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 the platforms one by one to identify their value proposition and help musicians to build their path to success by prioritizing their participation in NFT projects.
The following post captures observations from spending 7 days on Vault.fan.
Summary
- Advanced web and mobile music platform that allows you to
- create vaults, fill them up with your content, and mint keys to them as NFT;
- May need some time to improve in community building and socialization;
- Way more liberal than most in many senses, provides much freedom to the artists.
Day 1: Overview and registration
A warm welcome from Vault.fan platform comes in the shape of a sweet and simple explanation of what this platform is about: expanding the creators’ opportunity to connect with the fans by employing NFTs as keys to vaults.
Registration was as simple as it gets and relatively conventional – email, password, confirm password. A side-step occurred when the button to connect the wallet appeared. This is the first Solana-based platform we are reviewing, so I was directed to the Phantom wallet page to download the Chrome (there are other options for mobile and web browsers) extension similar to MetaMask. Didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes though, but I did have to refresh the Vault page once the wallet was installed in order to connect the wallet.
This is in part why I really enjoy reviewing the platforms – I always end up expanding my knowledge of the environment surrounding the platform. The first nice thing about Phantom – when I clicked ‘Connect Wallet’ on Vault – the coinbase wallet page didn’t load (as it always happens with MetaMask). Little nice things.
But back to Vault, and, in addition to Solana blockchain, there are a few things that stand out immediately:
- It’s not solely a music NFT platform, it’s also for writers, athletes, artists, you name it.
- Vault has mobile apps unlike the platforms we have reviewed before
- A few invitations to register as a creator have appeared already on the homepage, and finally, I feel invited to join (as opposed to submitting an application form to be reviewed for the exclusive society)
I’ll just mention here that at the moment of writing this crypto is really low (or is it) generally, we are in a very bearish state: 1 SOL is sitting at about 30 USD today. Looking at the prices of the keys very briefly – between 1 and 3.33 SOL as a median is quite reasonable. Given it’s not an entirely music-focused platform, I didn’t expect much audio capability from the site, and only saw one artist card with a play button on it – Oh He Dead tune turned out to be a really pleasant cool song. Unfortunately, it stopped playing once I clicked on the card to see more info, so I had to go back to continue listening.
And just a couple of final notes for day 1:
- NFTs and Web3 are all about education right now, and Vault recognizes this fact: so many pages where you have some general info about NFTs, web3, wallets, Solana benefits, etc. – much appreciated.
- The iPhone Vault.fan application appears to serve a bit more as a browser – no such prompts to sign up as a creator there. But the fun part – it converted the prices to Hungarian Forints for me (I am writing from Budapest).
Day 2: Registering as a creator and creating the vault
Time to get our hands on the creators’ side of things! This was incredibly simple as opposed to other platforms we looked into so far:
- click one of the buttons that were noted on day 1 – very inviting;
- fill out the quick registration form;
- beef up your profile with bio and social links;
My profile is created – https://vault.fan/sevam, and I move on to create my first own Vault!
Again, everything seems to be very self-explanatory, but one thing I’m glad to see is that I can pick a category of the vault – something I missed looking at the front page – categories of vaults are not displayed, and I wish there were filters by category on the home or discovery page.
Creating a vault is almost misleadingly easy. I thought of creating one where I would upload all my downloadable tracks. Key price is picked in USD (ranging between 19.99 and 399.99), which is almost unconventional now in Web3 world charging ETH, SOL, MATIC, etc. This is not the first time I see the platform encouraging you to think of utilities early on. The good part is that this one gives some examples, and it looks like other Vault creators also may give some good ideas.
Very smooth implementation of the rollout opportunities – vault releases can be scheduled for a future date. It is important, and the brightest example of making an event out of releases we’ve seen so far was on Sound.xyz. Here we see a bit less focus on it, but I like how gracefully it is implemented. I feel like I’m ready to hit the ‘Create’ button.
It didn’t go through from the first attempt, since I had no Solana and couldn’t pay even the tiny <0.00001 SOL to validate. Although, in my experience, this type of fees are sometimes lifted after a couple of attempts (happened to me on OpenSea). No biggie, I managed to get some funds from my debit card over to Phantom in no time – used MoonPay for the first time, and really happy with it.
Now that it’s minted, I can say I spent about 0.015 SOL or $0.5 on creating the vault. Indeed, Solana is proving its reputation correct. And look at my beautiful creation:
I won’t lie – I didn’t screw it up on purpose, I was hoping that I’ll be able to edit it at a later point, especially given that I pushed the release date by a couple of days. Unfortunately, it looks like this release date is the only attribute I can now edit. But now I have a good reason to dig into Vault.fan’s FAQs, and questions to ask the community and support.
Day 3: Community and Support
Bright idea #1 – ask Google before you start pinging people around. I learned that lesson the hard way, and hope I’m not alone who embarrassed myself by asking stupid questions. In this case, Google could help, but luckily there’s a dedicated FAQ section on Vault.fan. And still I went into it a bit too late – my vault is already created, and only now have I read the important note stating that whatever settings are set prior to minting are unchangeable – it makes complete sense, but there is no alert or red exclamation mark telling you this at the point you hit the Create Vault button. Vault.fan, please put it there! (and still, musicians, please read the FAQs before minting)
A few other findings from the FAQ reads:
- You can issue between 1 and 10,000 keys to your vault
- Although the registration is expected to be done from the desktop, content uploading to the vault happens solely from the mobile app
- The first upload will be used for Vault preview (assuming this will determine whether there will be playback capability at preview, or just an image until the key is bought)
- You can place images, audio/video files, and links into the vault (I think there was an outdated piece within FAQ stating that audio/video is upcoming)
All looks good, but I have reservations relating to the second bullet point. I like the idea of creating content on the go, and the clear resemblance to Instagram functionality, but I don’t keep my own music as files on the phone. Not a huge hustle, but surprised I have to load my music as mp3s on my phone in order to share it on the web3 platform.
On the bright side, look at the content types I can bring into my vault:
Community
Vault folks are very active and friendly on Twitter, this is a fact. I’m writing this during the NYT NFT, where the Vault CEO is leading one of the conversations on the future of NFTs. On the other hand, Vault does not have Discord. That’s new, unconventional. Not criticizing, maybe this is something that allows them to focus more on developing the platform and the business, but it’s something rarely challenged in the world full of half-empty Discord channels. The longer I spend in this space, the more social buttons appear on my profile, but Vault only has two – Twitter and Instagram.
Share the Vault functionality also simply copies the creator’s profile URL to the clipboard – works for me, posted it to my profiles. It does look neat on my Twitter:
Day 4 on Vault – started populating my Vault with music! https://t.co/FOsYscZVPN
Thanks @vaultapp_ , my journey so far is very enjoyable!#NFTMusic #NFTmusicians #musicMarketing #web3 #web3community— Music NFT Startup (@musicnftstartup) June 21, 2022
Day 4: Business Model
It’s time to talk $money! It was hard to sustain this even earlier, as we already touched on it while creating the vault. The distribution is quite fair, Vault charges the fee from the primary and secondary sales of the NFT keys to the vaults. It appears to have a good initial inflow of funds from the founders, who already made success with a gambling company called FanDuel which Flutter Entertainment now owns.
As for the artists, the way to make money and connect with super fans is quite clear too. Positive things specific to this platform include the following:
- Vault Earnings Calculator – such an encouraging way to visualize success for the artists!
- Payment options, including SOL, PayPal, and In-App purchases
- Ability to increment what your fans get for purchasing the key to your vault (as opposed to the flat offer of an NFT itself)
Something special, but hard to decide whether it’s positive or not (especially during the dip in the cryptocurrency market) – the value of the keys is initially provided in USD, and the SOL prices displayed for the keys are dynamically calculated going forward. Feels secure, but takes away some of the excitement associated with the uncertainties and market volatility.
Slightly less encouraging is the number of sell-outs. Looks like the level of freedom artists have over the pricing and number of keys could use some more control or curatorship. On the same note – worth mentioning that the Featured list is currently handpicked by the Vault moderators. I’m sure this is something in the pipeline already, but I’m really looking forward to sorted and filtered lists of creators, or search functionality at a minimum.
The next part is going to be dedicated to being a fan on Vault.fan. This is the first time I’m going to spend money to conduct a thorough investigation. Tomorrow I will look into artists and vault creators to decide whose key we are going to buy. Excited, to say the least.
Day 5: Artists
To be frank, vault content looked rather alien to me on the first day. For one – you only get a preview, limited to either a visual or a video – for an obvious reason, the rest comes when you make a purchase. Text descriptions and list of utilities don’t compare to the music or art NFTs. An NFT on OpenSea is way more informative prior to the purchase. (Now that I started with comparisons) it’s like the difference between meeting a person IRL vs. matching on Tinder. Tech makes it easier, nothing wrong with that, but you end up missing the challenge, the discovery, and ultimately lowering the value.
Going through the featured Vaults, I’m noticing some strong artists, beatmakers offering non-exclusive licenses, entire groups of musicians forming sound collections, like Diverse Sounds, and even fundraising campaigns to support journalists placing their content into the vaults… My dear Cyber Monday left a footprint here too – won’t miss a chance to mention that his YouTube videos are absolutely amazing and outstanding in the niche right now, informing musicians on a variety of NFT music platforms.
I am noticing that some artists are making promises that are going to be pretty hard to fulfill. Like ‘exclusive content’, ‘announcements’, ‘unreleased material’. It’s easy to fall for this if you are an artist, but by stating this, you are making a commitment. Imagine all your keys get sold out, there are now 1000 people expecting to have access to your content – indefinitely unless stated otherwise (and I’m not noticing too many people stating the expiration). How long can a key holder expect you to keep delivering? Life does take unexpected turns, you gotta be specific before you can start taking money for something you plan to do in the future!
That’s not to say I’m discouraged in any way, and I can totally see the reasons behind artists making the promises. So far I really dig the stuff by Rowlan, Jazz Ali, Tom DuPree III. And yet, I couldn’t help but purchase the key to Pip’s vault. It’s quite popular, we’ll look into the $ side of it on the last day. At the moment, I’m just enjoying ‘Elvis Presley’. Nice!
Worth mentioning – the content of the vault is only available via mobile app. The player is alright, playing back the playlist in background mode, that’s what we’re used to and that’s what we like. Good luck Pip, your music is charming.
Day 6: minting
I left very little for me to say today, given that I have already created my own vault uploaded some tracks to it, and bought a key to a great artist’s vault. But I’ll start with one very positive yet cheesy observation: Solana is very refreshing, and so is SolSea. It is better, it is faster, and it is cheaper, which is in my case liberating. Thanks to my explorations on Vault, I experimented with listing the key (no intentions to sell yet), and unlisting it for cents, without worrying that my money will go to waste if I do something wrong. This feels right to me as the end consumer.
This ability to experiment and to make mistakes is very important to the end customer – music collector, fan, and listener. Unfortunately, it seems like many platforms have forgotten about it. It’s one thing for an artist or a musician to invest $30-$100 in gas fees, and it’s another thing for a beginner NFT adventurer to spend any extra amount with no certainty that they are doing it correctly. I’m yet to see if there are platforms operating on Polygon, but a bit worried that free mints may go too far into chaos.
But back to Vault.fan – YOMO, or You Only Mint Once (just came up with it). Then you are welcome to build up your entire universe right in that vault. You are welcome to create as many vaults as you want, which some people do. For example, you can have it for your alter-egos, albums, unreleased vs. published vs. backstage.
Day 7: Key results
Today is the day to sum it up. First of all, how did I do? I did not sell any keys to the vault I created, but that’s anticipated, and totally on me to do further marketing. I may as well create another, more mature vault and pack it up with my music and extras. Since I bought 1.5 Solana three days ago, it went up in price, and despite spending nearly half of it in SOL (I have 0.77 left), it equates to $32 against my $52 purchase. That’s not to say that I’d be worse off if I made a purchase today – it’s the SOL price that got adjusted, not the dollar price of the key selected by the artist, i.e. I would spend less SOL (0.61) if I bought it today. On top of it, I made a purchase of a key to what appears to be a pretty popular Vault – Pip is doing alright selling 204 of 500 keys. I could resell it, but I think I’ll stick this key in my back pocket, not selling it any time soon.
Let’s see how well Pip did with his vault real quick: 204 keys sold at $24.99, that’s slightly over $5k. Now, remember that Vault keeps 10% of the initial sales, leaving $4,500 for Pip. But then we still have one unknown, and that’s the secondary sales – Vault states that it keeps 2% and gives back 8% to the artist. It would be curious to hear from Pip himself, whether he made any secondary sales, and secondary sales mechanisms are something I’m yet to discover. How does SolSea know that 10% of the listed sale needs to be distributed back to the platform where it was minted, and the creator of it? How do they execute it?
As I mentioned above – Pip’s vault is selling quite a lot of keys. Let’s look at a few others: a couple of them sold about 10% of the volume of the keys, and the rest didn’t do as well. I have reservations looking at a bunch of Diverse Sounds vaults with packages of instrumentals that are priced at 8-9 SOL, and not selling too well – it makes me question the methodology behind selecting the featured vaults.
I believe this platform has so much potential to be realized. The value proposition is indeed unique, the implementation is fantastic, unrealistically intuitive, and fun to discover and play around. There are a couple of things I’m sure the Vault.fan team is actively working on, including the desktop/mobile capabilities enhancements so that you don’t have to jump from one to another, the selection process for the featured list, and algorithms to allow discovering more vaults by content type, pricing, or popularity. I’m really eager to see this platform in a couple of months, thanks for letting me in, and for all the new experiences I had while being on it.
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