Unlike last year, when the music business was obsessed with cryptocurrency, this year comes at a time when the crypto market, like most of the economy, is in decline.
The attention recession and potential economic recession
Well, the market downturn is not limited to cryptocurrency. It’s also possible that some of the crypto “downturn” is just the predicted return to normalcy following the exaggerated high. However, there are concerns that the music Web 3.0 market may lose steam as consumers become more selective about how they invest their time and money.
Education is one of the most significant obstacles.
To be interested in purchasing an NFT, a music lover must first learn what an NFT is, why it is essential, and how to obtain one.
While it may appear as if everyone in the music industry has gotten the concept by now, customer knowledge remains very limited. As of Q3 2021, around 20% of worldwide customers recognized what NFTs were, and a comparable amount was interested in purchasing limited-edition digital collectibles from their musical heroes. It is not just a matter of convincing users to pay attention, but also of artists and their crews.
Major record labels that have committed to Web 3.0 are still training their own staff about the sector and attempting to pique the interest of artists — at a time when many have resumed their focus on in-person activities such as touring.
The bear market has benefits
Nonetheless, the bear market has a lot of potential advantages.
A crypto winter would assist to separate the legitimate firms and ideas from the money grabs in the existing saturated field. A bear market will be an excellent moment for those who are serious to focus and begin the work and effort of resolving the many challenges and impediments that became apparent during the hype phase.
One guest from a music NFT firm mentioned how difficult it was to be focused during the 2021 crypto hype, and that they are a lot more productive and effective today.
The bear market may also be beneficial to fans, who were often priced out when crypto was booming and are now able to acquire their first NFTs at cheaper costs. Despite the market collapse, money is still pouring into the music Web 3.0 industry.
DAO Dreams Never Die, a record label, just secured $2.5 million in initial investment, anotherblock, a blockchain-based music rights marketplace, raised $1.2 million, and NFT startup Highlight acquired $11 million. From the perspective of NYC.NFT, there also appears to be no lack of recent grads eager to begin jobs in music and Web 3.0.
There are still opposing viewpoints.
In the Web 3.0 music space, there are two opposing schools of thought. While one side is creating music-crypto ventures atop incumbent frameworks, the other side is scrapping those frameworks almost altogether and building a new, blockchain-based music company alongside the conventional one.
While big labels and other established stakeholders dominate the former, independents and music industry outsiders dominate the latter.
This separation persists, as evidenced by the attendance at various events.
There were also significantly more conferences and speeches about how NFTs may be used to promote new products to consumers than about utilizing NFTs to solve fundamental — but less enticing — problems like optimizing royalty payments. In the larger scheme of things, the music crypto realm is still fairly new.
But, perhaps, the bear market will also be a moment to focus on less glamorous (but possibly revolutionary) undertakings, and for these two opposing ideologies to pay close attention to and benefit from each other.
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