In last week’s MUSIC x Web3 roundup, I quipped that I could write these on a weekly basis. The two main topics I’m currently most engaged with in music are community and web3, so LFG: another week, another roundup.

sone’s tone Discord music bot

tone is a music bot for Discord that’s designed to pay artists. It’s being developed by the sone DAO, which was kicked off by members of the Topshelf Records team and is exploring what a record label can be in the new web3 context.

Edit, Nov 12: at time of writing, tone is a work-in-progress. An MVP exists on the sone DAO Discord.

The bot takes a metered approach to streaming and collects monthly fees based on usage. It plays music from SoundCloud and Bandcamp and creates a registry of all music that’s been played, so artists can sign in and claim their payments in CELO (a proof of stake blockchain & cryptocurrency).

It utilizes a so-called ‘user-centric’ payment model, as opposed to the big pool model common with most major streaming services, where in this case the Discord server is the user.

Besides payments, artists also get $SONE tokens, which gives them access to the sone DAO.

Aspects I like:

• Being popular on the bot means you get to hold more tokens in the DAO that develops it. Imagine if artists that drive traffic to the platforms they use (Instagram, Bandcamp, Spotify, etc) automatically became shareholders in those platforms.
• It solves the issue of Discord streams not being monetized. Communities can decide “we want artists to get paid”, then kick out the existing music bot and go for this bot instead. They could use it to play the music of artists they know and alert those artists so they can claim their CELO payments.

One thing I worry about:

• Collecting money for artists without having licences in place will eventually invite the attention of lawyers. I trust the crew behind this. They work in music and have a track record of getting musicians paid. I think what they’re setting up solves a problem, gets artists paid in a place where no payments exist yet, and they do so in a transparent way, so that anyone can see exactly what’s happening with the money… But if a company feels that this money is not theirs to collect & distribute, I think this DAO might run into some friction with the legacy industry’s lawyers sooner or later.

For more info, check out the tone website.

WarpSound’s WVRPS

WarpSound is a music collective created by Nayomi, DJ Dragoon, and Gnar Heart which appear to be avatars created by Authentic Artists. Their upcoming project, called WVRPS, blends generative profile pictures (PFPs) with music by feeding a generative visual and metadata layer into a music AI, which generates an audio loop. This last music layer is then merged together with the other two layers to form a unique audiovisual NFT called a WVRP.

What I like about this project specifically is its world-building exercise through Twitch, its Discord which has loads of activities including social games, and its characters. By launching a generative PFP series, it gets the community to invest and will bring more folks into the community that may currently be just on the periphery.

Longer term, they want holders of the NFTs to be able to collaborate to do new things with the audio fingerprints, like create full songs or new compositions.

geniuscorp

The website is a little mysterious, but I think geniuscorp is kind of like a record label by music web3 pioneer Mighty33. You may know the latter from this blockchain music map on Miro, if not from their music. geniuscorp lists its address as 104 Ceres Tower A, Ceres, Cryptovoxels, which is a virtual world (or metaverse, if you will) built on top of the Ethereum blockchain.

A lot of their music is also released on NFT platform Rarible, for relatively affordable sums like 0.05 ETH (~$250 at time of writing).

hic et nunc radio

hic et nunc has been the NFT platform of choice for some artists, due to the low transaction fees and energy cost of the Tezos blockchain that it’s built on.

What I didn’t know, is that there’s a music ecosystem there, which has now been clearly exposed by a little tool called hen radio which provides an easy way to explore the music on the platform.

I’m highlighting this project, since it was built by the community during a hackathon. It’s a great example of how people in web3 ecosystems can come together to create value for each other and the wider space around themselves (similar to Club BPM’s bot which plays Catalog NFTs on Discord).

If you’re new here and would like more MUSIC x web3 updates, consider subscribing to the biweekly MUSIC x newsletter, which has been covering innovation in the music space since 2016. You can also follow me on Twitter.