Onchain Music 101

Once a song is minted onchain — it will exist there forever.
This means that a song has a permanent lineage.
Once you upload a song onchain — you never have to upload it again.
Minting a song cements your place as a supporter of the artist.

— Cooper Turley

F*ck a Spotify 'cause a girl's gotta eat
I give you the song and you give me all the ETH

— Baker Grace

Last week I chatted with DJ and artist Chic Bangs, who had recently returned home from Basecamp and FWB FEST. She mentioned that she encountered people there with no idea that the onchain music scene even exists. I was dismayed to hear this, because it’s a cool scene, one that deserves recognition alongside visual art. (Incidentally, Chic just released a song called “Vision” — give it a spin!)

I thought, as I often do, “You know what this situation calls for? A blog post!” So here you have it, a guide to finding bangin’ tunes in the web3 world. This is not a comprehensive list, because I’m sure there are projects that I haven’t heard of either. But it’s certainly enough to get you started.

Where to mint music#

Sound.xyz is the biggest NFT platform dedicated to music, with a two-tier model:

• Commemorative “Free Editions” cost 0.000777 ETH, of which 0.000555 ETH goes to the artist. Song audio is not included. “This tier is like a POAP — proof that someone discovered you early and a digital memory of finding a new song they love,” per the help center.
• The “Limited Edition” tier does include the actual music. The price and available quantity of LE mints are dictated by the artist.

Naturally, Sound.xyz has integrated Splits so artists can easily share revenue with collaborators.

Coop Records is an onchain record label built on top of Sound.xyz; you may recall that Splits interviewed founder Cooper Turley a couple months back. Coop Records just launched a custom frontend that includes token incentives for minting: at least 100 $COOP per song, and sometimes $LOUDER rewards as well (Louder is a music-themed memecoin).

Coop Records offers a Sound.xyz “Free Edition” with no audio, but after minting you can download the song directly from the Coop Records website. Another option is the Coop Records Club: free subscribers receive one new release per week, while paid subscribers get ‘em all, plus a share of 10% of the label’s onchain earnings.

Songcamp, also featured by Splits earlier this year, recently debuted its own custom frontend called Audiato, showcasing music on the Zora protocol. Development is ongoing: “We’re in the middle of a complete revamp,” Songcamp lead Matthew Chaim posted. “We remain highly interested in delivering a super chill Zora music minting experience that feels good to artists and collectors alike.” Audiato is already a functional music portal, so we’re interested to see what Matthew and the team do next.

Meanwhile, Catalog has something cooking, but it’s not open-access yet. Teaser:

And Subvert is dreaming big as “a Bandcamp successor that is collectively owned, stewarded, and controlled by its community, with 100% of its founding ownership reserved for its artists, community, and workers.” The website has a countdown with 43 days left 👀

Audius incorporates crypto, including the $AUDIO token, but exactly how everything works is… opaque. You can buy tracks with Solana-based USDC, but it’s not clear whether you’re actually minting the song as an NFT. So, probably not?

However, “All data written to Audius lives on-chain through a clever combination of Ethereum, Solana, and an Audius-specific decentralized EVM blockchain run across discovery nodes.” Here are links to the Audius help center and developer docs — let me know if you figure it out.

Listen to onchain music#

Everywhere you can mint, you can also stream (even without minting), with varying levels of convenience or customizability. Zora’s website will loop a single song. On Sound.xyz you can create playlists of any songs on the platform, whether you’ve minted them or not. Both Coop Records and Songcamp’s Audiato allow you to sit back and let the tunes roll.

Another intriguing option is Surreal app’s music mode, through which you can browse all of your audio NFTs:

Honorable mentions#

Web3 video app Drakula is heavily used by artists like Baker Grace and Jayden Hills. It’s more of a marketing tool, but the videos are mintable. That also goes for streaming platform Unlonely.

Sonata is a Farcaster client dedicated to music, with the tipping currency $NOTES.

Pods is a home for mintable podcasts, but I don't see why you couldn't put music on there if you want!