BentenSound

Problem #1

The modern music industry is awful, it is extremely competitive and unfair. For example, more than 90% of musicians are complete unknowns, and moreover, artists get only 12% of the money the music industry makes.

Besides, technology has significantly changed the music business. As a result, the ballooning increase of convenience for consumers has rapidly become a bust for musicians trying to make a living.

For example, Bette Midler has written some popular music. She tweeted that she made $114.11 on 4,175,149 plays of her work.

Problem #2

The YouTube and gaming industries are similar to the music industry, but in addition to the same problems, they also have a problem with finding music. All videos and games must have music, but most novice YouTubers and game developers cannot buy it.

Solution

Decentralized networks allow for the creation of free platforms for distributing content, and cryptocurrencies allow for the creation of fee-free payments for artists. BentenSound uses both technologies and both problems to solve them both — on the one hand, YouTubers and game developers can use absolutely free music for their videos/games, on the other hand, musicians will gain promotions and donations without fees.

For example, a video of a young YouTuber that used a free song can go viral, and as a result, they can share the popularity with the musician. Or a young game developer that did not have money while developing their first games can become successful, and as a result, express gratitude to a musician and share their revenue.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

1. Allows young artists and bands to get first money and listeners.
2. Building a product that can make life easier on both YouTubers as well as indie game studios, and solves a problem for both of them.
3. I used Netlify Functions and Now.sh as backend for handling Lightning payments, which is able to scale with the growth of our community.

What's next for BentenSound

Right now my main goal is to engage as many new musicians as possible. But in addition, I am working on improving the overall UX: add filtering by genres/moods/themes and optimize work with blockstack (I have plans to add backend-proxy to speed up downloading of tracks).

In the future, I have plans to increase potential revenue for musicians: First, I want to add the possibility to create and sell merchandise (like t-shirts, mugs, etc.), and then I want to add partnerships with Qrates to sell real vinyl.

Built With

• blockstack
• lightning
• vue