We’ve all heard of bitcoin, but what is only catching on now are the possibilities of the technology powering bitcoin called blockchain.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger system that enables transactions to be securely and reliably tracked online, without the need for an intermediary, like a bank, to record credits and debits.
What’s more, you can create your own cryptocurrency and distribute it in a way that benefits your music project.
How exactly can artists benefit?
Well, the possibilities are still being invented, but here are a few exciting scenarios to wrap your mind around…
The New Crowdfunding
When you launch your own digital currency using, for example, a smart contract on the ethereum blockchain, you get to set the price of each unit. So, let’s say you create 2 million units of a new currency called ‘ART’, and you set the price at $1 per unit. If you issue half of them at launch and they all sell out, you’ve raised $1 million, and your fans collectively hold 1 million ART.
Why would people buy? Well, to support a particular project of yours or even your entire music career!
What do they get in return?
If, for example, your project is to record an album, you could set the price of the album in advance, at say, 10 ART. When it’s ready, you could allow your fans to cash in their ART for the music.
Crowdfunding blown wide open
But you could also create other products and services associated with the project and sell those too, for example:
- Access to a livestream of a recording session (e.g. 100 ART).
- A pre-release of the first track.
- Access to an online concert featuring the new songs before they're available to the general public.
- ...Whatever you can think of!
But they don’t have to spend the ART on any of these things either. They could spend it on other items on your website available at that time or in the future.
You could also make certain items exclusively available for purchase with ART, so fans would have to collect it, or earn it, or bid for it in an auction, in order to get the access they want. This would drive up the value of the currency.
Depending on how you set things up, you could even weight fan voting rights according to the amount of currency they hold (or even spend on votes) when you poll them on such things as your choice of album art, or the list of cities on your next tour.
So many possibilites…
An online platform that is pioneering some of these ideas right now is called SingularDTV.
Entry Barriers To Be Overcome?
What you’d want to do is make it very clear for your fans how to buy and use the currency.
And ideally you’d have some way of enabling fans to exchange the currency among themselves.
Would there be enough incentive for fans to go to the trouble of buying your currency? It all depends on how much you’ve grown your music career of course…
But certainly you don’t want to make it harder for your fans to support you, and that’s where Smart Media Tokens come in…
Your Own Blockchain Street Team Recruiter
Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) are currently under development using the STEEM blockchain. To get inside how these work, you can check out the sites below where members actually earn ‘STEEM’ by commenting, up-voting, posting and sharing content:
- There's a Youtube-like app called Dtube
- And a new Facebook called Busy
- There's a Soundcloud-like app called DSound
- And a Forum called ChainBB
- And of course, there's the blogging platform too, called Steemit
You get 25 STEEM just for signing up, which is very easy to do. And you can post your music on all these sites, and earn STEEM for doing it. And if people like it, and interact with it, you get more STEEM, and so do they!
On the STEEM blockchain, cryptocurrency is created and distributed according to an inflationary model that is nevertheless cleverly designed to maintain value in the currency (not unlike how governments do it, except using algorithms). And yes, you can even trade your STEEM for bitcoin and convert it into ‘real’ money.
Sound too good to be true? Read the STEEM whitepaper – it’s a fascinating and convincing read.
The Power Of Smart Media Tokens
But there’s more. The Smart Media Tokens (SMTs) under development are also the basis for new widgets and plugins that will give you the same functionality on your own website (for example, on WordPress).
You’ll be able to set up a cryptocurrency on the STEEM blockchain (including a currency exchange) and then set your own parameters for how the currency is distributed.
In other words, people who love your music will not only be able to invest in you by buying your currency, they’ll be enabled to earn your currency by sharing and commenting and creating links to your content online! This is HUGE.
They’ll have the option to save up for whatever you have for sale — or they can always exchange it for cash. And Superfans will have an avenue to earn your high ticket items (e.g. ‘a day with the artist’) that might otherwise be too expensive for them — even as they’re helping to grow your career in meaningful ways.
The snowball effect of all this is, you get bigger, you get more fans, you make more sales, you develop more avenues of income! (ahem… that is, you make money.)
And if you don’t want to set all this up yourself, don’t worry, I’m sure the Bandzoogles of the world will find a way to make it easy for you.
What the STEEM model allows is not so much the appreciation in value of your cryptocurrency (though this too is certainly possible), but a reliable system of exchange of value that grows your music career.
The Tokenized Live Streaming Entertainment Agency
In China right now there’s another model in entertainment that is reaching epic scale through livestreaming. Fans convert money into tokens on sites like YY and MOMO and they use the tokens to tip the live online entertainers (or ‘hosts’) of their choice. The company behind the streaming site and the host split the tips.
Hosts are trained by ‘guilds’ (i.e. artist development/talent management) to produce a high quality live-streaming show.
Audiences can pick and choose among a wide variety of shows and activities on the site from music, comedy, gaming, dating and outdoor shows to live interactive ‘game shows’ with multiple hosts and even multi-user ‘parlor’ games like Werewolf.
The most successful (and prosperous) hosts are the ones that are most authentic and develop the greatest personal connection with their audience (as you would expect!).
We may see this kind of model integrated with the possibilities of blockchain sometime down the road.
How Can You Make Blockchain Work For You?
Well, one thing you can do right now is visit all the sites and information linked to this post and see for yourself how it all works.
Another thing you can do is sign up right here at Musician’s Breakthrough so you don’t miss future posts on this topic (and you’ll also get lots of other great free stuff when you do!) 🙂
But as ever, the most important thing you can do is create music, create content, and create opportunities for people to be a part of your thing… and bring your thing to the people! Only by putting yourself out there and connecting with people will any of these strategies ever get any traction.
You can easily spend a lot of time on this stuff (like you did setting up your profiles on Bandcamp, Facebook, Twitter, Reverbnation, Soundcloud, whatever), but for it to matter, you’ll still need to step into your GREATNESS as an artist — you need to have the confidence and willingness to go there. Join Musician’s Breakthrough below to learn more about how to do that.
Also see:
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Aaron Bergbusch somehow just couldn't break through the barrier between himself and the audience and achieve the connection he wanted... Until the day came when he grabbed hold of the feeling at the core of the dream and learned how to bring it up on stage. Also known as the Northstar for Rockstars, Aaron is the creator of the Audience Connection Masterclass.
Email: Aaron@musiciansbreakthrough.com
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