Background
As Web3 and NFT universe is expanding, it becomes more and more tedious for the musicians and artists to identify the right platforms to partner with. We are going to investigate each Web3 music platform one by one to identify their value proposition and help musicians to build their path to success by prioritizing their participation in NFT projects.
This time we are looking at a fairly new, but rapidly maturing Web3 music platform – Nina Protocol.
Summary
- The strong side of this platform is simplicity for both the music fans and artists
- The platform is in development stages, support and community are finetuning
- Nina takes a portion of the transaction fees instead of a portion of the NFT sale
Day 1: First look and register
At the first glance Nina strikes with simplicity, clean look, and authenticity not many Web3 music platforms can show off. It’s definitely an experience different from the majority of platforms with catchy, but often overly-populated design.
You get to music after two scrolls, and no offense, but I had a really poor first and second impression from what I’ve heard in the highlights. It’s not that the music is bad, but maybe I got spoiled from the supreme quality we are offered these days, and simply wasn’t ready to hear something raw and unmastered, like this cover of Life after Love. At about the 5th track you actually start adjusting and appreciating, but boy it’s a rough ride. Expect a lot of experimental music ahead!
What I really did enjoy is that everything is working! This platform is not pretending to be anything more than it is, and you can trust that what’s promised is delivered. I was able to connect my wallet – Phantom this time, as Nina operates on Solana (we’ve seen Vault.fan running on it) and Arweave (which makes it a Pianity sibling)
Day 2: Web3 Musicians Onboarding
The next stop of our journey with Nina web3 music platform is onboarding as an artist. Luckily I have a couple of tracks to show off. Hitting one of the “publish your music” links brings you to a quick explanation that for each track you need to get Nina Publishing Credits (NPCs), and a link to the Google form to apply for them. Yet again, simplicity is key here.
After filling out the form I went straight to the FAQ to look for any info on how long the wait is going to be, but I wasn’t able to find additional info on this. I’m really curious what their artist onboarding looks like, and if I don’t get a response any time soon – I will be reaching out to the community.
Similarly, I requested to get a hub – the part of the platform that was launched recently, and functions as a place where artists, labels, and bloggers can make posts and store their music and connections. I might be too picky, but I’m guessing that having hubs on a subdomain prevents the platform from having a single point of authorization – you need to log in again once you go to the hubs, but on the bright side the main interface is well synched to them
Day 3: Nina Community and Support
Judging by the voting that was open to identifying which platform we are reviewing this time, Nina is able to activate its community and beat another Web3 Music Platform like Audius, Catalog, or Mintsongs.
It’s been some time since I submitted the publishing credit request, and I decided to reach out to the community’s chatting platforms, starting from discord. We’ve seen some very active communities recently, so the benchmark is high. Noticing some active channels, but can’t say this about most of them. Nina’s discord could use a little clean up.
The other two social media listed on the site are Instagram and Twitter. While waiting for a response on discord, I decided to snoop around FAQ a little more. Found a broken link – if you click on Publish, and then hit the FAQ link, the page is not found, but there are ways to actually get there, for example from the burger menu in the top-left corner.
It’s even strange, that I haven’t seen any bad FAQs in the Web3 space so far. Nina has yet another exemplary case of an FAQ well structured and well written. As a younger platform, I’m noticing a few more promises here on how things will work soon, and it’s completely acceptable at this point.
Day 4: NFT Business Model
This Web3 music platform has quite some road ahead of it, and here is something that I’ve learned from blog posts about it, and the FAQ section – the platform is in the final stages of the Proof of Concept phase, during which the participation in the platform is moderated. Once all the functionality is tested and ironed, getting on the platform is going to be simplified, same goes for the Hubs. It looks like Nina thought of multiple ways for the participants to monetize their content on Nina, including playlists, referrals, and purchases done through hubs. Nina’s income is planned to be from taking a portion of the transaction fee.
This is different from other platforms we reviewed. Other Web3 music platforms are charging a percentage of the sale, mostly in the range of 10%, but in other cases, up to 20% of the primary sale, and Nina is taking a portion of the fee that occurs on top of the sale. Either way most of the money goes to the artist, but Nina’s model is ahead in elevating the artists’ stake. The challenge is you do need a massive and active crowd to keep the ball rolling. In turn, this requires you to put tremendous effort into community building and keeping them engaged, which only a few platforms manage well.
Day 5: Web3 Artists and nfts
As mentioned on day 1, it takes some time to go through semi-experimental and lo-fi stuff which is enjoyable to a degree, but not in the long-term. This is not to say there’s lack of selections on this Web3 platform already, and some of the tracks are worth the attention big time.
Check out this track by Glint – Eaten – rhythmic, chill tune comes with some ethnic vibe to it- Very fresh electronics and reggae from OTA Recordings are perfect for a rainy day
- Have fun with Lxrd_Ox – some really fat beats I’m putting on repeat.
To be honest, it took more time to find these gems than anticipated. I’m all up for simplicity, but it wouldn’t hurt to put sorting/filtering options here and brush through junk content – it looks like folks are experimenting with some uploads, and they just never clean their mess afterward. Songs and tracks could benefit from some attributes like genre or mood. The best filtering capability I’ve seen so far was implemented in Emanate. On Nina the list view helped me to browse more efficiently.
To finish the day on a positive note – the player on the Nina front page is lovely: it’s consistent with the look, and it stores your listening history so that you can get back to what you played. In addition, you can prepopulate your playlist next tracks. Please do bring this player to hubs too!
Day 6: Minting on nina
Update from day 2 – I had to replicate my query regarding when to expect the response in multiple Nina discord channels, and the response came 3 days later on Monday. They reached out to me via email and discord informing me that the hub credit has been granted and instructions on how to create it. Turned out that Hub credit and publishing credit are now the same and I can upload everything through hubs.
I like that the instructions had some suggestions on how to set up the publish and referral fees, maybe this should be included in the form itself. I also enjoyed the fact that it’s clearly stated that while the handle will be unchangeable, the rest of the settings you can change in the future. Some platforms miss this part, and I learned it the hard way with Vault.
I put .05 SOL on my account as recommended, and hit the Create button, but it didn’t go through (presumably because I was sitting behind the firewall). When I opened the “Create a hub” page in the new tab I discovered that my balance was captured well, and I succeeded from the second attempt. Here’s my hub on Nina!
It took 0.005 SOL to mint my first track, which is about $0.17 as opposed to about 4 USD per release mentioned on the landing page.
Although some of the tracks on Nina are quite tempting, I decided not to buy anything right now. I think the NFT economics on this Web3 music platform is still consolidating. If you browse the list of submissions and order by price, the top one I found was 1200 USDC for a 10-minute ambient pad. Just a personal opinion, but I don’t find it justifiable, even for a 1/1. Next in line was a banger by Prince Innocence – Forever & Ever. REALLY GOOD stuff, must hear to the end. I’m less surprised about 500 USDC tag on it. And not to give any wrong impression – most tracks are within very sensible price caps.
Looking at how well the music NFTs are selling and taking into account how fresh this Web3 music platform is into the game, Nina is doing relatively well in sales. I’ve seen artists’ social posts about it on Twitter, and it looks very appealing even to a person not involved in Web3 and NFT.
Anyone buying music NFTs today? Check out my Nina Hub profile for all my newest releases! https://t.co/78bXO9a7Kw#MusicNFTs #MusicNFT
— Lxrd_Ox (@titanium50) August 20, 2022
Day 7: key Results
This was a really good experience with a couple of bumps – the fresh look and simplicity give Nina a very special and attractive feel, but this Web3 music platform could benefit from more community admin activities. It certainly has a great potential to attract talent, but there is space for improvement on both the platform team and the artists’ sides when it comes to utilities.
I’ve got the publishing/hub credit at the last moment, and I’m seeing now that hubs are actually an excellent product with much more to explore: for example, you can bring in contributors to your hub and you can make written posts. Hubs just made the game way more interesting, but it is visible that the team is still ironing out some of the functionality. One last comment on the technical side – looks like Arweave is actually powering music NFT platform very nicely, and combined with Solana and Phantom wallet they are producing great functionality.
FAQ section is promising that joining as an artist will be more open, and I’m really looking forward to finding ETAs for these changes. Wishing a lot of inspiration to the creators of this platform, and certain that if everything goes as planned we will come back to Nina’s blossoming fresh look.
