Summary
Nouns Beats is a fork of Nouns DAO that aims to be the self-sustaining music arm of the Nouns’ ecosystem. One Nouns Beat is born and trustlessly auctioned every 24 hours, forever. Each day’s Nouns Beat is generated using Nouns’ traits as inputs. 90% of the auction proceeds will go directly into the Nouns Beats DAO treasury governed by Nouns Beats holders and 10% will go back to the Nouns DAO treasury for the first 5 years. All Nouns Beats holders are members of Nouns Beats DAO. One Nouns Beat is equal to one vote. The treasury is controlled exclusively by Nouns Beats holders via governance. The purpose of the Nouns Beats DAO treasury is to fund Nouns music related projects, expanding the Nouns’ universe into the music world and providing a valuable service to other Nouns’ projects who may have music needs. Nouns Beats songs are generative and stored as MIDI directly on-chain (not IPFS). Nouns Beats founders receive rewards in the form of Nouns Beats (10% of supply for the first 5 years).
About Beat Foundry
Beat Foundry is a generative music platform that works with music artists to turn their music into collections of unique collectibles. Just as Nouns combines visual components to create a unique output, we have artists compose audio components that combine to create hundreds to thousands of CC0 and aurally pleasing tunes. Each collector gets to own something unique on behalf of the artist they love, giving them a 1 to 1 connection with the artist as well as a 1 to many connection with the entire group of super-fans that makes up an artist’s collector base. Our artists are able to enhance their communities with us by connecting directly with their top supporters, by connecting with the broader Beat Foundry community to bring in new faces into their communities, and by capturing value from their biggest fans to continue making amazing music.
Beat Foundry’s founders are both jazz musicians by nature, a genre of music that is currently struggling to keep musicians afloat. In a world where mainstream music is the only way to create enough value to thrive as a musician, it is important that we discover ways to allow our favorite artists who are maybe not so mainstream to make their music. Our community is foundationally built upon this idea.
What’s in it for Nouns DAO?
Bring recurring value back into Nouns DAO
- Nouns DAO will receive 10% of the auction proceeds for the first 5 years, bringing a positive inflow of value back into the treasury so the DAO can continue to fund more projects like this one.
- The 90% of the auction proceeds that go into the Nouns Beats DAO will fund Nouns related music projects, further expanding the Nouns universe.
Bring in a collective of musical creatives into the Nouns community
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Establishing a DAO specifically tailored towards music related Nouns projects will bring musical builders into the Nouns community who are inspired to create something and could benefit from public goods funding. This would bring in communities of superfans who are very passionate about the artists into the Nouns universe.
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Invites collaboration between the Beat Foundry and Nouns communities. The Beat Foundry community is full of musical voices who have already taken advantage of our CC0 music to create their own derivatives and remixes. They would be thrilled to get involved in the world of Nouns.
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All Nouns Beats members will be included in the Beat Foundry collector base, giving them access to the Beat Foundry community and allowlists for future drops, encouraging collaboration.
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We will be inviting the artists we work with to be involved in the future creation of more Nounish stems for the continued generation of Nouns Beats. These artists are well-established web3 artists who have thriving communities of music fans that we’ll be able to introduce into the Nouns universe.
Helps to create and inspire more Nouns derivatives with music
- Nouns Beats DAO proposals should be aimed at funding music related endeavors within the Nouns space.
- If a Nouns project were to need music for a Nouns documentary film for example, Nouns Beats DAO could source and fund the appropriate talent.
Why Music NFTs?
Music NFTs are fundamentally different from visual NFTs like Art Blocks or PFPs. The focus with Music NFTs is on the artist, not the art. Musicians are platform agnostic, making the artist and their work the focus, not the platform. Unlike a PFP project where the collectors are tied to a single project, the collectors spread themselves out between all of the projects that a musician creates and the value of each project follows the trajectory of the artist’s musical journey. For example, Daniel Allan has released editions on Sound.XYZ, 1 of 1’s on Catalog, created personal projects in collaboration with 10s of other musicians, released generative music on Beat Foundry, performed live shows at NFT conferences, and just released his Glass House music video collection. He has a community of fans that show up for him every time, despite where he releases his music and how. Daniel finds ways to give back to his community and connect with his community. They desire a personal connection with the artists they love and are rewarded for being there early and digging in deeper with the artist by collecting more of their music.
At the end of the year, Spotify tells the artists how many people listen to them more than anyone else on the platform. The artist most likely will never know who those people are. Capitalizing on that failure to form a personal connection between the artist and fan is where Music NFTs thrive in the music industry.
Music NFTs also provide a stronger signal for taste. When someone collects an NFT, there is a lot more signal from that transaction than from liking an album on Spotify. As people discover what other people are collecting, there becomes a strong network effect leading people to discover new artists that they can form connections with. Through Nouns Beats, Nouns can be one of those discoveries.
Creating a Nouns fork that is solely focused on creating music brings in a new audience of people who are deeply passionate about the artists they love into the Noun universe. When an artist like Daniel Allan makes a proposal for a Nouns style release on Nouns Beats DAO, his community will be there and share their passion for Daniel with the broader Noun community and vice versa. We will be inviting artists who already have strong communities to use this form of public goods funding to create Nounish music, propagating the Nouns meme via the most popular art medium in existence. Through music, a more personal connection can be formed with the Nouns meme.
Budget
| Amount | Use |
|---|---|
| 5 ETH | On-chain transactions and contract deployments |
| 30 ETH | Commissioning artist to create Nounish stems |
| 10 ETH | Smart contact development |
| 10 ETH | Nouns Beats.wtf website and music player experience |
| 5 ETH | Nouns Beats artwork |
| Total: 60 ETH |
Timeline
| Date | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Proposal passed | Proposal funded |
| 2 weeks | Nounish stems created and shared with Nouns community |
| 4 weeks | Smart contracts complete and established on-chain with the stems |
| 6 weeks | Nounsbeat.wtf website experience designed and built |
| 8 weeks | Nounsbeats.wtf launched |
Previous Beat Foundry collections
Ocarinas
Our first collection entitled “The Ocarinas” was a collection of video-game sounding tunes and proved our concept of generative music through stem combinations. Made up of stems written by one of the Beat Foundry co-founders, we released 1500 unique songs for 0.04 ETH. This collection, being written not by an external artist, was the foundation for the Beat Foundry community and established our vision to create large quantity collections of unique musical collectibles. Being CC0, we had many collectors remix and reimagine many of the songs post-mint.
Opensea Collection: https://opensea.io/collection/ocarinas
Thread with Various remixes: https://twitter.com/BeatFoundryNFTs/status/1485394318751932423
Bridges
Our first time collaborating with an external artist, “The Bridges” by Oshi was a collection of 808 hyper-pop beats and was our first time producing on-chain lyrics. The process of creating lyrical components that could combine to create cohesive ideas was creatively empowering for Oshi and allowed the collectors to hear multiple perspectives of a broader story. Check out a few samples below:
[images and audio from those samples]
Collages
In collaboration with Daniel Allan, “The Collages” was a collection of 900 vintage, electronic beats that experimented with a new on-chain trait system that allowed collectors to better understand exactly what they are getting. Given that people are generally a lot more able to express what they are seeing with words than they are able to with what they are hearing, it is important that we find ways to help collectors put into words what they hear. We also were able to get all of Daniel Allan’s collectors access to the collection early, as well as previous Beat Foundry collectors, expanding Daniel Allan’s community as well as our own. Check out some samples below:
