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Of the many verticals in the Algorand ecosystem, there is one that holds the most potential — Music.

With over half a dozen extremely promising projects, could music be the industry and path to adoption that sees the most success on Algorand?

I’ll explore, in detail, that startups building on Algorand and assess the impact so far.

Perhaps one of the most famous projects in the ecosystem is Opulous, an innovative startup allowing musicians to fractionalise the royalties to their songs and share the income with their fans.. Musicians can also take out advances and loans against their projected income via the platform too, allowing them to focus on their craft and get the funding they need.

The project is founded by Ditto founder Lee Parson’s, ICO’d at $0.15 which saw a high of $7! Currently trading at $0.08…

Opulous has launched 3 MFTs ( Music Fungible Tokens ) with artists such as Lil Pump, Ard Adz and Kyle.

Verdict:

Fully understanding the complex legal structure behind launching a token representing music royalties, would obviously threaten the record labels but also cause a stir at SEC; thus it is difficult to accurately give a verdict on Opulous. However taking what we can see publicly, they have only 3 MFTs and no other product besides a staking platform, which is the default that one goes to after launching a token.

They have recently raised extra funding from the Algorand Foundation and as this is a promising project one can only hope they do well and consistently put out MFTs over the next year.

Being a prominent figure of Web1, it is very nostalgic to see Napster still here for web3 — so what does it do?

According to their site “Napster is going back to its roots and will launch as a decentralised music-first ecosystem to the benefit of fans, music makers and rights holders.”

Verdict

With very little actual answers but a lot of buzzwords I could not figure out what they are actually doing — “Bringing fans closer to their artists..?” Could be anything right?

Wasn’t clear if it was streaming, tokenised royalties, merchandise or even a collectable marketplace.

You can read their text-intense litepaper here.

The big sell and reason why Algorand was an investor, in the acquisition, is because of the brand name that Napster represents. Perhaps they forecast an easy on-boarding to web3 music, of all generations, by using a household name that have been around for decades.

Another project making a resurrection on Algorand is 25 year old Limewire.

Now, one can argue that Limewire is actually the most successful of all the music projects despite being launched fairly recently in comparison to others.

Limewire offers exclusive digital collectibles for music fans to purchase off their favourite artists. You can buy merchandise, NFTs, unlockable songs and other items from a range of artists.

Artists like Soulja Boy and Aitch have had their memorabilia up for sale on Limewire.

Verdict

One may argue that calling Limewire an Algorand startup is actually miss leading as their Limewire Originals NFT collection was launched on Ethereum ! However, that being said, a lot of the items for sale have actually been minted on the Algorand.

The main utility behind all of the items on the site is to give you “access” for something else. For example collectors are buying Aitch’s items for the chance to get a Facetime call or be entered into a raffle to win tickets…

The user experience is great and you can pay with card, BTC or Eth — a huge plus in my book for adoption and reaching users outside of Algorand.

Dequency is a music licensing platform for creators to easily get the rights to a soundtrack and use in their project. It works similar to Algorand startup Tokenblogs, which is a publishing rights marketplace- but for blog content.

The licenses range in costs with some at $750 and some $22 — how exactly they are derived are unclear.

By the looks of it, the music can only used for blockchain specific usecases that “run on a public blockchain”.

Verdict

Very nice platform and certainly an innovative use case of NFTs.

Initially I thought you could purchase the license and use it straight away but it seems as though the Licensor needs to approve the agreement before you get access to the files. How long this process takes is unclear, is it quicker to use existing practises ?

Would love to see use cases expand beyond the licensee being only allowed to use it on blockchain so that Dequency could become the go-to license purchasing marketplace for music.

I would love to know what traction they have!

Musii helps artists diversify their income and monetise their community through NFTs.

Being a product of the Algorand Miami Accelerator Musii focusses on providing services to independent artists.

Verdict

Musii has a stunning interface and users can log in with Google and even checkout with card!

The team are clearly focusing on the Latin market where fans are incredibly passionate and loyal to their artists. I expect they will further dive deep into this area and do well.

Music is such a tough market to revolutionise due to monopoly that record labels hold and as such the last thing they want are companies attempting to take money out of their pocket whether it be from merch or streaming income. In the same way Napster, Limewire and initially Spotify faced huge battles, anyone also attempting to take on these goliaths will be met with huge pushback, especially if they manage to get any traction. With Algorand being an investor in Napster and also backing several music projects, would music be the best vertical to focus on for adoption?

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