Web3 App Sona is disrupting the music industry

Disrupting the Music Industry with NFTs

My love for music began at the age of six, when Mrs. DePrima, my music teacher, followed my mom’s car home just to tell her that I needed to be in singing lessons. From that moment on, music had a profound impact on my life. My days were filled with singing and dancing classes or listening to music 24/7. While I’ve moved on from my days of musical theater and jazz combo, I haven’t moved on from my passion for curating, collecting and sharing music.

Throughout my life, I've witnessed the evolution of how we experience music - from pleading with my parents to buy CDs for my purple and gold boombox as a child, to downloading individual songs on iTunes for my green apple iPod as a teenager, and now, subscribing to streaming platforms like Spotify, which offer millions of songs on demand. The Internet dramatically transformed our methods of discovering, sharing, collecting, and purchasing music.

While having millions of songs readily available at our fingertips is fantastic for music enthusiasts, streaming revenue is bleak for musicians. The average artist earns a mere $0.004 per stream[1], which is far from a sustainable income. Musician Weird Al revealed in his Spotify Wrapped Message that despite over 80 million streams on Spotify this year, he earned a total of $12 from those streams. In the message, he thanked his fans for helping him buy a sandwich.

The music industry, as it stands, is facing significant challenges, and Web3 presents an opportunity for a much-needed overhaul.

With technologies like Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Web3 empowers artists with true ownership of their music. Also, the integration of smart contracts can ensure that artists receive fair compensation for their work. At the forefront of this transformative movement is Sona, an innovative platform co-founded by two women I admire, Laura Jaramillo and acclaimed recording artist TOKiMONSTA. Sona exemplifies how Web3 can reshape the music industry into a more equitable and artist-centric space.

Sona’s vision is a music industry that’s more equitable and rewarding for both fans and artists. It combines ad-free music streaming with a marketplace for SONAs: one-of-a-kind digital twins of specific songs that can only be owned by one person at a time.

How Sona empowers artists and fans:

• Music NFTs: Artists mint songs as unique digital assets called SONAs

• Fans Collect SONAs: These SONAs are purchased by fans, who then become the owners of these unique digital music pieces

• Streaming Revenue: Whenever songs (SONAs) are streamed on the platform, they generate streaming revenue for the artist and the fan

• Revenue Sharing: The collector, who owns the SONA, receives up to 70% of the streaming revenue, while the artist gets the remaining 30%

• Streaming Payouts: This revenue is calculated and paid out regularly, ensuring that both artists and collectors earn from streaming songs

• Community-Funded Pool: A portion of each SONA sale contributes to a pool that funds artist payouts, based on streaming numbers

• Social Discovery: SONA emphasizes personal connections over algorithms, letting you discover music through friends and community

What I really love about Sona is that artists and collectors both financially benefit from music's popularity and streaming. It's a perfect win-win: artists monetize their creativity while retaining their IP rights, and fans actively share in their favorite artists' success. Another aspect I'm excited about is that music discovery is driven by who you follow on the platform, not by algorithms. This reintroduces a vital social element to music discovery and sharing, something that platforms like Spotify have overlooked in recent years.

Join me on Sona and be part of the transformation of the music industry:

• Sign up for Sona’s open beta https://app.sona.stream 

• Let’s follow each other, I’m @love, and I’ll follow you back!

• Join the first Sona Auction on 12/7 at 7pm ET, where you can bid on TOKiMONSTA’s song Rouge 

• Auctions will be on the auctions tab in the app. You’ll need to fund your wallet, which can be found on the top right of the auctions page

• Follow SheFi on Twitter and Instagram for sona tutorials

• Subscribe to the public calendar for full schedule of SONAs: https://bit.ly/SONA-auctions

*I have no financial investment in Sona, I’m just a fan of all things music, Web3 and female founders.

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