Background
As Web3 and NFT universe is expanding, it becomes more and more tedious for musicians and artists to identify the right platforms to partner with. We will investigate one music NFT platform after another to identify their value proposition and help musicians build their path to success by prioritizing their participation in NFT projects.
This time we are looking at Catalog.works
Summary
- Curated, 1/1 music NFT platform with great quality content
- Mature and carries great and unique features and functionality, but ETH only
- Gives maximum value back to artists, greater than most web3 music platforms
Day 1: First glance and registration at catalog.works
Very excited to join one of the very mature platforms and communities in Web3 music. Additionally, this is the first platform in the 7 days reviews series among the 1/1 model adopters. I always like pointing out my first impressions, and it’s not always positive, but catalog.works strikes with awesomeness of its featured music from the first time I hit the Play button, and onward to the tracks following it. I might have just joined at the right moment, or whoever moderates the featured list has a very similar taste in music – either way, big thumbs up.
The homepage design and functionality are flawless in every detail: the player, the filtering option for the list of records, album art, clear pricing, connecting the wallet and registration:
I love that email is optional. Wallet-first and clear indication of what email could be used for. After creating the account I was taken to my profile page and filled in some missing pieces. While filling the links I noticed that an example link is audius.co – do I sense a partnership between catalog and audius?
At the first glance, not much changed once I created my profile visually. However, when I pointed at a track I noticed I can add records to “spaces” – while logged out you can still click it, but it would prompt you to log in.
Spaces turn out to be quite promising – I guess there is a plan to extend spaces’ functionality beyond playlist, but even now it’s such a charming, subtle way for me to start organizing my presence on this Web3 music platform.
I’m very eager to cut it to the chase and try to get my track listed here, but the absence of “Join as an artist” calls to action is indicating that it’s unlikely to be an easy NFT music platform to onboard.
What else is good for the first day? Something missing on a few music NFT platforms: filtering and sorting options. Here you can view the catalog by tracks and by artists, you can sort alphabetically or by the release date. You can limit your view to tracks currently listed for sale or auction. You also have a search functionality if you are looking for something specific.
What I’m missing: genre indication, stats (streams, sales) social bits (likes, sharing) – but maybe we have enough social features everywhere else.
Day 2: nft Artist registration and releasing on catalog.works
It’s “curated”. Now, this is not specifically about Catalog.works, but we need to talk about it. Bolero and Sound NFT platforms are also curated. They want to make sure they put success stories as a concrete ground to keep building on it in the future. The folks behind these music platforms may be 100% fair, but if you absolutely have to “curate”, you either disclose your assessment criteria from the start, or you set up a transparent DAO around it to make decisions. Otherwise, forget about decentralization, then forget about the values Web3 brings to the table. Platforms may live like this while we are in the early days, but in the long term – this won’t stand.
That being said, I head over to FAQ section of Catalog, Artists section, where a link to Artist Submissions form is stored. 3 tracks are required as examples of your work, stories surrounding your profile and music are encouraged, and Catalog staff reserves the right to remain silent for 6 months before you can submit something else if they never got back to you. FAQ states that they value the background info over the number of followers on the social networks or music platforms, however, I did not find the “open share section” in the form.
I love finding additional brilliant tools like Typeform that Catalog uses for Artist submission forms. It looks and feels very good, it’s clear and pleasant to fill. However, after hitting submit, I brace myself for a long wait.
Day 3: Music nft platform Community and Support
I’ve been following Catalog on Twitter for a while now, and added it to some of the lists I’m tracking. So far my impression has been that this Web3 music platform’s team promotes its artists quite a lot, which is a great sign. However, after I got acquainted with the artist registration process, I think Catalog should consider expanding their team, given the growing popularity of this music NFT platform, or get the community or DAO to do the preliminary checks of the materials submitted. It’s not the first platform where I see this process as a bottleneck. Not solving it could be an option only in one case – if you are maneuvering the artists and fans populations, in case the fans community doesn’t grow as fast.
It is also not the first platform I’m seeing delegating the FAQ functionality to Notion. Absolutely nothing against it, it’s a very recommendable tool and can serve any site’s FAQ well. The contents of the Catalog.works FAQ are a good read. It answers questions I always have, like whether I can upload the track elsewhere after minting a 1/1 on the catalog (yes, and encouraged to), and how the economy works – which is pretty advanced and simple at the same time. Another important thing mentioned in FAQ – artists are only allowed to post music they have full rights to – no remixes!
Pretty decent amount of activity in Catalog.works discord. A few posts from the last 24 hours in at least 3-4 channels + I’m always happy to see support, feedback, and dev channels. I didn’t have much experience with Discord prior to or outside of music NFTs and Web3 industry, but it seems quite conventional for platforms to also have shilling channel, and Catalog.works is not an exception.
I was happy to see the channel for collaboration, and people asking some really good questions there, even a couple of academic questions. Aparently the community of CATalog.works is into cats – if you own one, can upload a picture of yours into a special channel there.
Day 4: catalog.works Business Model
Let’s start with some basic numbers: Catalog.works states they’ve got $3+ million transitioned from fans to artists via this Web3 music platform. Catalog.works gives 100% of the initial sale to the artist, and recommends 10% creator share to be set for secondary market sales. I already mentioned it in my previous posts, but 10% seems a bit high, and in my opinion slows down the market’s liquidity, because to make a profit you then have to sell the NFT for 110%+ of the price you bought it for. Back in 2021 Catalog’s advantage was that each NFT came together with its own market book, but by now I’m not sure if that brings you ahead of other platforms. (or does it? can’t you buy NFT on any platform and sell on any other platform on that same chain?)
Listing an NFT appears to work with a bidding/auction scheme: artists set their reserve price (nobody can bid lower than that), and then the offers come. Little neat touch to it is that the offers can come with additional promises – if somebody intends to flip it after the purchase, they can give a cut of the profit to the original seller.
I was happy to see the proper split functionality for the tokens that have more than one creator behind them.
Catalog.works is built on Ethereum, which introduces the gas fees we all know about, and we all wish we’ve heard something different about them than “too high”. It is curious that this platform being well integrated with other Web3 tools is still dependent on ETH and not flexible about it. In a way this is also connected to the way Catalog.works encourages musicians to include utilities off the platform in their NFT packages – having them included on the Ethereum blockchain wouldn’t be sensible.
It is not obvious how the founding team makes money, given that artists get 100% of the 1/1 record. Looking at their Terms & Conditions I assume they charge a percentage from the secondary sales, which is displayed at the point of purchase. I haven’t yet found something affordable for myself but will look closer into it tomorrow while looking closer at the artists. I have found an interview, where somebody from the founding team tells that they see potential ways to monetize by keeping 1% ownership of the catalog’s inventory or charging for featuring tracks on the homepage.
Day 5: web3 musicians of catalog.works
Prepare for a whole lot of praising today. I’ll start with Drea Rose – such a sweet voice, production, style, I could listen to her all day long.
- Green Ring publishes mesmerizing trance and EDM records;
- Check out Jackintheway if you’re into rap music, and chill beats;
- reid impresses with experimental sound design beats
- Toha – Ochikiwa is a sweet trippy banger offering a show-entry utility
Browsing the list of artists, I’m not noticing a roster of renowned musicians, although it’s almost weird given the superior quality of records collection Catalog.works offers. Overall – very artistic, predominated by electronic, and what I noticed is that we don’t really have enough happy tunes. It’s not depressive, but very serious. Good folks like thomTide and Jerry Folk stand out with a positive vibe.
Day 6: pressing (aka Minting) on catalog.works
1. I didn’t have my hopes up high for getting my music into this Web3 music platform, although I had a perfect occasion for it – the release of the W3MA track by Seva M. Either way, no mint for me.
2. My considerations to buy an NFT on Catalog were initially slowed down by ETH and the gas fees associated. However, I did check the gas fee for Drea Rose’s “Gone” which was auctioned with 0.08 ETH reserve and it turned out to be only $2 in gas – that’s acceptable for gas.
3. 10% artist share appears to be conventional, and I’ll have to look closer into how well Catalog.works NFTs sell on the secondary market. To me, 10% sounds high, but the songs featured on this Web3 music platform appear to be selling so well that I might be wrong about my evaluation, and I’m happy to be mistaken.
Browsing the info about music minted on Catalog.works you start getting a taste of what success is like on this platform. If you are curious about what it looks like, check out VÉRITÉ profile and her tracks listed for 100+ WETH that were originally bought for 1 WETH and more with 25% artist share. To sum it up, she is a perfect combination of great voice + production + branding.
Day 7: key findings
Let me summarize it:
- The exceptional quality of the content of Catalog.works comes at the high price of heavy curation of the material proposed for this music NFT platform;
- Cool outstanding features: spaces (variation of playlists), splits and slices (cut of the next sale of an NFT), live auctions;
- The UI is addictively gorgeous, and the streaming is of great quality;
- Only supporting ETH and WETH, which sucks, but gas prices these days seem to be reasonable;
- Music NFT artists should be quite certain about their decision to mint with Catalog.works as it’s a 1/1 platform – it’s not advisable to mint the same music elsewhere after
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