting with Lens Protocol
Messaging between wallets is one of the most exciting use-cases in crypto and could be really powerful for artists and their communities.
It’s now possible on Coinbase Wallet and rolling out to Lens users first. Lens frens can now start a chat in Coinbase Wallet and continue the conversation across different Lens apps like Orb, Lenster and Buttrfly.
The applications for artists and musicians are compelling. For example, you can send your collectors and fans a message direct to their wallet to say thank you, even if they’re pseudonymous. It could even be the starting point for Web3 artist communities — except now it’s composable across different apps instead of funnelling fans into Web2 products like Discord or Telegram.
As a collector, you can reach out to other wallets to initiate trades or even collect content directly through DMs. Decentralized, composable messaging unlocks all sorts of new opportunities and we’re excited to see where it goes.
3. Onchain albums?
For the crypto nerds among us, there’s a new token standard that opens up new possibilities for music. ERC6551 is a new format that allows NFTs to own other NFTs.
It developed as a concept for the gaming world. For example, imagine an NFT character that could own and trade separate NFT items like a sword or wearable.
Applied to music, it can be used to create NFT albums that own individual NFT songs. Or NFT playlists that own individual NFT tracks.
Onchain music engineer Sweetman is experimenting with this concept and spun up a new product, Onchainalbum.xyz. We’re in the very early days of this token standard but worth watching.
4. A music game?
Our friends at WAVWorld have launched an interactive experience with music NFTs. You can collect trading cards from some of the leading artists in the Web3 ecosystem and then level up to reveal new experiences like exclusive content and meet-and-greets.
The biggest music drops of the week
Huge week of dance music on Sound.xyz
San Holo - Electronic music icon San Holo is back with his new album Existential Dance Music. His track TINY FLOWERS dropped on Sound.xyz on Wednesday at a highly accessible 0.002 ETH.
Pauline Herr - Fresh from the EDM festival stages, Pauline Herr returns with Lightyears — a track that teases you with a melodic piano before breaking into a thumping trance anthem.
Serboy - Istanbul-based producer and DJ Serboy dropped a fresh house track, NEED TO KNOW, curated by our friends at DANC3.
Verite - Verite was one of the earliest artists to experiment with music onchain. This week she announced an experimental new drop SEED 01. It’s a raw live recording of a melody available to collect on Friday. The golden egg winner gets to be part of the journey as she builds a song around it, and will receive a 1/1 when the track is finished.
Zora
Sound of Fractures - UK dance producer Sound of Fractures has dropped 110 individual ‘frames’ from his latest music video. The collection aims to fundraise for a bigger project, ‘Scenes' later in the summer.
Ziggy Ziggy Live - Only 3 editions of our first ever live session are left on Zora.
Self-released
Ret↩️rn.eth - a unique audiovisual NFT, fully onchain, created by the head of protocol development at OpenSea. It’s an open edition until Friday, available for 0.05 ETH.
Thanks for reading!
We believe a new generation of independent music will be born out of Web3 culture. Discover the best music here first. Follow us on Twitter where we share the best music every day.
Ziggy Ziggy Music Season 2 is supported by Spinamp and Lens Protocol.
Disclaimers: We may own NFTs mentioned in this article, have previous or current contracts with companies mentioned and may earn referral income from links to music NFTs. This newsletter is purely informational and should not be considered financial advice. Nothing in this content should be considered a recommendation to buy a particular NFT, only an expression of our opinion.