One of my favorite early projects at Consensys was Ujo Music, a platform for musicians to share their music onchain — before the NFT (ERC-721 standard) was even really a thing, and nearly a half-decade before we even started saying “onchain.”
2021 was the period of time where there was a more mainstream rush into speculative assets. NFTs benefited greatly in terms of the amount of money pouring in, but this also meant it became ripe for consumer skepticism.
Now as we are nearing the end of 2023, there are dozens of platforms to create and share Music NFTs, with far greater user experiences, and even dedicated fan communities. According to Future Tape, which indexes music NFTs released on Catalog, Sound, Nina, ZORA, Supercollector, and Riff, there have been over 10,300 minted tracks from 3,421 different artists.
Testing out Nina and Catalog
It’s one thing to write about these platforms as an observer or enthusiast, but another to truly experience the feelings of radical insecurity in releasing music. So I went through my archives, selected two tracks, and had my brother Scim master them.
First, I chose Catalog to release “Harmless Thrash.” As a collector on Catalog since they first went live, I appreciated their curation approach. After applying and being accepted as an artist, I uploaded the art, a .wav file, a short description, and paid a ~$10 gas fee on Ethereum to publish the track. I set the price for 0.1 ETH, and within 30 minutes it was purchased by Ture.eth (aka musiconblockchain.eth), one of the co-founders of Studio Nouveau.
The second platform I chose was Nina Protocol, which I was less familiar with. Nina is less polished than Catalog, but the DIY vibe helps meet the aesthetic of the artists publishing on their protocol. The total cost for storage and broadcasting to the Solana blockchain was only $0.04. They also don’t gate-keep — anyone can upload music, keeping true to the community good ethic.
MacEagon Voyce has a thorough overview of Nina and Catalog if you’re interested in better understanding their philosophies on curation and onchain music.
I know I’ll be spending more time collecting on both of these sites in the future, in addition to my Bandcamp Friday binges, and also interested in seeing how the Hubs on Nina develop to represent different on and offline music communities.