KuCoin AMA With Melos Studio (MELOS) — The First Decentralized Music NFT Marketplace in Web3

Dear KuCoin Users,

Time: March 14, 2022, 10:00-11:18 (UTC)

KuCoin hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Yalu Lin, Co-Founder of Melos Studio, in the KuCoin Exchange Group.

Melos Studio is a decentralized meta+music Web3 collaboration platform for musicians and music creators. It is also a pioneer within the decentralized creator economy as it allows anyone to create music through its tools. The generated content can then be saved as NFTs and brought into circulation. Through the open re-creation of generated music NFTs, Melos Studio functions as a social music platform where music creators can collaborate, communicate, and co-produce.

Official Website: https://melos.studio

Whitepaper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15yIS6ILsocA98yb1mzq5aNKaYx-IYQMaQ7BZJ5UIUf0

Follow Melos Studio on Twitter and Telegram.

Guest:

Yalu Lin — Co-founder of Melos Studio

Q: Can you please introduce yourself and your team and what is your experience in crypto?

Yalu: My first investment in crypto was in 2017. I was very interested in blockchain technology and started thinking about how it was going to change the world. But thinking alone got me nowhere.

I joined Machi X in Machi X at the very beginning, back in 2019. It was a music copyright marketplace. There were music copyright tokens that fans, patrons, and collectors could buy and sell. We listed 59 songs from Golden Melody Award-winning artists. One of the songs was listed on Binance DEX. Machi X is also a project listed in https://ethereum.org/en/community/.

I was in charge of the operations department and handled song IP purchasing, legal, etc. Cooperate directly with music creators, singers, and their agents. I learned a lot about crypto and the music industry during this time.

We also have Jim, another co-founder. Jim is one of the core experts of Java machines in Aplix, which is a Japanese listed company and key partner of SUN. He devoted himself to the innovation of the IT area for over 20 years.

He also has been a music lover since childhood. He set up a music studio and helped people mix audio, train bands, and voice recording. We started our conversation about what music creation can be like in web3. So, Melos Studio!

And we also have Vera and Leo to join us from the very beginning as well. Vera is experienced in marketing and is a part-time singer. Leo is also a very experienced developer. We all share the same passion for music and web3.

We built Melos Studio to allow these musical pieces to be seen in public and give a chance to get others to collaborate in Github style through blockchain.

Here is the team’s profile before we changed all our avatars:

Q: There are already several existing NFT platforms, maybe not especially focused on music. How is Melos Studio different? Can you briefly describe what Melos Studio is?

Yalu: Melos Studio or Melos is the destination for creating, discovering, and collecting original music on Web3.

Melos is a new and unique create-to-earn music ecosystem on blockchain. The core vision of Melos is to create an ecosystem in which all fans of music can participate in the creation process and be rewarded for their efforts. From the casual music fan to the professional musician/producer, the Melos platform offers tools and features to take not only music enjoyment but NFTs to the next level.

In Melos, we use NFTs very differently. Most NFT projects are using NFTs as a storage medium to store graphics or music. At Melos, we are using NFTs as proof of creation or co-creation. This gives our NFTs a dynamic, collaborative function as MusicBlocks within our DNA Tree system.

This is an example of how the NFT creation process works and how stage of the NFT chain is rewarded for their efforts and contribution:

1. Pianist Aditi mints a piano tune as G0 NFT.

2. Bob sees the NFT and likes the tune, adds his guitar riff to it, and mints piano + guitar G1 NFT.

3. Camilia comes across the G1 piano/guitar NFT and adds his vocal chorus to it to mint piano/guitar/vocal G2 NF.

In this way, all co-creators are sharing profit, and you can see there is a new interaction between fans and creators, as the fan can also be the creator. People also see this as the Github style for the music creation process. Eventually, this systematic process will result in a democratic and transparent ecosystem between music artists and their fans.

Q: Have you guys gotten any big musician/producer backing you?

Yalu: There are Trey Songz, David Bowie, Methodman from Wu-tang, and also the most iconic rock band - Queen. We will release music NFTs for Queen - the world-renowned rock band formed in London in 1970 and also the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner who sang the most popular songs in the world - “We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions".

(Their music NFTs will be dropped on March 25, 2022 on the Binance NFT market, don’t miss out! )

And Melos is about indie and emerging artists, so we have 800+ indie and emerging artists to be onboarded in over 45+ countries.

Q: How do you consider non-musicians in Melos Studio? Do you have any workshops and musicians that can teach non-musicians who want to explore more on your platform?

Yalu:

In Melos Workshop, there is a tool. An AI assistant that we called Metis. It can help you complete a song even if you insert only a few music notes. Music newbies can create music and enjoy the fun of music creation.

To be honest, I am not so much of a music creator like another co-founder Jim of ours. I’ve learned to play music with Metis AI. It's been fun and exciting. Please feel free to go and try.

Q: What is your tokenomics structure and token utility?

Yalu: Token is going to be both DAO and utility token. For utility, advanced functions on ours are going to require consuming of our MELOS token, including new styles on Melos workshop and VirtualBand for the future release. It is also used in staking and mining (with some of our NFTs). And for DAO community voting, there are 5 different membership levels and 3 different topics that we set for max and min voting weight and voting numbers.

DAO Voting:

Distribution and Token Eco:

Q: Can you talk about your project development roadmap? What has been achieved to date and the 2022 targets? Any hot updates that we should look forward to?

Yalu: We launched Metis AI music composer and our marketplace in late November last year. It turns out that: (1.) Indie artists want to use our platform to launch their music NFTs and (2.) music newbies want to play with more music; so this year, we are going to launch Sonus NFT, artists’ pages, virtual band and NFT stake & mine on Melos Studio.

Here is the complete roadmap:

Q: Can you tell us the key features of Melos Studio?

Yalu: We building an ecosystem;

1) Metis AI Music Workshop - Music NFT Creation → lowering the bar of entry for music creation

2) Decentralized Music NFT Marketplace

3) Sonus NFT - Convert PFP NFTs to Music NFTs - more applications to music

4) Virtual Band - Co-create with favorite artists → allow experienced musicians to co-create

music online

5) Melos Launch - Drop your music to Melos Studio - for an emerging artist to engage with their fans in web3 fashion

6) Music Auction - Regular English & Dutch Auction for Music NFT - more sales format for an artist to market their NFTs

7) DNA Tree - A diagram to illustrate the DNA structure, so when a final music piece is sold, all compositors will share its value through the NFT chain. It provides a new solution to fulfill today's lost value extraction by community mixing the original music pieces.

Here is an overview organized by one of our community members:

Q: What are the technologies and ecosystem of Melos Studio?

Yalu:

1. “NFT Forging”, a new method to mix music artworks (JAM)

2. Unique music pieces are written into the DNA of the MusicBlock. Each DNA is carried by the MusicBlock. When the MusicBlock is forged, so does the DNA, and the scarcity and value will be inherited.

3. NFT + IPFS/Arweave and the ongoing protocols are designed to make sure that the value of the MusicBlock NFT arts can be widespread and exist forever.

4. Melos Studio aims to become an incubator for music creators, virtual bands, and music studios. It supports musicians and holds music festivals, hoping to help more musicians to accomplish their dreams and create more valuable digital musical arts.

5. Operation “More Salt to Music”: “NFT + Cash = Searching For The Sugarman”. Melos Studio plans to hide crypto assets inside MusicBlocks. It is similar to “hiding BTC in music works”. Fans around the world can be part of the promotion of MusicBlock NFTs by mining BTC within MusicBlock NFTs.

Q: Can you briefly talk about your backers and how they will support Melos Studio's growth?

Yalu: We are fortunate to have Binance Labs, Dapper Labs, Innovion, NGC ventures, Multichain Capital and CryptoPhd as our strong supporters. They’ve all been helpful by providing us with support and guides to strategy, marketing, necessary technologies, consultation, and incubation services.

Thanks to these strategic investors, Melos Studio can draw support from key industry leaders to help it with the Public Sale and call for communities and alliances to support its ecosystem activities. Besides, these strategic investors will also be actively helping all artists to retain and celebrate their inspiration and freely create, share and profit from this musical utopia.

Q: Please tell us why this project name was chosen as Melos? Is there any reason or story behind that?

Yalu: It's a word in Latin for music, melody, tunes. We wanted to start from the origin.

Q: Does your project support staking programs? If yes, how does your stake system work? What is the requirement for users if they want to stake in your platform?

Yalu: There is going to be LP + NFT staking and token + NFT staking. Our NFTs are a requirement for staking, for some of the NFTs that we issued before. We will announce it soon.

Q: A key factor behind $MELOS seems to be providing true ownership of one's own music. Does $MELOS also allow the fans to profit off buying and reselling Music NFTs of their favorite artists, and will the creator be receiving royalties off resells?

Yalu: Profit sharing is what we call in our DNATree. It works similarly to royalty. When the later generation of our MusicBlock NFT is sold, all other co-creators receive a share of the profit.

Q: Music that does not belong to them and is being uploaded to your platform. How does Melos Studio go about preventing such playing or copying ideas?

Yalu: Artists have to be certified in order to mint their music (others will only be able to use Metis AI music). We are asking them to stake some MELOS tokens. So if the certified artist uploads any music with problems, the staked token may be confiscated and delisted.

Q: What is your team doing to ensure that users support MELOS in the long term and not just for temporary gain? How can your team increase user engagement with your product and project capabilities?

Yalu:

1. We are working with many many other projects in the crypto space. People know us and support us. This means that users have no reason to go away.

2. We have been working on this project for 2 years now, it is hard to give up this baby that we all grew attached to.

3. Music NFT is just about to hype, no reason to leave now. And we all just love “playing with music” so much.

Q: I have participated in testing and sold NFTs of music I edited. What I want to ask is, will Melos contact well-known music stars to sell their music works on the platform? I think this can increase awareness and bring more attention to traffic.

Yalu: Nice question! Yes, that’s in our pipeline. Also, we do want to have new emerging artists from our own platform as well. We are working in these two directions.

Q: What do I have to do to start posting my music on Melos Studio, and what is Music NFTs? Can you please explain a little bit more about it? I am very interested in this project!

Yalu: Just sign up at www.melos.studio and if you are a professional artist, please sign up here.

Q: How many team members do you have? Do they have enough experience in the blockchain field? Do they have any experience working on crypto and non-crypto projects?

Yalu: Fifteen members, mostly developers (3 blockchain developers), and three from operations.

Q: What is the most ambitious goal of your project? Can you share with us any upcoming updates?

Yalu: The ultimate goal is to have new music to be heard everywhere.

Q: An impressive technology of Melos’ ecosystem is a function called “More Salt to Music” operation. With this process, Melos plans to hide crypto-cash inside MusicBlocks in order for fans the world over to be part of the promotion of MusicBlock NFTs. Without a doubt, this feature is awesome, as it builds a strong bond for music and its NFT collections. Can you carefully elaborate further on how this feature will be implemented? Would fans be compelled to carry out specific mining operations for a share of this crypto cash, and how often will such operations take place? Also, since this operation has direct correlation with “NFT Forging” as offered on Melos, can you briefly talk about this?

Yalu: What if we add some crypto assets as an easter egg in our NFTs?

Q: I can already feel the melody in Melos. As an aspiring ambassador of Melos, what are the greatest enticing perks to educate a beginner about the prospect of the token and the challenges the community would face on its way to the moon in order to encourage the beginners not to fold? I believe this is going to help in building a lasting Melos community. What are the functions of the mystery box? Do they have mining power, as that I believe would increase the community growth and popularity, as assets yield therefore increasing requests for Melos NFT and mystery boxes purchases across all platforms and everyone would definitely contribute to the Melos studio growth.

Yalu: Yeah, many NFTs that we have issued come with mining power, especially those that cost money. Some mining powers are higher, and some are lower, and every mining requires NFT.

Q: What problems related to traditional musical platforms do Melos Studio aim to solve? How will Melos Studio address the issue of content theft that is common with most similar platforms? Will there be any forms of censorship of content on your platform? How about the protection of the NFT against potential scammers?

Yalu: There are so many problems with traditional music platforms. I’ve been posting them on my personal Twitter account.

Some of these are the following:

- Publishing - too many hand-labor work

- Marketing - unfocused market strategies

- Music copyright - it was 200 yrs old music, a virtual asset that is being managed on paper records.

- Melos provides a solution to these or at least an example of how they can be done alternatively.

KuCoin and Melos Studio have prepared a total of 2,000 USDT & 5 Music NFTs to give away to AMA participants.

1. Free-ask section: 5 Music NFTs

2. AMA activity: 2,000 USDT

Activity 1 — Quiz: 1,500 USDT

Activity 2 — Price Guess: 300 USDT

Participation Rewards: 300 USDT

. . .

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