Summary
We intend to build a new platform that enables music collectives and onchain record labels to easily create a Nouns style community where members can actively participate and collaborate. We believe that music communities are uniquely positioned to showcase the benefits and scalability of the Nouns model and hope that by providing creators with new tools to incentivise and grow their community we can catalyse a more symbiotic relationship between artists and fans.
A diverse ecosystem of platforms leveraging the Nouns Builder protocol will unlock new market segments and help to attract a wider range of individual contributors and projects. By supporting projects that are helping to bring creativity and imagination onchain Builder DAO can position itself as not just a public goods infrastructure provider but also a driver of cultural change.
We want to create a future where hundreds of thousands of music communities can coordinate, cross-pollinate and flourish on top of open source protocols.
Why music?
Simple, we believe that music communities can scale the Nouns model more widely than any other and benefit most from its adoption.
Music collectives have long been a powerful cultural driver and have had a significant impact in shaping the music scene as we know it. The Wu Tang Clan, Swedish House Mafia, The Grateful Dead, Odd Future and many more are examples of what can be created when collaboration and experimentation are a core principle of the group's existence. What does that look like onchain, and at scale?
Of all the communities that exist online, some of the largest are the fanbases of musicians and bands (think Taylor Swift’s Swifties or K-Pop group BTS’s A.R.M.Y). Superfans crave a sense of belonging and want to be part of a club of like minded individuals who share their passions. The Nouns model allows for active participation rather than passive consumption.
We’ve already seen a number of artists and collectives experimenting with releasing their music onchain as it provides better economic opportunities, more equitable distribution of royalties, and allows them to form one-on-one connections with fans and supporters. The Park and CHAOS are some great recent examples. We believe this trend will accelerate and expect to see many more onchain music communities flourish over the coming years.
Background
We recently conducted a series of user interviews with artists, collectors and music collectives in the web3 space. Some of the insights that came from these conversations included:
- Artists find building an aligned community hard and time consuming
- Fans are fragmented across various social platforms and apps, each requiring a different approach to engage
- Artists want to create a more symbiotic relationship with their fans and supporters
- Fans want to participate in the journey of their favourite artists and be recognised for their contributions
- Artists spend more time promoting their work and managing their brand than doing the thing that they love, making music
Fam Works
Fam Works is a collective of creatives and builders who want to catalyse a new era in onchain music and birth a vibrant ecosystem of artists, collectives and labels who collaborate and support one another. Our mission is to educate a new generation of artists about innovative ways of coordinating, creating and releasing music by leveraging onchain tools and protocols.
Fam Works will be launched as a Nouns Builder community on the Zora Network in the next few weeks and will be responsible for:
- Funding ongoing development of the Fam platform
- Providing seed funding to new communities launching on Fam
- Facilitating events and programs to onboard artists into web3 and educate them on current best practices and tools
- Developing partnerships with brands and organisations who are contributing to the propagation of music culture on the internet (eg. Red Bull, AIAIAI, The Fader)
- Launching collaborative music projects and experiments (our recent Soulquest at Fest project is an example)
Proposal
We are seeking support from Builder DAO in the form of 20ETH to build a SLC (simple, loveable, complete) version of the Fam platform, which will leverage the core functionality of Nouns Builder and provide creators with features to help attract new members and scale their communities. We have estimated the SLC will take 3-4 months to build balancing a part-time workload.
Lead Developer 300 hours (part-time) at 0.04ETH ($75USD) per hour = 12 ETH ($22,500)
Project Lead & Product Designer 200 hours (full-time) at 0.04ETH (~$75USD) per hour = 8 ETH ($14,250)
The funds will be sent to withfam.eth, converted to USDC upon receipt and placed into a LlamaPay stream or similar
Barriers to adoption
The Nouns Builder tool is great for quickly spinning up DAOs around a shared vision or idea, but for music communities to adopt it more widely we believe a bespoke solution is necessary—one that caters to the specific needs and use cases of these communities.
- Creators want a way to showcase their latest NFT drops to their community and provide them with unique experiences. We propose leveraging the composability of web3 to allow creators and communities to embed their latest NFT drops on their community profile page. Some of the platforms we intend to leverage include Zora, Sound, Catalog, Metalabel and more
- Creating generative artworks is cumbersome and confusing to many users who are unfamiliar with creating NFTs. We propose building a simple artwork generator that can be used to produce generative artworks without needing a designer and complex folder systems
- Reducing complexity is key if we want to see wider adoption of Nouns Builder style communities. We plan to use language that is approachable and design experiences that do not alienate individuals who are not web3 native
Scope
The first version of the platform will include all the functionality of the Nouns Builder platform but with some additional features specifically targeting music communities:
- A community discovery page showcasing trending and new communities
- A place to showcase the communities latest NFT drops
- A custom artwork generator
- A new UI for creation flow, auctions, profiles and proposals
- A 2% ETH interface fee from all auctions on the platform. This fee will flow to the Fam Works DAO to provide a sustainable funding model for future development. The Fam Works DAO will govern the fee parameters
Design exploration
*Please note these are early design experiments and not what the shipped product will look like
Team
Nick Smith - Project Lead & Product Design Currently working on Fam. Previously co-founder & Head of Design at Talisman
Daniel Rojkind - Lead Developer Co-founder at while and for. Has previously worked on projects for Songcamp, CHAOS, Nightrun
Timeline
5 weeks design User flows, Visual / UX design, Prototyping, User testing, Design revisions, Design QA
7.5 weeks development (15 weeks part-time) Smart contract development, Front-end development, QA and revisions
Goals
Our objective is to demonstrate that the Nouns model is an optimal solution for creating sustainable communities at scale. In an industry where major record labels and algorithms largely dictate the rules, many musicians and bands find it challenging to gain recognition and grow their fan base. By offering tools that enable fans to meaningfully participate in a creator's journey, we are hopeful to witness the evolution and growth of new modes of community coordination so that a more equitable music industry can emerge.
Future plans
Once we have built the initial SLC and started onboarding creators and their communities we intend to add additional features that make it easier for creators to promote their music and connect with fans. Some things we’ve been exploring include:
- Tools for communities to easily publish onchain media and create rewards for their communities leveraging the Zora protocol and others
- Token-gated chat for community members leveraging the Farcaster protocol
- Multiple membership models/tiers to improve accessibility and provide more entry points for fans and supporters
- Launch Fam Works as a Builder DAO on the Zora Network and provide seed funding to a group of early music communities and projects
Community links