Sonata Season Two

Season two is focused on music channels and their communities.

We believe in an open future for music where curation is driven from the bottom up.

An open future in which communities around the world can create their cozy corners on the Internet and have the means to make them grow. 

On which music platforms are built for composability, collaboration and community ownership, incentivizing the growth of a net new economy for the music industry. 

A music platform that has similar characteristics to mycelium: a shared structure that allows other ecosystems to grow and thrive. 

One which doesn’t impose taste, trends, or favors certain music or artists over others. 

A place where music lovers from around the world can find a home to share their passion and discover music from every style, decade, country, and genre.

Learnings from Existing Music Platforms

Napster and The Pirate Bay were the last grassroots revolution in the music industry, empowering everyone to share and listen to music.

An initial wave of platforms emerged, most of which were shut down shortly after.

Only open P2P networks have persisted, remaining operational despite facing years of challenges.

Eventually, entrepreneurs decided to partner with the traditional music industry incumbents - giving birth to the current era of music streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and Tidal. 

There are two models that have been successful in the post Napster era:

Royalty Based Streaming Platforms

Companies like Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music, which work closely with labels. 

User Generated Streaming Platforms

Music platforms like SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or Audiomack were home to a new wave of original music and newborn artists and music communities. 

SoundCloud and Audiomack eventually ended up partnering with big labels, and Bandcamp was acquired, showing once more how difficult it is to build a new kind of music platform that goes against their interests. 

Both categories often rely on editorial playlists, AI, and user behavior algorithms for music curation, creating a reinforcing loop where most music gets buried beneath the algo.

This also negatively impacts artists worldwide, leading to decreased earnings and limited distribution opportunities.

A third model which never fully scaled is:

Music Curation Platforms

Websites like Hype Machine, ThisSongIsSick, and Indie Shuffle thrived during the blog era but eventually lost most of their activity. 

They focused on curation and fostering music communities, streaming music via embedded players and music streaming platform APIs.

However, they didn’t have a platform model, and didn’t have the means to capture the value and sharing the value they were creating with their curators.

We will change how music discovery and curation work.

Sonata exists to create a shared economy around music curation and discovery. 

Previous attempts failed because they didn’t adopt a platform approach, preventing those websites and curators from benefiting from the platform’s success and forcing them to rely on ads. 

Crypto changes this. 

By leveraging crypto we can build Sonata to be a new kind of music curation platform.

One that favors human curation and a diversity of styles, moving away from editorialism and sharing ownership with the Sonata community. 

Season two is all about music channels and their communities. 

Today we started quietly launching new features to make Sonata a place where everyone can share ownership in the economy we are creating through NOTES.

We want everyone to be able to use the NOTES they earn on Sonata as they will become increasingly more prevalent in the coming months... 

Music Channels 

Every music channel on Sonata now has their own address thanks to Privy.

Although initially controlled by Sonata, channel addresses will be eventually transferred to channel moderators to manage them as they please.

We’re starting by routing 10% of any tips distributed within a channel back to the channel address. This is complimented by a weekly distribution of NOTES to the top channels - expected to go live before the end of the week. 

Eventually, channels will be able to reward their communities by using their treasuries to incentivize curation that aligns with their taste and ethos.

We have also rolled out a new UI for channels, featuring moderators, NOTES balance, top songs, and more.

Channel moderators will also receive a badge indicating the channel they are running.

Sonata Council

We've been reaching out to music channel moderators with the goal of creating a council to help us run Sonata.

We believe the only way for Sonata to thrive and become a global music curation platform is by building it together and sharing ownership with our community.

The Council will initially have two main functions:

1. Share feedback on the present and future of Sonata.

2. Help decide on the new music channels to be added.

All Council members will be rewarded with NOTES for their participation.

We are thrilled about the potential a lean, small, and fast Council can bring to Sonata.

If we haven’t reached out and you’re interested, please DM me here.

Collect Songs

Today, all Sound and Zora songs shared on Sonata feature a collect button that redirects you to the platform where you can collect the song.

Stake to Earn

We enabled the option to stake your NOTES on channels to get rewards for supporting the music and communities that you love.

In today’s version of Sonata - the main function of NOTES is for tipping. We’ve had nearly 1500 users earn NOTES for sharing music.

With channel staking - you can take those NOTES and stake them on the channels you are most passionate about. As those channels earn NOTES through 10% of tips and weekly distributions - stakers may be eligible for NOTES rewards based on how moderators decide to distribute them back to their community.

We will share more on "Staking" dynamics soon.

NOTES Back

We want to incentivize curators to distribute their full daily allowance. We will shortly roll out a NOTESback system, in which users are incentivized to distribute their NOTES and get 5% of their tips back to their account. 

Sonata Pro 

Sonata Pro is the premium subscription of Sonata built in partnership with Hypersub.

By purchasing Sonata Pro - you’ll unlock a custom badge next to your name and a boost on your daily allowance. The longer your subscribe - the more your daily allowance increases.

With Season Two - we’ll allow users to redeem their NOTES for a Sonata Pro subscription.

We are building Sonata to become one of the leading open music platforms of the future.

We believe that shared ownership, composability, and openness are key drivers in creating a new music economy powered by crypto rails.

We don’t see anyone as a competitor. Even if you’re competing with Sonata, we will find ways to collaborate, with the ultimate goal of creating vibrant new markets.

Sonata Season Two marks just the beginning of what we can achieve by fostering a new economy where every music lover, and eventually every artist, can benefit.

We invite music lovers from all over the world to come together to create a new way of discovering and sharing music.

Music is THE BEST.