Open wide and swallow another dose of your weekly Dequency newsletter — it’s good for your health (but DYOR, of course). Subscribe to be the first to hear about product releases, airdrops, coin news (👀), and other important (and frivolous) updates.
Greetings, Earthlings!
We had this idea to do an AMA on Twitter Spaces in the name of transparency, community, and all of the warm and fuzzy things… and honestly, it was all of that and more. Special thanks to our friends who hopped up and chatted with us, from sharing your own projects (dApps! albums!) to asking us what exactly the name of our project is, again? (hint: it’s… literally in the name of the Twitter space). So Keatly (CEO) and Margaret (VP Everything) popped on and chatted with the community today, covering origin stories, sync licensing 101, and the future of the platform.
In case you missed it… I’m sorry, but in my fit of manic excitement to talk to you all, I neglected to press the “record” button. However, our trusty admin was taking notes, so I’ll synthesize and give you the most pertinent info. We’ll be hosting more AMAs/community spaces going forward, so if you still have a question for us, tune in for the next one (or simply DM us; I’m terminally online and will likely respond quickly).
Don’t Fall Out of Sync
We do synchronization licensing, which is when music is matched to visuals (think: movie trailer music, music in ads, etc). So why, exactly, do people need sync in metaverse?
- Everyone needs sync because someone owns that music. Whenever you’re doing audiovisual projects, it’s not only the right thing to do, but it’s also insurance policy — if you’ve used music without a license (or specifically, without the correct license) you’ve infringed on copyright and are operating extralegally. The fines can be nasty; up to $250k per infringement. You’d have to sell (*begins counting on my fingers*) a LOT of NFTs to cover that legal bill (or just one Bored Ape).
- NFTs and the broader metaverse, although seemingly intangible, are all still in the “real world”, so we do have to play in the the realm of real world laws and copyright, even in the esoteric futurescape that is the metaverse and all it encompasses. Sorry to be a buzzkill.
- Inspiration for Dequency came, in part, from seeing all the creators in the space who were figuring things out as they went, doing first and asking permission later… which means that artists are not being cool to the people involved with the music they’re making AND putting themselves at risk. We don’t want anyone to be left out of earning a living off of their art, so let’s create and easy and fun way to get your sync project in good legal standing (while collaborating and expanding the universe of potential art + music combos).
What part of this are y’all doing?
At Dequency, we’ve created a sync licensing marketplace in the web3 universe, initially catering to native web3 creations and on-chain productions
- Beyond this: we want to be world’s sync marketplace — ultimately, a decentralized marketplace — where visual productions can come in and license music, and musicians and other music rightsholders can make their work available for sync.
- While we’re starting off with some centralized controls, ultimately our tokenomics will create a self-sustaining ecosystem with less and less central control.
So… Decentralization?
A really thoughtful question we heard was: is the goal just to build something leveraging blockchain tech, or are we actually looking to be fully decentralized?
- Currently, Music company in middle takes a fee, which is fine and fair. But what if it wasn’t necessary?
- Decentralization as it pertains to sync licensing is about putting power back in the hands of the creators involved and removes the institutions in the middle.
- Ultimately, this is the goal of Dequency: to create a marketplace where participants and the greater community are the ones calling the shots and interacting directly. (If you want to see an outline of the roadmap so you can better understand how we’re incrementally decentralizing, it’s here).
I’ve asked once and I’ll ask again… WEN TOKEN!?
Question from the community: Will there be a token, will you do presale, and if yes… can you please offer it to the Algorand community to buy tokens with Algos?
- Our philosophy is not to mint a token gratuitously. The ecosystem needs to be set up to support the tokenomics; we’re only going to introduce a token when we have actual utility for the token and it can support itself.
- By minting token you can create an economy within your decentralized system to incentivize people to do things that will grow the community — that’s how it’s supposed to work (in a very abstract, oversimplified way, of course).
- Public sale hasn’t been determined yet — you’ll know when we’re minting.
- We’ve seen many failures in coin release and we’re learning from each of them.
Until next time…
Thanks for joining us and reading the recap. It might seem redundant and self-indulgent to go through these points over and over, but we love the exercise of sharing what we’re building and how our philosophy is informing the infrastructure of the Dequency platform. See you next time, friends!
