Music is the key to onboard the next million of crypto users

Transcript

taste test can you hear me yeah all right let's go then hi guys um thanks for being here my name is william beady i'm the co-founder and ceo at bolero music 12 months ago i was here to talk about the potential of nfts and social tokens in the music industry now i'm back at it but with a lot of insights and a lot of experimentation so today i just want to try to show you how music is critical to the mass adoption of crypto and uh we're gonna see why so first of all why does music matter do you have any ide or i'm gonna give you a few hints first

hand these are screenshots of live concerts in fortnite so these are experiences where fans were able to interact in a virtual world for the first time so it's definitely centralized but it was a mass experience where millions of users were able to experiment this new kind of show second hint these are the streaming platforms age demographics so as you can see the most represented users here are the younger generations so now that you've got those two hints you should understand that the key are the youth so i don't know if you know these curves

but this is the the curve from the test this crossing the chasm of jeffrey moore something that was uh created in the 90s it shows you how it is a challenge to get from early adopters to the early majority here at the ethereum conference we are all innovators and early adopters so everything is okay for us connecting a wallet understand how blockchain works understand what is an nft but for the early majority it's a struggle it's a pain in the neck so today thanks to this crazy ride that we had during 12 months uh we are basically here so we are

you know having this jam with all the early adopters but how do we get to the early majority this is the the question that we that we that we should ask ourselves because obviously the next steps for web free and crypto is mass adoption first good news there are plenty of money in music so people even if there is a global economic crisis even during lockdowns people were spending money into music because people are craving for new experiences and they want to get closer to their favorite artists so this is a first good basis as a reminder we should just keep in mind what happens in the music industry as many of you now

um even if the streaming platforms are growing definitely at a fast pace they are not generating enough revenue to let every artist make a great living from the art second point actually the music industry is transitioning to something that is more local so what drives the growth of the music industry are local markets 20 years ago people were listening to you know the most listen 20 30 40 artists in the world now they are listening to local artists so having this in mind we think at bolero that web 3 is actually a concrete solution to improve how the industry

operates so let's see how we can do so like first of all let's think about the web 3 assets from your point of view do you think that there are candies vitamins or painkillers meaning that is it something that is essential that you have to take every day on a daily basis is it only a nice to have like you can skip actually your vitamin you know a day a week a year or during an entire lifetime there will be no danger or other candies so only something to entertain people actually the answer is pretty simple candies at the moment but it's a really nice point because this is

how we innovate this is how we try new things this is how we experiment we start with candies then we can produce some mass market products so what kind of tools that like we have a lot of tools plenty of tools but you know there are three common standards thanks to evm blockchains they are the erc20 tokens basically nfts erc721 the new standard 1155 and there is this awesome project which is related to the unchained distribution of music knowing this we should get back to the customer experience and i'm not the only one to say that

steve jobs actually said that you should not take a take and see how you are going to sell it you should go from the customer experience and see which tech which tool you are gonna choose you're gonna leverage to answer your customers need so please keep that in mind tokens and nfts are not product like during the last 12 months everybody was saying i'm selling nfts i'm saying tokens no you're not saying nfts like nobody says i'm sending a message to my mom through the tcp protocol no you're saying i'm sending an email you know so this is the same so keep that in mind it's super important now back to the product now that we know the tools that we can benefit from

actually artists can sell a lot of things thanks to web3 assets they can sell community membership exclusive content ownership tracks live concert tickets there are plenty of use cases great use cases that can be done thanks to blockchain in a better way that it is done now in a centralized way so oh god quick so during the last 18 months of experimentations there were a lot of use cases tried developed distributed around the world so let's have a quick look at what happened so actually artists tried to sold exclusive visuals basically album covers most of the time thanks to this web3

fashion 3d avatars or 3d items with which you could interact um they sold revenue sharing nfts so basically a way for a fan or music fan to own a piece of a track and um collect a passive revenue from it and release the records so that means basically mp3 so tracks that are not distributed on the steering platforms it is essential because you cannot you know distribute a track on the blockchain and then distribute it on the steering platforms like there's something that cannot work here regarding how the industry operates and how the copyright management operates master shares master shares is a common

word in the music industry but not so well known to everybody else it's actually the iep behind the record now thanks to nfts artists producers bit makers can sell a percentage of a track to their music fans and it is a nice way to share the ip so the fan can actually own a piece of a track that they stream on a daily basis that's something emotionally impressive and for the artists it's a nice way to generate some cash generate some liquidity to invest in the carrier without going into like a constraintful record label deal we have experienced three minutes too so

this is something that was really trendy in the last couple of weeks so actually artists sometimes didn't want to ask a lot of money to the fans so sometimes they were only asking them to mint an nft for free based on an experience and also we have experienced po-aps which are basically a proof of attendance so sometimes when you went to a concert you were able to get back home with the power in your pocket so with those like all these experimentations are super interesting because it you know it's it paves the way to a better music industry uh we we have met so many

artists who are innovative like real entrepreneurs so we are really enthusiastic but let's get back to the music fans because they are the one to buy at the end so we should focus on what is their feedback and with all these 12 months craze and all this bubble what happened we need to focus on what they are what they have to say so first first first result too many expensive drops that we can't afford not every music fan has you know a few hundred bucks to spend in an nft and sometimes they can't get in the loop they can't experience web3 in a positive way if

nfts are expensive so it's still kept to the lucky ones you know all the early adopters like remember the curve that i was showing you all the early adopters who have you know entered ethereum and all these cryptocurrencies are at the early time they have budget but all the early majority they are not going to spend 500 bucks 600 bucks in an nft second point nfts are against the cultural values of sharing and openness we attach to music so particularly in the rap scene the hip-hop scene people are super you know they care a lot about sharing for free giving strength to the artists to the community so

when you drop an nft you create this kind of exclusiveness around the content that is actually a cultural misfit my first motivation to buy is profit because of the artist influence most of the time like we have seen so many nhd drops social token drops we have seen a lot of people buying and those people were not music fans they were not fan of the artist they were actually only buying it for profit so it actually puts the real fan on the side and the people who benefit from the experience who can really engage on a long term basis with the artist are not the targeted ones so there is also um

like something that is not working here i find it difficult to value the content attached to the nft i've never bought one because of that again thanks to the avatar trend and the pfp trends a lot of artists try to release and drop some pfps but like in the web3 community we are like super enthusiastic regarding pfps we have been enthusiastic but music fans don't relate they don't understand they're like okay maybe i can put this on my instagram but what's the point of spending a thousand bucks on a profile picture they don't understand to have a wallet makes it complicated

and i don't understand why i need to have my own another point us early adopters innovators it's easy for us to connect a wallet for the regular user it's not so we should be like super focused on this issue too like i know there's a lot of work and research done around wallet connections and what it's accessibility and ux but at the moment the early like regular users will not use metamask like us i'm excited by decentralized use cases but i struggled to share this interest with my friends and siblings who didn't struggle like to explain to your mom to your siblings to your cousins what you are doing in life like we have a real lexicon issue here

and if we want to get to the mass adoption we need to improve this so i try to summarize this uh as five insights first insights regular users don't bother under understanding how blockchain works this is the first point i think you you understand that insight number three music fans want impact actionable assets and recognition social cloud what does that mean they don't want to collect just to own they want to own to do something they want to act so all the assets that we should think about and drop should be actionable second point it's recognition by doing actions performing actions

they want to be recognized as engaged fans and actually thanks to immutability and thanks to those web 3 assets we have a proof and this goes to the inside three listeners see tokens as a historic proof of support so that means that this is a way for them to tell their friends i was there before you and i engage with this artist before you and it actually excites them in fact number four listeners see tokens as the expression of their music tastes this is a new way to experience music actually like the tokens you own the nfts you own represent what you like and

like what is the music that you like to listen on a daily basis and what are the artists you believe in last insights digital assets follow the same adoption curve as streaming platforms we're in 2010 guys so we are still super early and back at that time nobody understood what was a stream no it's a common word and it is the same and this is why at bolero as a company we believe that token is the new stream and this is our you know this is what drives us on a daily basis we think that it is going to reshape the entire industry and how so simply by putting back the music fan at the center of the value chain

it will be like the get-go of any story behind an artist and the end so this is why at bolero we are trying to make this accessible we have so we have been operating since 18 months we have been working with hundreds of artists and at that time we are really thinking that the social token is the gate of entry into web3 and then once the fans are in the loop they can enjoy new with three assets new tools but first you need to like you really need to offer a simple experience and what we tell them is that now anybody can have a record label in their pocket build your own portfolio

show to your friends what you like who you support and build this record label thank you very much for listening and the special htc offer you can scan this qr code if you sign up and connect your wallet you will earn 10 bucks of fan tokens today thank you very much [Applause] any question guys any disagreement i told a lot of things so you have the right to not agree but we've been there yep

uh yeah maybe okay next one next one yep go go yeah yeah for me the main point of listening to music is about streaming as you said so i wanted to understand to what extent you take all this action of streaming through bolero and to what extent you think that tokens can be leveraged for this kind of use besides all the fun engagement fun tokens and also revenue sharing properties that are not unique to the industry of music in fact they can be the same in the art sector and so on and so forth

that's a really good question so so actually we are not trying to tackle these streaming issues around revenue redistribution because as mentioned string platforms are growing so in many like i think in five years six years seven years they will have you know more money they will have more like a higher turnover so they will be able to redistribute in a better way and to help artists to make a better living so what we are trying to tackle here is how do you create a sustainable revenue that is recurring in that that is not related to your capability to produce new content

like today to to like to challenge the the fact that streaming platforms are not paying so well artists are producing a lot they're releasing a lot of tracks you know it's uh they're really productive now with the fan tokens and the fact of monetizing actually your fanbase and the people who believe in you you are now able to benefit from a new revenue that will not be linked to how many tracks you have released this year so it's all about that and second point is regarding the fans we think that music needs a new layer of experience today you are able to stream you are able to listen you are able to follow to engage but everything

like you can do this only passively and now you can become a partner of the artist a co-creator as we say at bolero so this is a new way really to live music and to empower artists hope it answers yep uh hi uh i'm nishant from lomas my question was more around streaming because streaming is a passive behavior as you said you know and often we don't realize you know who we are listening to and then we are changing the behavior to more active you know discovering the artist like taking control of playlists and all so from a user perspective user experience perspective do you see it as a threshold to adoption

like streaming is very easy it's ai it gives you recommendations you listen listen and now you have to really manage like we are moving towards that so what are you thinking that from e's perspective ux perspective you know what could uh reduce the threshold to adoption um that's a deep topic but i try to be short um so actually like you know when you only talk about the benefits and the why music fans and people connect with what you do if you start by saying oh but look you can own nfts you can be like uh the owner of a specific exclusive content and uh it's actually attached to an nft

and if you stake your social tokens maybe you will be able to like people don't follow this but if you only talk about the benefits which are get closer to your favorite artist become a partner impact his career or her career then people understand this is a new experience this is a new way to engage so we just have to put blockchain behind the scenes so we have to like if people want to live the experience anonymously with a wallet we should offer this possibility but if people don't want to understand how it works and they don't care about what is blockchain and what is an nft or social token we should not you know make it mandatory to understand it to live the experience

so we just think that regarding like the ux perspective of this new experience in the music industry people will see this as as mentioned a proof of support and they will see this as something with which they can show off you know we like we all know this friends you know who talks about an artist that you actually have discovered one year ago before him how do you prove that and how do you benefit from that because actually artist blows up thanks to the fans so it's also a way to redistribute value and to make like to have a more fair music industry thank you guys have a great day

[Applause] you