Web3, the new home for music?
A seismic shift is happening in the music industry with all roads leading to Web3
Why you may wonder, and what is Web3 technology all about?
Well, with Web2 we had the birth of networking services such as blogs, forums, and social media where consumers became content creators sharing the same creative space with brands. Web3 is a new vision of the Internet where you own and control your data in a decentralised network (or blockchain). Where large tech companies don’t hold all the cards and artists are able to leverage their work and fanbase fairly.
Blockchain is a basic technology, where many computers share and update the same database according to a consensus mechanism. Since it was born, the popularity of the blockchain has had many ups and downs, from being labelled as “absolute evil” to “the technology that will save the world”.
The reality is that it is neither of those things. It’s a very specific technology, optimal for doing only a few things, but doing them excellently. The use cases for Web3 technology are diverse, and some are far too ahead of their time.
Music, with its global consumption as a use case undoubtedly makes sense, and could be the most significant real adoption wave for Web3 ever.
Once you understand the power of Web3, it becomes obvious why it will have such an appeal to artists and musicians, as it finally gives them a chance to break away from streaming giants and 360 record label deals.
Web3 allows artists to regain control of their work, reward their fans and at the same time reduce the complex system of music royalties, tracking and distribution.
In this article, we want to explain why we’re convinced of this.
The music industry
The music industry is one of the most dynamic industries. From vinyl, cassettes and compact discs to digital downloading and streaming, technology has always played a central role in transforming music distribution models. In the last century, the music industry has gone through multiple revolutions.
From the early 1900’s when we had the initial arrival of radio, followed by vinyl and cassettes, music consumption became a mass market opportunity.
Then in the early 2000’s we had the arrival of digital music files, which are impossible to track and easy to replicate, hence piracy driving revenue for selling music to almost zero.
The solution was to mount the industry on the streaming service giving a higher distribution for music content but with less monetisation. Major artists adapted by changing their business model: less revenue from the music sales, but more distribution and more live events. But for emerging and mid-level artists, this approach didn’t really work as there were less opportunities for live event revenue streams. So now sadly, emerging and mid-level artists are not in a good position.
In the music industry today, artists are not at the centre of their community. They produce the content, but their community is in the hands of the streaming platforms that they use to distribute their music.
Maybe now the industry is ready for the new great revolution based on Web3.
Why Web3?
With Web3 we can rebuild a business model for emerging and mid-level artists, still based on a high distribution of their content but also on a higher monetisation perspective for their music than the streaming business model.
Web3 is about disintermediation. The artist will be able to freely check, on-chain, who owns their NFTs, and if they are active or not. This is a game changer, and will allow artists to stay at the centre of their community with potential to build, engage, monetise and grow their fan base.
The tech argument
Essentially, the idea is that Web2 is a service-based industry, while Web3 is an ownership-based industry.
In Web2 digital files can be infinitely replicated, and you can’t track them. So, for example, you can download illegal music from a P2P network and listen to those files on iTunes — iTunes cannot ascertain whether those files are legal or not, and that’s the real problem with Web2. If you want an efficient platform for music distribution to really check whether a user is listening to legal music, you need Web3 technology and NFTs.
Our view is that a new generation of media player is around the corner that will be Web3 only, where you can only listen to the songs that you have in your wallet. Watch this space!
So, are we going to kill piracy?
Absolutely not, because maybe it is unstoppable. But we are going to divide the world into two different areas: a loyal one (sustainable for artists and users with excellent user experience) and a not so loyal one (unsustainable for artists where users aren’t aware and simply don’t care about the people behind the music).
In Web3, you can prove if you are a loyal fan by owning the NFT. All the benefits, real community engagement, and connections between artists and their fans simply flow on a Web3 platform. The ability for an artist to know and segment their community is not comparable with Web2.
The future is bright, the future of music is Web3!
About Public Pressure
Public Pressure was originally launched in 2015 as an online community and magazine dedicated to giving a voice to emerging artists and labels.
Now a Web3 media company headquartered in London with offices around the world Public Pressure focuses on the interactions between music, culture and technology. It powers a fair and equitable, direct-to-fan strategy for creators, minus the production and distribution costs incurred in existing Web2 environments.
Public Pressure is built on Polkadot, which has the lowest total electricity consumption and carbon emissions per year of the six proof-of-stake (POS) blockchains and has been designed to support the transition of music to Web3.
