STEEM + Bandcamp Philosophy (Maybe an approach to tap into the market of 7 billion users by 2025)
For your consideration
The message is clear: consumer wants cheap, bundled or "feels like free" access first, and will only then consider going further.
Just laying out some perspective here. I've been using Bandcamp for years, and think STEEM fits their philosophy. First of all, let's study their website:-
Their tag line comes to mind:-
"Discover amazing new music and directly support the artists who make it."
In essence, it's discover amazing new content and directly support the artists who make it. This is quite exactly like Steemit, just with a different frame and application of technology. Consider a Steem upvote - it's the same for every user. Any upvote will generate $0.00 or more, depending on the user's voting influence. Now, consider a typical Bandcamp Artist's track sales page:-
Notice right away - "Buy Digital Album" and "Name-Your-Price" right beside it. When you click on it..
It's $0 or more too. Not all artists will do the same, but a good chunk of music on Bandcamp are free, or pay whatever-you-like models. Gain access to some added convenience if you pay a certain amount. This will be the future, in my opinion. Music-making (or generally, any kinds of content) is gonna be in most of our "DNA" as tools, knowledge, and community become more connected and shared / accessible. This is partly evidenced by a growing market in digital and mobile music production applications.
But of course, premium music exists too!
https://series200.bandcamp.com/album/human-story-3
Now, consider the following:-
- Most people will get FREE content if they can access it. Free flow, free access markets will always exist. That will involve just about 100% of the world's population. Everybody who pays for content even has their own flow of FREE content, and everybody who wouldn't pay for content can be made to pay (or vote) if the service is more like access to a pool of products. Believe it or not, the REAL mainstream market segment is still largely untapped in today's world. Subscription based models like Spotify are at ~50 million subscribers in 2017, making about ~5 billion in revenue for rightsholders. Netflix / Spotify are great models going the right way.
Imagine 7 billion users by 2025, each contributing a minimum $5.00 all-year for ALL of their content consumption. That's a simple $35 billion per year! Around Bitcoin's market cap recently in June 2017. Can Spotify / Netflix model pull this off in scale? Maybe, maybe not - but it doesn't matter, they're profitable enough for the market segment they're getting. But let's go BIG into the billion market. If you strip away the need for a focus like Bandcamp, even Steemit as a blogging platform by itself can already be used to support any artists. But I think it would help with perspective if we can somehow make use of Bandcamp's philosophy on art / artists in some of the Steem-centric apps.
So provide free access first - something in which Steem / Steemit is already good at that it even works to onboard the unbanked / undocumented. There are plenty of ways to generate value and have users fork out money if they want to. Value is multi-faceted, and users will pay for many different reasons. Check out the image below:-
It needs to be made clear that I'm not only talking about a place for artists to store their digital works like LBRY - something which could work very well as a backend solution. However, Bandcamp is more than that a simple storage and distribution platform. To learn more about their magic sauce, head on to https://bandcamp.com, particularly:-
This is definitely not a market for the Kanyes and Biebers, but the point is to tap into a market that uses free stuff anyway. Let's make that free stuff accessible with an added upside of convenient support through microtransactions. There will be ways to encourage the purchase of STEEM for access to a great Bandcamp-like ecosystem for all sorts of content.
If you take a look at blockchain solutions for creators like Ujo Music and such, they're great and innovative, but will ultimately fail to tap into the market of billions of users, going against the grain of a universal consumer behaviour. Vote-for-access may be the far better activity for onboarding. In that sense, I think big parts of the creative industry will eventually need to learn and adapt. I'll end this post with a Gerd Leonhard's presentation about The Future of Music (or most types of content) back in 2013:-
"It needs to be made clear that I'm not only talking about a place for artists to dump their files for anyone to buy like LBRY. Bandcamp is more than that."
To be fair - LBRY's real gambit is to become the backend for sites like Bandcamp, Netflix, etc. by solving the hosting problem.
Steem has better UI and community features right now, but LBRY can handle video hosting (via its bittorrent-style decentralized hosting system). Steem on the other hand is relying on YouTube for video still, which is kind of worst-case scenario
The competition / co-existence of LBRY and Steem is something I'm very interested to watch, since they're the two blockchain projects I'm most active in. I hope they'll both be able to thrive alongside each other.
Isn't Steem going to have SteemQ for videos?
Eventually I do hope SteemQ will exist. I think LBRY's built-in decentralized hosting is likely to be a lot more reliable, scalable, and robust - but I could be wrong.
Right. It could be anything; only time will tell. I don't think I have the access to LBRY yet though.
Yup it is, although the UI / UX remains to be seen. I wonder how it's going to deal with discovery and such. Youtube is great on that front..
I guess features like discovery wouldn't be a difficult task once the product is in place - not comparing it with YouTube. It could be implemented and made better in future versions.
I think for something grand like YouTube, we'd probably need STEEM+GOLEM type project.
Thanks for bringing the argument to light, I'll edit out and make it more of something that should be considered along with the steem solution. My intent was definitely not to put the piece of tech down as a backend solution :)
SteemQ by @furion might do the trick here :)
@kevinwong, another great idea... but I keep coming back to the question of how to effectively implement it.
We have this community; we're building a Steemit ecosystem; new apps are proposed and developed... but then we have to look at the mass adoption idea. Whether we loathe "centralization" or not... we run into the sharp edge where "decentralization" (good) runs the risk of becoming "fragmentation" (not user friendly).
Why do I say this? Well, in trying to bring people over from Farcebook, one of the main sticking points is that when you log onto FB, "everything is right there." Steemit will be a hard sell to the average web user if "logging into Steemit" requires someone to run 43 separate apps. It's just not going to fly, with the general public.
So as we consider how (and if) we're going to fit stuff on the Steemit blockchain... we also have to look at how to "launch centrally" to independently open sourced apps.
Disclaimer: I am more of a "trend observer" than a tech guru...
I'd just think of Steem as the social currency layer of the Internet. Distribution takes time, and ultimately, people will start using the apps they like, coming in from different vectors. Steemit is central enough at the moment, it attracts the early adopter types and retains them. More mainstream folks will come in once the UI / UX improves over time. Up to the community to determine the value and build to improve it. People will start paying (or investing) for different reasons :)
In sense, the "Farmer's Market" model. Steemit is the Farmer's Market; the different apps are the individual vendors at the market... which is great as long as there remains a high awareness of the core marketplace where people can discover other things.
Artists badly need to be helped financially and anything like this to help creative people earn money directly I will hugely support! Artists bring much joy to people's lives in so many ways and can work so hard with very little reward! I want to see a world where artists and creators are valued properly for the work they bring and that can only be done by moving away from the current system!
I would love to see this take off, it is good for the artists, good for the community and good for the arts in general!
For me it's great because I'd treat anyone as an artist, as long as there's a display of integrity and pursuit of fulfilment . In the end, I'm voting for what i consider to be good accounts, besides consideration of content.
you won't be surprised to hear that this theme is at the heart of the mycelia-for-music hackweekends we were doing with Imogen Heap. The Steem model adds to this conversation though in ways that I haven't thought through fully. Thanks you've made a link that wasn't there before...
Good to know Imogen Heap's looking wide into the industry, afaik they're affiliated with Ujo Music, or some ethereum based applications if I remember :) Would be interesting to see what they have to say :) mad respect to artists always pushing the boundaries of tech and trying to apply them.
That's a common misconception because Ujo were the first off the blocks to make a prototype for selling "Tiny Human" - the ethereum link was largely through our friend Vinay Gupta who properly turned Imogen on to blockchain and the idea of smart contracts for songs. afaik (though it's been a few months since we chatted) there is no formal link between mycelium and any particular chain, platform or technology.
Ah thanks for the clarification, keep us up to date if the steem model is adding anything to the conversation :)
You are onto something here. A Steem powered bandcamp-esque platform, as others have mentioned, would not only allow artists to earn from people buying their tracks, but also from upvotes and the whole "social sharing" aspect.
The biggest issue I can see currently, is that whoever builds this thing has to store the music somewhere, somehow. Shoving FLAC files or even MP3 files into the blockchain in bulk is a really good way to mess things up catastrophically in short order by hugely inflating its size...
Direct integration with bandcamp would be best I think, no need to create an alternative service, bands and artists are slow to take up new platforms and bandcamp already has a huge library of material. Also hosting files is not a problem as the chain would only need to contain direct links and maybe some metadata to the material being pointed to. @kevinwong you may be onto something here.
Yup it makes perfect sense. I do wish steemit would partner with some decent projects, but I suppose we need to get the scam out of the name :D and grow a bit, act more professional and all :) it will be a while unless we fuck up somehow. It would be great to have a real social platform where we can share and earn :) but even if this is what we are, there are still problems that need taking care of, if we didn't have any half of the earnings should be going to support projects like wikileaks and wikipedia, .. small sites and whatever producers and developers we are fans of, it would be nice to fund and develop independent projects. Imagine getting some of the sites some stable support, although things are pretty much ok, they get by on donations, or they can go google ads :| but why not steemit content :)
Yup the best is direct integration, they've done a great job on the 3 pillars of their platform too :)
can't steemit get developed as a "offshore" app, basically download it, it links to the chain, you have your wallet and account and you can get upvoted and transfer funds. All that should take is some C/C++ or some other new shit language and a internet integration with the chain.
I guess with the account issues right now and the whole lack of a big team we shouldn't be expecting and embedded player for steemit to link in other sites. Or a desktop app where we can do peerplays :D I guess EOS :D
So rather than copying everything like some unimaginative "artist" couldn't we just integrate the net with steem we for sure will win, I would like to have more people use steem and it could be just like patreon, or yt now, but instead of adds we can support with content, I'm sure that would get the "mainstream" on our side and dash and eth will have a hard time catching up.
If only there was a way, I guess stan and dan need heroes :D
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@stan/bitshares-hit-by-cat-5-miracle-of-heroic-proportions
hence EOS sidechains and different tools for different cases. oh and don't tell anyone there is soulseek :)
Centralized services that store data themselves could still implement this to their site. Maybe even Bandcamp would be interested.
I've bought lots of music from Bandcamp. I'd love to be able to pay in Steem, but if those artists were using a Steem-based platform they could be earning from votes too. From the start I've seen Steemit as a great platform for bands and other artists who struggle to make a living.
Where do you see Steem going in the future?
Is it a bubble?
I only do analysis on my blog for precious metals i dont know a whole lot about cryptos and especially the smaller ones.
I just happen to value a "social currency" very much. I've been using the currency for more than a year. It's high utility, in my opinion. It's low-barrier microtransaction and it's awesome to distribute steem to anyone by just voting. It's up to the community to build stuff and improve the value.
The music industry is long overdue for a drastic revolution in the delivery of music and compensation of artists, which will hopefully lead to even better music available to the masses through the ability of smaller budget bands to be able to become noticed, without the need of a large corporate sponsor whose goal is money and not good music.
I heard there was a Musicoin that might be trying to do something like this? I didn't have much time to investigate. Does anyone know anything about Musicoin?
Haven't looked into musicoin.. but if it's specifically only for music, i don't think it has very good chances. I think there should be a coin for universal access like steem.. but thanks - i'll look into it. maybe they're onto something :)
I love their weekly shows :D
Diana Damrau - Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute)