From iTunes to Spotify and Apple Music, can Euterpe's SBT become a catfish that stirs up the music market

In 2001 , Jobs launched the first generation of iTunes at the Macworld Expo . Subsequently, iTunes online iTunes Music Store, users can spend 0.99 US$ to buy a song alone instead of the whole album. iTunes A series of measures changed the music market, and then iTunes became the world's largest online music store.

In 2006 ,  Spotify , the streaming audio service provider with the largest market share, was born. Early in product development, Spotify  used mixing technology to solve the music buffering problem. First predict user behavior, cut related songs into several parts, and then use P2P technology to realize on-demand listening. The product was continuously optimized and iterated and algorithms were introduced. Spotify  became one of the few streaming media applications focusing on user experience at that time, and became the overlord in the field of streaming audio services a few years later.

In the face of competition from Spotify , Apple launched a streaming media subscription service in 2015   Apple Music. According to the latest report of  MIDiA Research , Spotify  occupies the first place with a market share of 31% , followed by Apple Music, Amazon Music  and  Tencent Music   15%, 13%  and  13%.

Perhaps, many investors and users believe that the streaming music market structure is fixed, and it is difficult for revolutionary innovation to occur. However, a group of copyright practitioners who graduated from prestigious schools such as Stanford University and worked in Tencent Music, Sony Music, ByteDance, Warner Bro don't think so. To this end, they created a copyright as a service (copyright as a service) NFT platform Euterpe, through which professional music professionals and creators can sell high-quality IP NFT works to fans.

The dilemma of traditional streaming media

Although Web2 represented by Spotify and Apple Music has changed users' usage habits and made it easier for people to listen to various types of music, it also faces many problems.

11 Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift  has repeatedly criticized Spotify, accusing The latter does not pay much attention to the value of music copyright. Even after the platform revises its rules, it is still questioned by some people in the industry because of its opaque mechanism. In fact, in the field of music, due to numerous middlemen, complex value chain and opaque copyright data, piracy is rampant, the rights and interests of music creators are difficult to maintain, it is difficult to authorize the use of secondary music creation, and the complex value chain leads to low payment efficiency. Become an important factor hindering the development of the music industry.

The top creators can freely choose the platform, and even have enough voice to order the platform to modify the rules. The non-head creators need to go through complicated middlemen to release a song and an album. Even after the song is released, the return they can get is far lower than the cost paid. According to the latest Euterpe white paper data, Spotify and YouTube  pay copyright owners $0.00397  and $0.00074  for each playback.

In addition, traditional streaming music platforms provide creators and fans with too monotonous fetters. In 2010 in 2010 launched the music social network Ping on iTunes , creators and fans can join the platform, create their own circle of friends, pay attention to their favorite music groups and check what friends are listening to song. However, the platform was abandoned due to poor development after only two years on the line. Today, Spotify supports creators to display NFTs in their profiles to improve the experience between creators and fans.

There is no doubt that "music + social" will be a new outlet, but few platforms can understand this How to build, this also creates opportunities for  Web3 .

Cost reduction and efficiency increase, the NFT+B2C  model is conducive to the healthy development of the industry

Facing the difficulties encountered by traditional streaming media, Euterpe  chose to use NFT technology to solve them.

Different from the current  NFT  platform on the market, the underlying logic of Euterpe  is through B2C  The way to improve the efficiency of the industry, remove unnecessary middlemen and links, reduce costs, and increase the cost paid to copyright owners. When a  C2C NFT  platform such as  OpenSea  enters the streaming music field, it needs to face a lot of copyright disputes and censorship, which may not be able to improve the overall operational efficiency.

Euterpe  will use the income gained from reducing intermediate links and improving efficiency to increase the total amount of copyright distribution. In the case of unchanged user expenditure, the income of all links in the entire industry chain has increased. According to reports, creators are expected to earn 16 times Spotify's and 80 times YouTube's copyright revenue per stream through  Euterpe .

Euterpe Relying on the previously owned industry network resources and market, Euterpe directly purchases from copyright owners and provides users with copyright  ;NFT. NFT buyers can actually obtain the corresponding copyright by holding NFT , and, Euterpe built-in SocialFi function, so that fans can get Token  A new distribution channel was established.

At the same time, because of the traceable and non-tamperable technical characteristics of NFT , creators, record companies and publishers Many copyright owners, including , can view the sales situation in real time and obtain benefits. When users enjoy works in the  Euterpe  community, the Euterpe  smart contract will automatically execute the rights and obligations under the copyright license contract. After the user selects and obtains the work, Euterpe can distribute 100% the relevant royalty income to the copyright owner much faster than the current distribution cycle. Remuneration can also be directly scaled so that multiple rights holders, including creators, labels, and publishers, receive their respective shares simultaneously. It avoided the fact that Wu Xiangfei, a well-known lyricist who had previously created "The Road Is Always There" for Eason Chan, only received  271 RMB copyright fee a year.

Euterpe Genesis SBT Application in culture and society

Although the model of NFT+B2C  makes the development of the industry more efficient and healthy, user perception is not strong. As mentioned above, "music + social" will be a new outlet. Woody Mu, former chief representative of the Alibaba Entertainment Strategy Committee, manager of the International Department of Warner Bros. Films, and Euterpe  consultant, once said that culture is the ultimate pursuit of human beings. The social needs are the most basic needs of human beings after the basic physiological needs and safety needs are met.

For a platform to stand out from the times, it needs not only the efforts of the team, but also the current trend and user needs. For example,  Spotify started in the transitional stage of 2G/3G network, through the P2P technology, it realizes on-demand listening, and successfully acquires a large number of users. Apple's music social network  Ping  was launched in the early days of the rapid rise of the mobile Internet, but the lack of innovation in form led to the failure of the project.

In order to meet the needs of the majority of users and creators, Euterpe increased on the basis of IP-NFT  SBT.

SBT  first appeared in ETH founder Vitalik in 2022 year 1  ; month in the article titled "Soulbound". In the article, Vitalik   took the World of Warcraft game as an example, talking about props that cannot be transferred and traded, and thus extended to the soul-bound   NFT (SBT). In other words, SBT  is an alternative usage of  NFT .

Euterpe 's  Genesis SBT  started casting on  11 June 10  Holding Genesis SBT can enjoy IP-NFT blind box buying, early trial of social platforms, exclusive content and so on.

The casting of Genesis SBT  will be divided into two stages. ;25 holders of NFT as well as Binance Account Bound(BAB)  and Proof-of-Stake Pages by Vitalik Buterin(SBT) are eligible to participate. In the second stage, ordinary users can obtain Genesis SBT through Euterpe official website. According to official news, Euterpe 's forthcoming blind box will be released in accordance with  3 periods, and both the initial whitelist  mint  and the first phase of  mint require  SBT.

Of course,  Euterpe may launch common SBT casting later. Owning a  Genesis SBT  is like the holder of the early ".com" short domain name, and has a more  OG  status in the community.

Although  Euterpe Genesis SBT  cannot be traded, it has the characteristics of "display" and "priority" It plays an extremely important role in social interaction. The role of SBT  is not limited to this. In the traditional music industry, it is not a new thing to hit the charts, and the major music charts are constantly adjusting the rules to avoid being affected. However, we can often see few users on lists such as Billboard  Albums to listen to. Euterpe Genesis SBT Although this situation cannot be avoided, the participation of addresses bound by SBT to brush the list will reduce its social reputation and influence.

Euterpe CFO Charles Cheng  revealed in an interview that music IP  is only the first step for Euterpe  , and will be extended to a wide range of  IP  fields including videos, games, books, concerts, celebrity peripherals, etc. in the future. This also means that  Euterpe Genesis SBT  will have a wider influence in the social field.

Internet users once joked that the final destination of all applications is finance and social networking. Although it is a joke, it also shows that finance and social networking are the development trend. The narrative of Web3  and the popularity of NFT  also cater to this trend. We also hope that the  Web3 NFT  platform  Euterpe  can truly change the  IP  copyright industry, benefiting both users and creators.

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