Please describe your proposed solution.
Africa's abundant musical heritage and diverse music genres contribute to a vibrant and dynamic music industry. African music has a global appeal, with artists showcasing their talent and cultural expressions to captivate audiences worldwide. The continent continues to be a fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and the exploration of new musical styles and fusions. From Afrobeat to Bongo Flava, Soukous to Kizomba, African music continues to shape and influence the global music landscape, fostering cross-cultural connections and celebrating the continent's musical richness.
Africa’s music industry offers numerous opportunities for growth and success. According to recent market research, the music industry in Africa is worth an estimated $3 billion, and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This growth is driven by several factors, including the increasing popularity of African music both within the continent and internationally, as well as the rise of new technologies and innovations that are changing the way music is consumed and distributed.
The global music NFT market size was $1.350Bn in 2021, but African musicians are under-represented in this market. This is due to a number of factors, including limited access to online streaming platforms. Record labels are responsible for discovering, signing, and developing new talent. However, artist development can be costly and risky. Labels invest significant resources in artist promotion, marketing, and production, with no guarantee of commercial success. Finding a balance between taking risks and maintaining profitability is a constant challenge. Artists and songwriters have raised concerns about fair compensation and transparency in royalty payments. There have been debates over the distribution of streaming royalties and the fairness of contractual agreements between labels and artists. This issue has led to discussions about creating more equitable royalty structures and improving transparency in the industry.
According to Statista, Africa’s music streaming revenue is projected to reach a market volume of US$252.70m by 2027, with the number of users expected to amount to 58.5m users. As an example, in Kenya, the music market is expected to generate US$20m in 2023 in music streaming.
We aim to disrupt the African music industry by empowering artists with higher royalties and ownership, driving 10x revenue growth. through a Web3 model by using Blockchain.
NFTs have also allowed artists to establish a large global network among themselves giving room for friendships, collaborations, and general growth in their areas of expertise. NFTs serve as transparent digital contracts, validating proof of ownership through their uniqueness.
With our marketplace approach, we can establish a highly sustainable and circular economy. One of the goals that came about being in the NFT space was to discover “hidden gems” and new artists whose work was eye-catching and impactful such as Jessica Colaço and Fena Gitu and many others that MUZIKI plans to onboard after we go live with the MVP.
Muziki brings the NFT revolution to the music industry, enabling artists to sell music IP rights via secure blockchain technology. NFTs gain value as artists thrive, creating incentives for marketing and income generation. The platform covers marketplace, distribution, and royalty collection for the artist.
Muziki’s platform is built on several core components:
- Identity Management: We intend to do eKYC for all musicians on-boarding the platform. We may also consider looking at decentralized identity solutions to address the digital divide in Africa
- Own Your Music: The foundation of Muziki’s platform, the decentralized ledger securely stores token ownership and transaction data, ensuring the immutability and transparency of all records.
- Sell and Trade NFTs: The platform employs smart contracts to automate various aspects of the NFTs. By utilizing Cardano's robust infrastructure and smart contract capabilities, the platform will ensure secure transactions, verifiable ownership of NFTs, and transparent royalty distributions. This integration will contribute to the expansion of real-world use cases for Cardano.
- Decentralized Wallets: There are over 700m Mobile Money wallets in Africa; as one of the most popular forms of payment in the continent. We will integrate the ability for payments via Mobile Money (MoMo) in addition to ADA. Once the royalties are calculated, the smart contracts can initiate automated payouts directly to the artists' designated digital wallets on CARDANO or MoMo. This process bypasses the need for intermediaries like record labels and enables faster and more efficient distribution.
- Collect Royalties: We plan to develop a dedicated royalty management system that interfaces with the blockchain using CARDANO. This system should enable artists to register their work, track usage, and specify royalty terms such as percentages, and payment thresholds.
- Tokenisation: Holders of MZK utility tokens can use them to access or utilize specific functions, services, or content within the platform. For example, utility tokens can be used to pay for transaction fees, access premium artists’ content, purchase artists’ merchandise, or participate in platform-specific activities such as live streams of artists on the platform.
Marketplace
We are also building for both the artist and their fans the Muziki marketplace which will serve as a central nexus point for artists to create music NFTs. It offers a user-friendly interface and allows an artist to create a profile, connect to a wallet(s), upload their music track, add features of the track, price the track, mint it and list their NFT. This workflow provides the artists with full ownership to the process while ensuring they are able to make enlightened decisions and maximize their returns while ensuring a secure and traceable process using blockchain technology.
The Muziki marketplace provides alternative revenue channels for artists, fostering financial growth and allowing fans to benefit from the artist's growing content. This will contribute to the overall economic growth in the African music industry.
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
Our music NFT marketplace benefits the Cardano ecosystem in several ways. Firstly, it leverages Cardano's blockchain technology, ensuring secure and transparent transactions for artists and buyers. This enhances the ecosystem's reputation for reliability and innovation.
Secondly, by integrating with Cardano's native cryptocurrency ADA, the marketplace facilitates seamless and efficient payments, fostering adoption and use of ADA within the music industry.
Furthermore, the NFT marketplace provides a new revenue stream for artists, empowering them to earn more fairly from their creations. This encourages more artists to join the Cardano ecosystem, increasing its overall attractiveness and diversity.
Overall, our music NFT marketplace contributes to the growth and sustainability of the Cardano ecosystem, fostering creativity, financial inclusion, and wider adoption of blockchain technology in the music industry.
Each dollar spent on Muziki is an investment in the Cardano ecosystem, aiming to strengthen it by enabling at least 500 musicians in Africa to upload and mint their music and attract new fans (0.5M) and showcasing Cardano's utility. Thus, we believe the project represents excellent value for money.
The ₳ 105,000 ($31,500) budget for our Muziki project is based on a standard man-hour rate of ₳ 181 ($52), in line with industry standards for developers, architects and PMs in the sector. This cost includes project management, architecture, UI/UX design, feature development, testing, and platform launch, all performed by our highly experienced team.
Justification of the cost:
- PM, Architecture & UI/UX Design: Our experienced team ensures maximum value per dollar spent, producing a user-friendly and efficient platform.
- Core Features Development: Building secure and efficient systems on Cardano requires skilled blockchain engineers, thus justifying the cost.
- Testing and QA: To launch a high-quality, bug-free platform, rigorous testing is necessary, warranting its allocation in the budget.
- Launch & User Feedback: The marketing and support team will ensure effective platform launch and collection of crucial user feedback.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
We will determine our project's success through a blend of quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators, such as user acquisition, transaction volume, short-term and long-term impacts on Cardano.
Quantitative KPIs:
- User Adoption: We aim to attract at least 500 musicians and 0.5M fans within the first operational year, creating a vibrant ecosystem within Muziki.
- Transaction Volume: We aspire to stimulate a transaction volume somewhere between $0.25m - $0.5m during our inaugural year. This target is attainable given that we need to create a huge awareness of the NFT marketplace as well as educate musicians to consider NFTs as the way forward. We intend to adopt the marketing strategy below.
Qualitative KPIs:
- Short-term Impact: By facilitating a high transaction volume, Muziki will corroborate the utility of Cardano in real-world business applications, enhancing its applicability and relevance.
- Long-term Impact: Muziki’s success could act as a magnet for additional NFT ventures to leverage Cardano's robust capabilities. By introducing lots of musicians and fans, Muziki will not only expand the community but also invigorate it, contributing to Cardano's growth and fortifying its reputation in the NFT space.
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Outputs will be shared and results as follows:
- Bi-weekly through Twitterspace live sessions
- Social media posts per month (Twitter and Blog)
- Reports at the completion of each milestone.