You know that friend who always tries to score indie snob cred by saying he thinks a specific band’s “early stuff was better?” P2P music startup PeerTracks might have devised a way for your hipster friend to monetize his early adopter status.
PeerTracks uses the BitShares platform to allow bands and individual musicians to create and distribute their own cryptocoins to their fans, who are in turn incentivized to spread the word about the artists.
“For the first time, artists can now engage and incentivize their fans into sharing their music,” cofounder Cédric Cobban said in a statement Tuesday. “Using the blockchain, all trades are done peer-to-peer, no trust required.”
PeerTracks’ goal is to cut out any intermediaries between artist and fan (e.g. record companies, distributors) and allow a musician’s popularity to grow organically with word-of-mouth interest.
Addressing artists, the company writes on its website:
“The more popular your music gets, the more sales you make on PeerTracks, the more each coin will be worth. Your fans now benefit financially by sharing your music on all social media networks, blogs, forums etc. Every single user is now a potential talent scout. If a song goes viral thanks to your fans, you all benefit together.”
The Various Coins
PeerTracks is built on top of the BitShares Music platform and functions as that network’s talent discovery engine.
That platform’s coin is called Note. The coin is the only way to interact with the BitShares music blockchain, and a presale for Note is currently underway. The presale represents 20% of all Notes, and those are available for purchase in BTC on the BitShares Music home page.
All told, BitShares plans to create 1.5 billion Notes.
PeerTracks, however, will sell artists’ coins in exchange for BitUSD, a coin that is pegged to the USD, to overcome any users’ concerns about volatility. Then, an artist can begin to sell his/her/their music and/or artist-specific coins on PeerTracks in exchange for BitUSD.
Competition
If this sounds familiar, it’s because NXT created something similar back in the summer with its NXT Digital Goods Store, which also offers a middleman workaround by allowing creators of any digital art to sell directly to customers.
BitShares’ innovation is allowing the artists to create an issue their own coins, which incentivizes a whole new level of network participation beyond simply buying music.
“Say you find an artist early on, before he is popular, you like his music and decide to buy his coin,” PeerTracks’ FAQ reads. “If that artist goes mainstream and starts selling music on PeerTracks, his artistcoins should each be worth more now then when you purchased them.”
“Remember this works both ways! If you buy an artistcoin from a band that never manages to sell their music, the coin could end up being worthless.”
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