Introduction
Welcome back to The Bluffer's Guide to Cryptocurrency - a layman's approach to understanding Bitcoin and Blockchain Technology!
In the previous blog, we rounded up the final platform of the Chapter called “Minds”, which is competing to be a decentralised Facebook. If you missed that, check it out here.
Now, let’s dive a little deeper in to one of the platforms we introduced previously called Inmusik. In the next two blogs, we’ll try to understand the working of the economics on this not-yet-live platform by digesting some of the contents in their recently updated whitepaper. I hope you have your scuba diving gear handy as we’re going in deep…
But hold (or should that be hodl) your horses, it's disclaimer time!
Before I begin, I want to emphasise that this is a highly simplified version of what I have learnt from my own research and I'm sharing my learning with you. If you do know this topic inside out, be nice to those who are still learning about this (myself included) and we can grow together.
Furthermore, this is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor. I am a crypto-enthusiast and wanted to create a guide to help total beginners understand what this is all about. Please seek financial advice from a qualified professional if you have any doubt about how to spend your money.
So with that said, brace yourselves, you might learn something! Shall we begin?
The Economic Incentives of Inmusik
Let’s not beat around the bush here. As musicians or content creators, the rise of these crypto platforms should inspire hopes of fairer pay for us all and Inmusik certainly has a strong set of philosophies that form the foundation of their platform. So what incentives are there for being a part of the platform? Well, it's time to dig in to their revised whitepaper and see what they have in mind.
Curation
Simply put, curation is when a fan spots talent early enough and gets rewarded from it. The way it would work with Inmusik is that you would cast your vote on a newly uploaded track by using the utility token of Inmusik, called SOUND. If you are one of the early voters, say in the first 30 minutes from when the track was uploaded, you would get a bigger reward than someone who voted days later.
By placing your "bet" or "stake" on a track or artist’s success via the SOUND token, you’re effectively saying “I believe in this artist”, investing in them and getting a return on your “investment” if that artist becomes successful.
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Will I Need To Constantly Invest Real Money In To Vote?
Not necessarily as their white paper states that a number of tokens will be gifted daily for you to vote with. However, these will not accumulate so you can't hoard them and will only replenish when used. Obviously, if you want to vote with more tokens than the amount from the "daily gift" then you may have to fork out some cash. The choice is yours.
Quick-Play Discovery
I covered this briefly in Part 1 but it’s still related to curation. Here's the 1-2-3 on how it works:
- Choose a genre to explore.
- Listen to the 7 best seconds of a track selected by the musician themselves and decide whether or not to add it to your playlist for a full listen later.
- 7 songs will be showcased in this way, meaning that less than 1 minute will be spent in Quick-Play.
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What About Fake Profiles And Illegally Copied Music?
Yep, that's always a valid concern as we are getting smarter in the crypto space and Inmusik appears to have considered this as well.
For an artist to create an account, they need to share an image of them holding up a hand-written note with that day’s date. So you better start practicing handwriting again! The artist needs 20 users to verify their profile and users who do this also get rewarded with a token.
The same principle is applied to when an artist uploads their music. Sadly, there are ‘people’ out there (I can’t call them their real derogatory phrases as I want to keep the Bluffer's Guide family friendly), who upload content that isn’t their own to make money off it. Effectively, fraud and stealing. Naughty naughty, very naughty (a great philosopher once said).
So, rewards are also given when verifying a newly uploaded song that is actually made by the artist! Particularly useful for uploading remixes or covers of songs, as then, the original artist can be tagged so the streaming royalties can distributed to the relevant people. Copycat killers, I like it.
Are There Any Streaming Royalties?
Even with all these additional incentives, there is still a pay-out for streams alone and Inmusik claim that each stream on a "popular" song will range between $0.01 and $0.09. Although with the voting system on the tracks, it could be even more. I’ll explain later on in the blog about how Inmusik proposes this will work.
Contribution Rewards
I know, it seems there can't be any more ways to earn on this platform... but there will be. One of Inmusik's mantras is that it will reward ALL content that is added based on the amount of value it brings to the community. This includes photos, videos and other posts on top of the music uploads. So if the community deems the content to be valuable, the user will receive more rewards, thus making sure that those who take the time to add real value to the network are rewarded, not the spammers. We don’t like spammers.
So from this Bluffer's reckoning, that means it will be like having a Facebook Page for your music but you could get rewarded even for posting engaging non-music content. Time to shine!
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What About Us Label Owners, Aren't We Getting Shafted Here?
Don't worry Label Owners, Inmusik has you covered as well. You can tag the artists from your label each time you upload a release and, using smart contracts, the royalties will be paid out to those artists autonomously. This simplifies things for you completely. Plus, if you are more socially active as a label, that will help your reputation on the platform and may give you more influence with releases.
So Many Incentives..
Well, it sounds like there are so many ways for users to be able to earn rewards on the platform for both listeners and musicians in a social way. As someone who would much rather have interaction and engagement with followers, this aspect certainly fits with my personality, what about you?
Will I Need To Pay For an Account?
Now would be a good time to tell you that Inmusik looks like it will be a subscription based service, which means there will be a monthly fee for the user to be on the platform. What this fee is yet, I don’t know as the platform won’t be live for a few more months.
You may now be thinking, “Sod that, if it isn’t free then I don’t want to know” and if that’s the way you think, then let’s consider the bigger picture briefly.
There is no such thing as “free”, even with Facebook or Twitter; you create a free account in exchange for your personal information. YouTube – you get adverts on a free account based on information you let Google have about your streaming history.
Spotify and SoundCloud free accounts have adverts and when you pay the subscription, those adverts go away but here’s a question for you. How many of Inmusik’s incentives listed above are on these platforms for artists and fans to make that money back and then some? Is the prospect of an Inmusik subscription service looking as bad now? It’s certainly food for thought and bear this in mind, particularly with the next section of the blog.
How The Economics of Inmusik Work
Ok, let’s find out how these incentives will actually be implemented but bear with me as there are many facets to this, unsurprisingly! How's that crypto scuba diving kit holding up?
Dual Token System
I briefly touched on the Dual Token System in Inmusik Part 1 but to refresh your memory, Inmusik will operate using two different tokens – Inmusik Tokens (SOUND Coin) and Inmusik Cash (IC).
- SOUND Coin – This is the token that the Inmusik ecosystem is based on. A percentage of the subscription fee is converted in to SOUND, which can be used to vote on songs or even to pay the subscription fee if you have enough of them built up.
- Inmusik Cash – This is the token that is paid to fans and artists/labels for various rewards. IC has been designed to be a stable currency for the platform that is pegged to the USD and will always have the value of $0.01.
But Where Can I Store These Tokens?
Inmusik have taken a “bank” style approach to their two wallets. That’s right, TWO wallets – Wallet A (Wallet) and Wallet B (Stash). See, the philosophy is based on long term rewards and returns on investment for supporting talent and the way their wallets work is a reflection of this philosophy.- Wallet – Works like any other wallet we’ve covered in the Bluffer’s Guide before where funds can be sent or received whenever it is decided.
- Stash – This is like a savings account but actually gives you interest (we all know fiat current interest rates are down the tube) with a few other benefits. Any tokens stored in Stash contribute to the longevity of the platform and thus are rewarded with a 15% yearly inflation. Yes, I did a double take too, 15%!
How Will That Interest Be Paid?
According to the whitepaper, the interest will be paid on a "rolling 12-week period, broken down over the course of 52 weeks". In other words, what you have in Stash after week 12 will earn interest on that amount in week 13, and so on.What About Those Who Want To Get Rich Quick?
Yea that’s not going to happen as Inmusik will be building a system where, if someone wanted to withdraw EVERYTHING from their Stash in one go, they would have to wait 12 weeks for that amount to appear in their Wallet. So if people want to dump and run, well, they can’t!This keeps the price from fluctuating violently and really does keep people invested in the platform. And to be honest, quick grab and runs aren’t going to contribute to long term success of anything in life in this bluffer’s eyes.
How Are The Rewards Distributed?
In essence, each track is distributed in to 3 pools:
- Artist Pool - Song creators or labels that distribute rewards accordingly
- Community Pool – Users who vote on the track
- Referrer Pool - Users with "high influence" can share good music on their profiles.
What Do You Mean "High Influence"?
What I mean is, users on the platform will be incentivised to keep a large number of tokens in their Stash. This is because the bigger the Stash, the bigger their vote pays and anything they share can reach more people i.e. you have more influence when you vote.So if you had high influence, your actions would be able to push songs to a larger audience and faster. This will also apply to labels wanting to promote their artists.
Isn’t That Open To Abuse?
Well, that was my concern as well. Having seen some lower quality posts get a lot of attention on platforms like Steemit, just because someone has a high reputation and influence, it started ringing the proverbial alarm bells. But Inmusik is forming a clever way of getting around this.
When a “high influence” user votes on a track, there must also be a relative percentage of upvotes from "low influence" users. If this happens, then the track can be considered as a genuine high quality track.
Therefore a user with a large Stash account shouldn't be able to manipulate things in the community, which comes back to the point about Inmusik wanting the community as a whole to dictate play. That’s not to say there’s no point in having influence. In fact, if a high influence user is in agreement with the community, the effect could be profound in getting great content to rise up faster. It will be interesting to see how this works though once we see the platform launch next year.
Is There More Information On The Technical Aspects Of The Economic Model?
There certainly is! Have a look in their whitepaper and look for chapter 4.5 where they talk about the Economic Model. It does get a bit “mathsy” and for a beginner’s guide, we’ve already covered some fairly technical stuff here so you’re better off taking your time and doing some of your own digging if you like the sound of the platform.
What Other Developments Are Coming Up In The Roadmap?
Currently, 2018 is looking very much like the focus is on the SOUND token sale with marketing strategies and webinars to get the brand name out there. The initial plan of launching a Beta platform at the end of 2018 has been put back to Q2 2019, which makes sense given the dire situation the crypto markets have been in since the beginning of 2018.
Personally, I'm hoping to get myself in as one of the first users and artists on the platform and hopefully, after reading this blog, you will also look forward to getting involved with it! I'm looking forward to the "minimal" product launch of course in 2019 as that's when we'll begin to see what Inmusik is really about.
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How Do I Get Involved?
At the moment, the best bet is to join their Telegram as the team is most responsive on there. Register your e-mail on their website and you will get the newsletters about developments. However, if you're itching to get involved with the beta, speak to them in Telegram, they are a friendly bunch. I do have a referral link as well that you can use if you want to get your hands on some cheap tokens - click here.
Ok, time for a time out!
Let’s resurface after that deep dive and grab some air! Wow, we found out a lot more about the economics of Inmusik here as it looks to be a more social music platform with a real long term approach. In part 3, I'll be sharing some of the webinars with you from the founders of the platform and the answers to the questions I had during the webinars. Goodness, I feel like a journalist!
If you are enjoying the series so far, I'd love to hear from you! And if you'd like to feel the high energy of my music, feel free to have a listen to my profile on Choon.
Now though, it's your turn.
Did you enjoy the article or find it useful?
I'd love to hear from you and if you learnt something new, feel inspired to do some of your own research or felt I didn't cover something well enough, let me know and when I finalise the pdf, I'll make it right!
For now though, take it easy and catch you soon!
Nicky
Contents
The history and technology of Bitcoin
2.1 How and why did Bitcoin come in to existence?
2.2 How does Bitcoin & blockchain actually work (Part 1)?
2.3 How does Bitcoin & Blockchain actually work (Part 2)?Buying Bitcoin
3.1 Being secure with cryptocurrency & wallets
3.2 How to Buy Bitcoin & How Exchanges WorkBlockchain Platforms for Musicians & Music Fans
7.1 Atom Collector Records Part 1
7.2 Choon
7.3 Musicoin Part 1
7.4 Inmusik Part 1, Inmusik Part 2 (you are here)
7.5 Steemit Part 1
7.6 Channels
7.7 Sola
7.8 MindsConcluding Thoughts
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://www.atomcollectorrecords.com/blog/2018/10/09/7-4-bgtc-blockchain-platforms-for-musicians-music-fans-inmusik-part-2/