The music industry has been one of the sectors that have wholly embraced technology, with music streaming now being the norm worldwide. While streaming has opened up vast opportunities for content creators, music ownership for the fans has been lost, and Soundoshi is out to change this. Speaking to CoinGeek Backstage, Soundoshi founder Michal Scislowski talked about the evolution of music from compact discs to streaming, and now, it’s moving to audio NFTs.
Scislowski spoke to CoinGeek Backstage host Becky Liggero in Warsaw during the Blockchain 4 Gaming event, which brought together gamers, technophiles, and blockchain enthusiasts.
“Soundoshi is the first infrastructure for the music industry that allows fans to stream the music directly from the artists and pay for it in real time,” Scislowski described his platform.
And it’s not just the direct streaming that Soundoshi has introduced. As Soundoshi founder revealed, he’s even more excited about the platform’s Bitcoin SV-based audio NFTs, the first of their kind in the market, which is the new-age music carriers.
“We used to have compact discs but they are an outdated form of music carriers. We’re coming to the market with BSV-based NFTs that are acting exactly the same way but are digital, transferrable, sellable, and people can use them the same way they did compact discs,” he said.
Every time a user listens to a song, they get to pay a tiny amount of money directly to the artist. This is made possible by the micropayments capability that only BSV offers. However, you don’t have to pay all the time to listen to the same song. Soundoshi will identify you as a super-fan for this particular song and award you an NFT that lets you listen to this song for free forever, kind of like how during the compact disc era, you got to keep your disc and listen to the music whenever you wanted.
This is a departure from the current streaming dynamic where the music is only ‘rented’ for as long as the streamer pays a certain amount of money to Spotify or Apple Music. This exploitative model gives all the power to music streaming platforms like Spotify at the expense of the artists. These companies benefit way more than the artists; in recent times, more artists have either left these platforms or encouraged their fans to directly buy the music from them.
Soundoshi is a graduate of the first cohort of the Satoshi Block Dojo, the London-based Bitcoin SV incubator. As Scislowski told CoinGeek Backstage, the Dojo was “like a miracle” for the startup. Craig Massey, the Dojo founder, “is the biggest person for Soundoshi.”
Scislowski launched the startup in Warsaw, but he said it wasn’t getting as much traction. He applied for the Dojo and was invited to the 12-week program in London. Unlike most investors, Massey doesn’t just dish out a cheque—he is just as involved in the startup’s operations and works with the founders to optimize the product for the target market.
“They [the Dojo] put us through this extensive 12-week program. They put us in front of the people we should know and gave us an amazing set of mentors. Being surrounded by such people made such a huge impact on Soundoshi. Right now, we have a crystal clear value proposition and it’s all thanks to the Dojo,” Scislowski noted.
Scislowski was at Blockchain 4 Gaming, an event that catered more to the gamers than the music fans. However, as he revealed, this market is just as important to Soundoshi. The startup has an API that can be plugged into any game, providing audio NFTs as rewards for quests within the game. It also allows the gamers to stream the music directly while enjoying their favorite game.
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