The music NFT market exploded in 2021 and is still growing, peaking at $27 million in primary sales in October, 2021. Waterandmusic lists 50+ music NFT platforms in its database.
This comparison looks at a selection of 8 niche NFT exchanges aimed specifically at the music market with the criteria that they either utilize an interesting concept or have acquired a significant volume and/or fundraising. Unlike many of the more general NFT platforms, most of these music-specific exchanges are new – founded in 2020 or later, with a few still in the fund-raising and pre-launch phases. Moreover, each has a unique niche business model aimed at attracting musicians and investors, with its own strategy for incentivization and connecting stakeholders.
These music-specific exchanged are now curated, although TokenTrax is built on the premise of rewarding music tastemakers for curating playlists. All except Audius power (or will power) creators to mint on their platform. Only Makerspace (best known for partnering with Christie’s to sell Beeple) and Royal accept debit cards, and MakerSpace also accepts PayPal, the only NFT exchange of any kind we’ve found so far to do so.
Size is difficult to quantify because so many of the platforms are brand new. Makerspace, and Audius, which launched in 2018 have $31 million and $7.6 million in monthly trading volume respectively. Audius signed 5.3 million new musicians in January 2022, and Melos which launched in 2020 also traded $2.7 million in volume as of January. Neweew powerhouses like Royal have significant fundraising, $71 million in this case. TokenTrax and Loud will launch in 2022 but have interesting models.
Because of the niche nature of some of these exchanges, the business model and community they attract are telling. Core business models range from:
- Creators receive revenue share of streaming (Audius)
- Play to earn rather than straight sales (ModaDao)
- Creators sell a percentage of future royalties with the NFT (Royal)
- Creators sell shares in the copywrite itself (Opulous)
- AI enhanced collaboration between artists to create scarce original music (Melos)
- Rewards to curators for popular playlists & mixes, so tastemakers and fans share revenues (TokenTrack)
- Creators will receive 100% of sales from NFT’s streamed (Loud)
- Social market place connecting musicians with eachother (NFT Tone)
In addition to these niche marketplace, most of the NFT exchanges also mint or accept music NFTs, including OpenSea, the largest one, and Decentraland, which has launched a Metaverse Festival featuring international musicians, along with SuperRare, a curated exchange with some music, Foundation, a curated exchange with a section dedicated to music, Mintable, and Rarible. This comparison is only a starting point. Please do your own research as this space is as fraught with scams and rug pulls as any other, if not more so.
Audius
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- Type: Open
- Background: Founded in 2018, Audius is a streaming music and sharing platform that’s billed as a hybrid of services like Spotify and SoundCloud, with the added benefit of token rewards for users and creators alike.
Musicians Deadmau5, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, Weezer, and Skrillex have released songs via the site, which has attracted more than 5.3 million unique users over the past month, according to the site’s own analytics.
Audius is designed to provide artists with a direct link with their listeners and was originally built to be used on the Ethereum network, but it has gradually embraced rival blockchain Solana as a way to scale to meet increasing demand.
The platform, which is a community-owned* and artist-controlled music-sharing protocol, lets artist upload their tunes and songs and users distribute, monetize, and stream songs using the app. The way Audius works is, unlike Spotify, creators are not paid directly by Audius based on streams, but instead are given the infrastructure needed to monetize their work in the way they see fit, including through sales of NFTs.
*Audius has token-based governance via a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which was established when the platform aidropped 50 million free tokens to artists and fans back in October 2020. - Network / blockchain: Initially built on Ethereum, they are now gradually moving to the Solana blockchain. The firm announced recently the latest step in that process: bridging its Ethereum-based $AUDIO token to Solana.
What this means is any $AUDIO token holder can move the ERC-20 token from Ethereum to Solana using Wormhole’s Portal, a cross-platform bridge that lets users “wrap” an asset from one blockchain to use it on the other. When bridging, the native Ethereum tokens are locked into Wormhole’s smart contract, which then produces new native Solana tokens to use instead.
- Target market: Independent music artists mostly use the platform, but some record label artists join Audius.
- Support: Online
- Token support: ERC-20 token, Sol
- Supported currencies: $AUDIO is the official and only cryptocurrency of the Audius platform. Let’s note that, artists aren’t earning fiat currencies (USD, GBP, EUR, etc.) for their streams on Audius but rather $AUDIO tokens.
- Wallets support: Uniswap
- What coin pays the transaction fees? The $AUDIO token.
The $AUDIO Token is also used to gain governance at the ratio of 1 token to 1 vote. Token holders can propose changes to the protocol such as feature integrations, royalty rates, token distribution, fee pool allocation, and staking rewards.
All proposals are subject to 5% of staked $AUDIO quorum and 50% majority. This means that for a proposal to pass, at least 5% of all staked $AUDIO must vote on the proposal and more than 50% of the votes must be ‘For’ the proposal. Only those running a node may make a proposal on-chain.
Occasionally, the Protocol airdrops generous amounts of tokens to artists based on the total listening time and the engagement an artist has shown on the platform.
- Fees: Artists get 90% of the revenue, with 10% going to node operators that support the network. The platform doesn’t take any pay cut; the platform remains sustainable through funding rounds and incentivizes employees and early investors using the $AUDIO token. To trade your $AUDIO tokens for cash, you can use Uniswap to transfer the $AUDIO token to Ethereum. Then use a crypto wallet like Coinbase to transfer from Ethereum to USD, EUR, or other currencies.
- Track record of stability: The platform currently has more than 5 million users, and at its peak in April 2021, music was streamed on the platform 7.5 million times. As a result, Audius can start competing with SoundCloud and Spotify, although there is still a long way to go. For comparison, Spotify has 365 million monthly active users, while SoundCloud has 175 million monthly listeners.
The platform also announced a significant partnership with TikTok in August 2021, bringing them closer to a large audience of music lovers.
- Any interesting features? Artists get premium features that allow them to display NFT collectibles on their profile by staking the $AUDIO token.
You don’t need to know much about blockchain to join the platform, this is why the platform is popular even from outside the crypto community. In addition, the platform automatically rewards specific achievements on the platform. For example, the top 5 trending songs of the week get automatically rewarded with an $AUDIO token.
Finally, developers can also build their apps on the platform and access a unique audio catalog on Audius. - How do you make money on this platform? To earn money on Audius as an artist, you need to have a certain number of monthly streams of your songs. Unfortunately, the total number of monthly streams on the platform is relatively low compared to other streaming platforms like Spotify and Soundcloud (5 million users for Audius, compared to 365 million monthly active users for Spotify and 175 million monthly listeners for SoundCloud.)
However, they pay higher than Spotify and Soundcloud, in the sense that artists get 90% of their revenue on Audius, while on the mainstream platforms, they only get a very small percentage. For reference, on Audius an artist gets $0.35 cents per stream while on Spotify and SoundCloud they get between $.0033-$.0054 per stream — meaning a song could have to be streamed three times, on the mainstream platforms, for an artist to make a penny.
Additionally, as an artist on Audius, If you have a song on the top 5 weekly trending tracks, you get rewarded with 100 $AUDIO sent to your Audius wallet.
Have a top 5 weekly trending playlist, and you get rewarded with 100 $AUDIO tokens sent to your Audius Wallet.
Be a top 10 monthly API App: if you drive traffic to Audius, you will receive 500 $AUDIO tokens to your wallet. All weekly tokens are sent out on Fridays at noon.
If you want to upload some music to Audius then you should just create an account and go to https://audius.co/upload, to upload your tunes. The process is straightforward. - Do they allow NFT creation? Audius isn’t an NFT minting platform, though it does offer Audius Collectibles, a feature where musicians can display their NFTs on their Audius profile.
- Size: Trading volume $7,690,935
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No.
https://audius.co/
ModaDao
- Type: Open
- Background: Founded in 2021, this project is still being launched. ModaDao is an NFT Music Aggregator that enables users to stream NFT audio files from any supported NFT platform and chain with a simple layer of usability that brings a unified listening experience to NFT-based music. In addition to enabling users to listen to NFT files without requiring ownership transfers across multiple platforms, the aggregator will include integrations allowing musicians and creatives to upload their music to IPFS and allow direct streaming to other users.
In this new Music3 paradigm, access to music for personal listening provides utility, while NFT-based ownership is a means of collecting/investing in the art form. Designed for the metaverse and the play-to-earn era, MODA is dedicated to the adoption of Web3 in the music industry via NFTs, micro-licensing, DAO governance and DeFi. - Network / blockchain: Ethereum
- Target market: Musicians and fans.
- Support: Online
- Token support: ERC-20 token
- Supported currencies: $MODA token, USDC for the investment phase.
- Wallets support: any ETH compatible wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? USDC, $MODA
- Fees: Not available at the time of writing.
- Track record of stability: It’s still being launched.
- Any interesting features? MODA is being established as a not-for-profit foundation (with a tokenized value structure) with the purpose of pushing Web3 music forwards and establishing a more sustainable future for audio creators. Therefore, the token model itself contains a balance of free and open-source tooling for the music world and value-creating functions which will potentially drive its long-term growth.
At the core, MODA is designed to bridge the legacy music industry with Web3, and to also bridge existing networks through standards and interoperability. - How do you make money on this platform? MODA is designing a publishing entity that takes the aspects of music publishing that are proven to make money but flips it into a system that benefits the artists and ecosystem over external shareholders. This will mean, in most cases, that songwriters will control their rights and only use MODA Publishing services to maximize the earnings on the music.
MODA Publishing entity is meant to ensure an ongoing stream of new music and talent on the MODA Technology. In short, publishing Admin and Sync services will help fuel the Web3 Sustainability Loop. - Do they allow NFT creation? Yes, according to their website, they are planning to make it possible to mint sell, buy, trade and stream Audio NFTs.
- Size: Not launched yet
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
https://www.modadao.io/
Royal
- Type: Open
- Background: Launched in 2021, Royal is an NFT music royalty start-up platform. It allows users to buy certain parts of the song and then make money from the song they invested through royalties. How this works is, artists can sell ownership* of their music and fan experiences on Royal through NFTs. Collectors who buy these NFTs can claim partial ownership through blockchain-based NFTs. Once they own the NFTs, they can receive royalties as artists earn capital for their music. The founders are Justin Blau, known on the music scene as DJ 3LAU, and JD Ross. The company raised about $55 million 3 months ago from sponsors (2021), in which Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) had the largest share.
*(Read here the difference between ownership and copyright) - Network / blockchain: Ethereum
- Target market: Musicians and collectors
- Support: Online
- Token support: ERC-20 token
- Supported currencies: $MATIC, ETH, USDC
- Wallets support: Metamask
- What coin pays the transaction fees? USDC
- Fees: Not mentioned at the time of writing. You need to pay for the gas fee.
- Track record of stability: It is still in beta version. It is just launched now in 2022.
- Any interesting features? Royal says it will enable you to tokenize and monetize a completed musical work. Let’s say you made five songs. You can tokenize those songs and assign ownership to your fans. Here, ownership means fans can claim royalties for the songs. Let’s say you have 100 limited editions of each of those five songs, and you sell them each for $100. You’re a small artist. You can sell any percentage of ownership in that music to your fans and generate about $10,000 per track.
Artists that have existing songs out there that are popular might command a higher price point, might release more tokens. It’s really up to the artists to figure out what they want their pricing to be. Essentially, it gives fans unique ownership of the music through royalties.
- How do you make money on this platform? Developing and selling your own NFT’s is possible.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes, it is the purpose of the platform.
- Size: $71M in funding
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? YES
https://royal.io/
Opulous
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- Type: Open
- Background: Created in 2021, Opulous brings Decentralized Finance (DeFi) to the music industry, changing how artists access the funding they need and providing a launchpad for music copyright-backed NFTs. Opulous DeFi Loans are backed by future royalties and will replace the deals traditionally forced on promising artists.
The platform features: – NFT launchpad – NFT exchange – DeFi loans. - Network / blockchain: Ethereum blockchain (NFTs) & Algorand blockchain (DeFi)
- Target market: Built for Creators & Investors
- Support: Online
- Token support: ERC-20
- Supported currencies: $OPUL, ETH, stablecoins & fiat
- Wallets support: Algorand wallet & MetaMask, MyEtherWallet, Trust Wallet or similar ERC20 wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? $OPUL
- Fees: Not mentioned at the time of writing.
- Track record of stability: It is still being launched.
- Any interesting features? Opulous claims they are the first platform to launch music copyright NFTs. Unlike other NFTs, Opulous tokens offer buyers a share in the music copyright itself (read here the difference between ownership and copyright). These NFTs will be able to generate monthly royalty revenue and possibly increase in value as an artist’s career progresses. NFT owners can track this passive income and withdraw their earnings directly from their Opulous account.
- How do you make money on this platform? Musicians can make money by selling their music, while fans and investors can make money by earning royalties and interest with Defi loans.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes, with their NFT launchpad
- Size: 1.5M in funding
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes, you can mint and sell lucrative music copyright NFTs
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
https://opulous.org/
Melos STudio
- Type: Open
- Background: Founded in 2020 in Taiwan, Melos is a collaboration platform for musicians and music creators. Melos.Studio platform leverages an AI (artificial intelligence) engine called Metis AI that uses a DNA Tree to categorize and forge different music files into new ones. This enables users of the Melos.Studio platform to have access to a platform that lowers the barrier of entry to creating new music while enabling an economy of fan-based music files. The end goal of the platform is to create “unique and scarce” music with every musical piece. This would enable musicians to collaborate in creating truly scarce and valuable pieces of artwork that can only exist on Melos and nowhere else.
- Network / blockchain: ETH, BSC and FLOW blockchain
- Target market: Musicians and music creators with an emphasis on the aspect of the music community.
- Support: Online
- Token support: BEP20
- Supported currencies: $MELOS, USDT, ETH
- Wallets support: Metamask, Binance chain wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? USDT
- Fees: Not mentioned at the time of writing. Gas fee must be paid.
- Track record of stability: It’s still a young project. Melos Studios has more than 800,000 registered users.
- Any interesting features? The platform is designing a discovery mechanism based on the Web3 content recommendation algorithm and applying it to its music NFT model. The Web3 content discovery mechanism can add value to the community by assisting creators in creating high-quality music content and helping fans access works they choose, benefitting music creators, users and future bands.
Melos Studio claims to have created a structure that eliminates the need for music creators to rely on record labels to sell their albums and allows them to reap the financial benefits of music without giving “the lion’s share” to the intermediaries. In addition, Melos aims to assist musicians in developing a more personal relationship with their fans. The Melos content discovery mechanism comprises two algorithms: the NFT content and wave points recommendation algorithms. Aside from these components, Melos provides music libraries and audition features to make it easier to find creators’ NFTs in the marketplace. - How do you make money on this platform? Creating and selling NFTs.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes, you can create, upload and list your Music NFT on Melos. The platform also uses ‘Lazy Mint’. This tool allows users to save a lot of GAS fees, the cost of writing data into a block, which has been a burden for many starting creators. As there is no way to predict whether a produced NFT will be recognized and purchased by others, it becomes risky to invest a lot of money into a block before it has proved to be profitable. Lazy Mint was developed to overcome this deterrent so that creators can carelessly start their musical process.
- Size: Melos had a monthly trading volume of more than $2.7 million for music NFTs in January 2022. The Melos marketplace is ranked among the top ten NFT trading platforms on BNB Smart Chain and the top five in the DappRadar BSC marketplace.
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
- https://www.melos.studio/
TokenTraxx
- Type: Open
- Background: Listed in 2020 but set to launch in 2022, TokenTraxx platform tokenizes audio tracks, which are curated into playlists and albums in the same way as Spotify, but with a different monetization model. NFT platform tokentraxx allows fans to become stakeholders of the artists they love by buying tokenized shares.
- Network / blockchain: They have a multichain approach using Zilliqa, Polygon & Ethereum. Zilliqa provides speed; low carbon footprint and strategic opportunity — for example metaverse experiences like Metapolis and a range of initiatives in e-sports & gaming. Ethereum maximizes the secondary market opportunity for high-value NFTs. Polygon provides low gas fees that make NFTs accessible, environmentally friendly and seamless interoperability with the broader NFT ecosystem.
- Target market: Musicians, music curators, and collectors.
- Support: Online
- Token support: ERC-20 compatible token
- Supported currencies: $TRAXX, USDT, USDC
- Wallets support: Polygon wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? UDSC, USDT
- Fees: Token||Traxx will operate a Freemium+ Subscription business model. Token||Traxx will generate NFTs sale commission of 10% on primary sales and 2.5% on secondary sales.
- Track record of stability: Set for launch in 2022.
- Any interesting features? Using the platform, music curators are rewarded for finding, compiling, and sharing great music. Fans can get exclusive NFTs from the creators that they believe will bring value to them. It assesses music collectors on their ability to buy and sell at a discount, rather than their overall value. Essentially, you’re trying to time your investment so that you can profit from a rising market while the track is still young.
- How do you make money on this platform? By enabling tokenized songs, albums and merchandise, they aim to give control back to the creators. Therefore, it allows creators to make money by selling tokenized shares of their music. The platform also aims to provide curators and tastemakers with the ability to monetize playlists and mix choices. Basically, fans will share financial revenues with the artists.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes
- Size: Not available yet
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
https://tokentraxx.com/
Loud market
- Type: Open
- Background: Launched in February 2022, LOUD Market is an *ownership-based marketplace where musicians and fans can interact seamlessly.
It aims to restructure how musicians profit from their work by removing the complicated process associated with streaming, and all the unnecessary middlemen. Musicians will be able to sell their music directly to their fans as collectible and tradable items on the platform. In line with this, musicians get to keep 100% of their sale price as Loud Market takes 0% fees on all on-market transactions.
*(Read here the difference between ownership and copyright) - Network / blockchain: Binance Smart Chain (BSC)
- Target market: Artists and fans
- Support: Online
- Token support: BEP-20
- Supported currencies: $LOUD, $BUSD (dollar pegged crypto)
- Wallets support: Metamask, Binance Chain Wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? $LOUD
- Fees: 0% Fees on NFT Sale. Content creators will be subject to small BNB fees when creating (“minting”) NFTs which is a requirement when performing any function on the BSC.
- Track record of stability: This is still being launched.
- Any interesting features? Artists are able to choose the sale/starting auction price for their music and then make sales directly to fans and consumers. Following this, they keep 100% of the sale price and pass nothing on to the platform.
- How do you make money on this platform? NFTs can be listed at a single sale price or sold through auction. Additionally, artists can include a “Royalty fee” guaranteeing them a percentage of all future sales. $LOUD tokens will be accepted as payment by the content creators, musicians and artists.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes
- Size: Too early to tell.
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
- https://loudnft.co/
NFT Tone
- Type:Open
- Background: Launched in May 2021, NFT TONE is a social marketplace offering music artists the ability to connect with each other along with investors and digitally exchange NFTs for their creations.
- Network / blockchain: Binance Smart Chain blockchain
- Target market: Creators and fans
- Support: Online
- Token support: BEP-20
- Supported currencies: $TONE, USDT
- Wallets support: Metamask, Binance Chain Wallet
- What coin pays the transaction fees? $TONE
- Fees: For each transaction, an 8% tax fee is applied.
- Track record of stability: An average of $150 trading volume in the last months, which is quite low. However, the project is still being launched.
- Any interesting features? Easy creations of NFTs that are sold or auctioned to supporters and investors.
- How do you make money on this platform? Not clear yet.
- Do they allow NFT creation? Yes
- Size: $1M cap, 34k Holders (from their website)
- Does the marketplace accept debit and credit cards? No
https://www.nfttone.io/#about
Note: Other platforms that allow NFTs for music:
OpenSea
OpenSea.io has the largest NFT marketplace for musicians. Minting an audio NFT using OpenSea.io is a fairly straightforward process.
https://opensea.io/collection/music
Guide how to create music NFT on OpenSea
https://medium.com/geekculture/how-to-sell-music-as-an-nft-ae546fdefd05
Super Rare
The platform hosts some NFT music.
For example, SuperRare is hosting Jerry Garcia Music Art’s NFT Art and Music Tour as a result of a partnership with his label.
https://superrare.com/
Rarible
You can create or buy audio NFT on Rarible.
https://rarible.com/search/collections/audio
Foundation
They have a whole section dedicated to music NFT.
https://foundation.app/tags/music%20nft
Mintable
You can choose the category music on Mintable website/ app to browse music NFT.
https://mintable.app/
Decentraland
To promote NFT music, Decentraland launched a Metaverse Festival that features international artists. They were the first ones to host an Ethereum virtual music festival.
https://decentraland.org/
MakerSpace
Art marketplace with discovery for audio/visual colloboration that can also be minted and sold (Makerspace)
Marketplace Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX)
The blockchain platform Worldwide Asset Exchange (WAX) partnered with an internationally renowned DJ to enable NFT content such as recent shows as well as video clips, collectible pins, pieces of collaborative artwork.
https://on.wax.io/wax-io/
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