Muziki.xyz - supporting African musicians in the NFT journey [Music NFT Launchpad for African artists on Cardano]

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

Jessica Colaco

[GENERAL] Email address of main applicant

jc@muziki.xyz

Additional applicants

Mona Abebe

Bart Kącicki

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

3

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language.

No

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

Yes

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

We are working closely with NMKR and using their proven API solution to enable the provision of essential functionality and data, such as secure blockchain transactions, authentication, and provenance verification, which are fundamental for ensuring a reliable and trustworthy platform for artists and fans. 

By utilizing NMKR's APIs, we can leverage their expertise and infrastructure, accelerating the development process and ensuring a robust and efficient platform that meets the needs of our musicians, the community and industry stakeholders. 

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

No

[GENERAL] If NO, please describe which outputs are not going to be open source. If YES, please write “Project will be fully open source.”

NO, not at this stage but we’re willing to reconsider this at a later stage as we scale and collaborate with other parties who may also be aligned with our vision to help African musicians. Our ultimate goal is to change the situation in Africa and boost the livelihoods of the musicians as well as create a stronger relationship between the musicians and their fans.

In line with Blockchain philosophy, we are committed to the principles of collaborative development and transparency. As such, all elements of the Muziki project that directly interact with the Cardano network, including our smart contracts, will be open source. This reflects our commitment to give back to the Cardano community and contribute to its ongoing growth.

However, we must also consider the unique requirements and challenges of running a platform like Muziki. With that in mind, there are certain elements of our project that won't be open-source for specific reasons:

• Backend Infrastructure: This involves our custom databases, servers, and data-processing systems that form the backbone of Muziki. Open-sourcing these components could risk exposure of sensitive data, potentially compromising the security and privacy of our users.
• Business Algorithms & Logic: The services and core features of Muziki are driven by our unique business model. This provides us with a competitive edge, and making them open-source could offer our competitors an opportunity to mirror our business model, threatening the platform's potential for profitability and growth.

[METADATA] Category of proposal

NFTs

[METADATA] SDG rating

SDG goals:

• Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
• Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

SDG subgoals:

• Achieve higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high-value added and labour-intensive sectors
• Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries
• Increase the access of small-scale industrial and other enterprises, in particular in developing countries, to financial services, including affordable credit, and their integration into value chains and markets
• Facilitate sustainable and resilient infrastructure development in developing countries through enhanced financial, technological and technical support to African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States
• Significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries by 2020

Key Performance Indicator (KPI):

• Manufacturing value added as a proportion of GDP and per capita
• Proportion of population covered by a mobile network, by technology

#proposertoolsdg

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Africa's abundant musical heritage and diverse music genres contribute to a vibrant and dynamic music industry. African music has a global appeal, with artists showcasing their talent and cultural expressions to captivate audiences worldwide. The continent continues to be a fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and the exploration of new musical styles and fusions. From Afrobeat to Bongo Flava, Soukous to Kizomba, African music continues to shape and influence the global music landscape, fostering cross-cultural connections and celebrating the continent's musical richness.

Africa’s music industry offers numerous opportunities for growth and success. According to recent market research, the music industry in Africa is worth an estimated $3 billion, and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. This growth is driven by several factors, including the increasing popularity of African music both within the continent and internationally, as well as the rise of new technologies and innovations that are changing the way music is consumed and distributed.

The global music NFT market size was $1.350Bn in 2021, but African musicians are under-represented in this market. This is due to a number of factors, including limited access to online streaming platforms. Record labels are responsible for discovering, signing, and developing new talent. However, artist development can be costly and risky. Labels invest significant resources in artist promotion, marketing, and production, with no guarantee of commercial success. Finding a balance between taking risks and maintaining profitability is a constant challenge. Artists and songwriters have raised concerns about fair compensation and transparency in royalty payments. There have been debates over the distribution of streaming royalties and the fairness of contractual agreements between labels and artists. This issue has led to discussions about creating more equitable royalty structures and improving transparency in the industry.

According to Statista, Africa’s music streaming revenue is projected to reach a market volume of US$252.70m by 2027, with the number of users expected to amount to 58.5m users. As an example, in Kenya, the music market is expected to generate US$20m in 2023 in music streaming. 

We aim to disrupt the African music industry by empowering artists with higher royalties and ownership, driving 10x revenue growth. through a Web3 model by using Blockchain. 

NFTs have also allowed artists to establish a large global network among themselves giving room for friendships, collaborations, and general growth in their areas of expertise. NFTs serve as transparent digital contracts, validating proof of ownership through their uniqueness. 

With our marketplace approach, we can establish a highly sustainable and circular economy. One of the goals that came about being in the NFT space was to discover “hidden gems” and new artists whose work was eye-catching and impactful such as Jessica Colaço and Fena Gitu and many others that MUZIKI plans to onboard after we go live with the MVP.  

Muziki brings the NFT revolution to the music industry, enabling artists to sell music IP rights via secure blockchain technology. NFTs gain value as artists thrive, creating incentives for marketing and income generation. The platform covers marketplace, distribution, and royalty collection for the artist. 

Muziki’s platform is built on several core components:

1. Identity Management: We intend to do eKYC for all musicians on-boarding the platform. We may also consider looking at decentralized identity solutions to address the digital divide in Africa
2. Own Your Music: The foundation of Muziki’s platform, the decentralized ledger securely stores token ownership and transaction data, ensuring the immutability and transparency of all records.
3. Sell and Trade NFTs: The platform employs smart contracts to automate various aspects of the NFTs. By utilizing Cardano's robust infrastructure and smart contract capabilities, the platform will ensure secure transactions, verifiable ownership of NFTs, and transparent royalty distributions. This integration will contribute to the expansion of real-world use cases for Cardano.
4. Decentralized Wallets: There are over 700m Mobile Money wallets in Africa; as one of the most popular forms of payment in the continent. We will integrate the ability for payments via Mobile Money (MoMo) in addition to ADA. Once the royalties are calculated, the smart contracts can initiate automated payouts directly to the artists' designated digital wallets on CARDANO or MoMo. This process bypasses the need for intermediaries like record labels and enables faster and more efficient distribution. 
5. Collect Royalties: We plan to develop a dedicated royalty management system that interfaces with the blockchain using CARDANO. This system should enable artists to register their work, track usage, and specify royalty terms such as percentages, and payment thresholds.
6. Tokenisation: Holders of MZK utility tokens can use them to access or utilize specific functions, services, or content within the platform. For example, utility tokens can be used to pay for transaction fees, access premium artists’ content, purchase artists’ merchandise, or participate in platform-specific activities such as live streams of artists on the platform.

Marketplace

We are also building for both the artist and their fans the Muziki marketplace which will serve as a central nexus point for artists to create music NFTs. It offers a user-friendly interface and allows an artist to create a profile, connect to a wallet(s), upload their music track, add features of the track, price the track, mint it and list their NFT. This workflow provides the artists with full ownership to the process while ensuring they are able to make enlightened decisions and maximize their returns while ensuring a secure and traceable process using blockchain technology.

The Muziki marketplace provides alternative revenue channels for artists, fostering financial growth and allowing fans to benefit from the artist's growing content. This will contribute to the overall economic growth in the African music industry.

[IMPACT] How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?

Our music NFT marketplace benefits the Cardano ecosystem in several ways. Firstly, it leverages Cardano's blockchain technology, ensuring secure and transparent transactions for artists and buyers. This enhances the ecosystem's reputation for reliability and innovation.

Secondly, by integrating with Cardano's native cryptocurrency ADA, the marketplace facilitates seamless and efficient payments, fostering adoption and use of ADA within the music industry.

Furthermore, the NFT marketplace provides a new revenue stream for artists, empowering them to earn more fairly from their creations. This encourages more artists to join the Cardano ecosystem, increasing its overall attractiveness and diversity.

Overall, our music NFT marketplace contributes to the growth and sustainability of the Cardano ecosystem, fostering creativity, financial inclusion, and wider adoption of blockchain technology in the music industry.

Each dollar spent on Muziki is an investment in the Cardano ecosystem, aiming to strengthen it by enabling at least 500 musicians in Africa to upload and mint their music and attract new fans (0.5M) and showcasing Cardano's utility. Thus, we believe the project represents excellent value for money.

The ₳ 105,000 ($31,500) budget for our Muziki project is based on a standard man-hour rate of ₳ 181 ($52), in line with industry standards for developers, architects and PMs in the sector. This cost includes project management, architecture, UI/UX design, feature development, testing, and platform launch, all performed by our highly experienced team.

Justification of the cost:

• PM, Architecture & UI/UX Design: Our experienced team ensures maximum value per dollar spent, producing a user-friendly and efficient platform.
• Core Features Development: Building secure and efficient systems on Cardano requires skilled blockchain engineers, thus justifying the cost.
• Testing and QA: To launch a high-quality, bug-free platform, rigorous testing is necessary, warranting its allocation in the budget.
• Launch & User Feedback: The marketing and support team will ensure effective platform launch and collection of crucial user feedback.

[IMPACT] How do you intend to measure the success of your project?

We will determine our project's success through a blend of quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators, such as user acquisition, transaction volume, short-term and long-term impacts on Cardano.

Quantitative KPIs:

• User Adoption: We aim to attract at least 500 musicians and 0.5M fans within the first operational year, creating a vibrant ecosystem within Muziki. 
• Transaction Volume: We aspire to stimulate a transaction volume somewhere between $0.25m - $0.5m during our inaugural year. This target is attainable given that we need to create a huge awareness of the NFT marketplace as well as educate musicians to consider NFTs as the way forward. We intend to adopt the marketing strategy below.

Qualitative KPIs:

• Short-term Impact: By facilitating a high transaction volume, Muziki will corroborate the utility of Cardano in real-world business applications, enhancing its applicability and relevance.
• Long-term Impact: Muziki’s success could act as a magnet for additional NFT ventures to leverage Cardano's robust capabilities. By introducing lots of musicians and fans, Muziki will not only expand the community but also invigorate it, contributing to Cardano's growth and fortifying its reputation in the NFT space.

[IMPACT] Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?

Outputs will be shared and results as follows:

• Bi-weekly through Twitterspace live sessions
• Social media posts per month (Twitter and Blog)
• Reports at the completion of each milestone.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability?

We already have been working on a MVP in advance of putting this venture into the F10. Our team brings a unique blend of industry experience and technical acumen as we have a proven track record and credibility in the African tech space. One of our team is also ex IOG having worked there for 2.5 years and has significant experience in the CARDANO Blockchain space. 

We have strong financial management skills, underscored by experience with previous startups. We've managed budgets effectively, ensuring optimal use of resources.

As some of the technical capabilities will be pulled from a partnering software house Haskell.Team, we bring the delivery capacity that worked for regulated financial markets institutions.

We ensure proper management of funds through:

• Corporate Governance: We will have a proper Corporate Governance arrangement in place with all the team involved in this venture.
• Detailed Budgeting: We allocate funds comprehensively to cover all project expenses.
• Financial Controls with Multi-Sig Wallets: We ensure strict oversight and security by using multi-signature wallets and implementing approval processes for fund transfers.
• Regular Reporting: We provide transparent financial reports to keep stakeholders informed about project finances.
• Open Auditing: Our financial processes are auditable by the shareholders and management and external stakeholders, promoting accountability and independent verification.

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] What are the main goals for the project and how will you validate if your approach is feasible?

This project’s main goals are to::

• Enable the musician to mint NFTs on the Muziki platform 
• Validate market fit for an NFT launchpad, primarily with African musicians.

Music NFT Minting For Muziki’s launchpad feasibility validation we would establish Muziki’s market fit by the following:

• Month 1: Architecture, Design and Infrastructure setup 
• Month 2: Transform PoC into Production ready solution
• Month 3: Onboard first 5 artists and discover, define and implement additional features (ie. Royalties).

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed breakdown of your project’s milestones and each of the main tasks or activities to reach the milestone plus the expected timeline for the delivery.

1. Architecture, Design and Infrastructure setup

• Tasks:
• Define scalable and sustainable architecture, logging and monitoring tooling
• Timeline: 1st month
• Work Estimation: 20 MD
• Budget: ₳ 30,000

2. Transform PoC into Production ready solution

• Tasks:
• Build stable Production and Test environments 
• Initialize Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery pipeline to support rapid prototyping of new features
• Timeline: 2nd month
• Work Estimation: 30 MD
• Budget: ₳ 45,000

3. Onboard first 5 artists

• Tasks:
• Establish accounts for first 5 musicians
• Mint first NFTs on the platform
• Gather User feedback
• Timeline: 3rd month
• Work Estimation: 10 MD
• Budget: ₳ 15,000

4. Discover, define and implement additional features (ie. Royalties)

• Tasks:
• Analyze User feedback
• Define and prioritize improvements and/or new features (like royalties or sharing NFTs through social media)
• Implement top priority item(s)
• Timeline: 3rd month
• Work Estimation: 10 MD
• Budget: ₳ 15,000

[CAPABILITY/ FEASIBILITY] Please describe the deliverables, outputs and intended outcomes of each milestone.

1. Architecture, Design and Infrastructure setup

• Outputs:
• Documented Architecture, Design and Infrastructure
• Defined delivery process

2. Transform PoC into Production ready solution

• Outputs:
• Stable Production and Test environments 
• Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery pipeline to support rapid prototyping of new features

3. Onboard first 5 artists

• Outputs:
• Established accounts for first 5 musicians
• Minted first NFTs on the platform
• Documented User feedback on the minting and selling process and the views on the potential of the platform

4. Discover, define and implement additional features (ie. Royalties)

• Outputs:
• Analyzed and documented User feedback
• Defined and prioritized improvements and/or new features (like royalties or sharing NFTs through social media)
• Implemented top priority item(s)

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown of the proposed work and resources.

1.Architecture, Design and Infrastructure setup

• Resources:
• Roles: Architect, Full stack developer, front end developer, Designer
• Infrastructure
• Timeline: 1st month
• Work Estimation: 20 MD
• Budget: ₳ 30,000

2.Transform PoC into Production ready solution

• Resources::
• Roles: Architect, Full stack developer, front end developer, Designer
• Infrastructure and NMKR costs
• Timeline: 2nd month
• Work Estimation: 30 MD
• Budget: ₳ 45,000

3.Onboard first 5 artists

• Resources:
• Roles: Executive team, technical team, legal team
• Contract / NDA
• Timeline: 3rd month
• Work Estimation: 10 MD
• Budget: ₳ 15,000

4.Discover, define and implement additional features (ie. Royalties)

• Resources
• Roles: :Technical team, marketing team, legal team, Research team
• Contracts/Legal agreements

• Timeline: 3rd month
• Work Estimation: 10 MD
• Budget: ₳ 15,000

[RESOURCES & VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

Our music NFT marketplace benefits the Cardano ecosystem in several ways. Firstly, it leverages Cardano's blockchain technology, ensuring secure and transparent transactions for artists and buyers. This enhances the ecosystem's reputation for reliability and innovation.

Secondly, by integrating with Cardano's native cryptocurrency ADA, the marketplace facilitates seamless and efficient payments, fostering adoption and use of ADA within the music industry.

Furthermore, the NFT marketplace provides a new revenue stream for artists, empowering them to earn more fairly from their creations. This encourages more artists to join the Cardano ecosystem, increasing its overall attractiveness and diversity.

Overall, our music NFT marketplace contributes to the growth and sustainability of the Cardano ecosystem, fostering creativity, financial inclusion, and wider adoption of blockchain technology in the music industry.

Each dollar spent on Muziki is an investment in the Cardano ecosystem, aiming to strengthen it by enabling at least 500 musicians in Africa to upload and mint their music and attract new fans (0.5M) and showcasing Cardano's utility. Thus, we believe the project represents excellent value for money.

The budget allocated for our Muziki.xyz NFT Launchpad project amounts to ₳ 105,000 ($31,500) and is determined based on the prevailing standard rates for man-hours in the industry. This budget encompasses various essential aspects of the project, including project management, architecture, UI/UX design, feature development, testing, and platform launch. Our highly skilled team is responsible for executing these tasks, leveraging their extensive experience in the field.

Investing in Muziki.xyz translates into investing in the growth of the Cardano ecosystem. Our primary objectives are to empower artists and the Music industry in developing ways to gain access to funding, attract new users to the platform, and showcase the practicality of Cardano. Therefore, we firmly believe that the project offers exceptional value for the resources invested.

Here is a breakdown of the cost justification:

• Project Management, Architecture & UI/UX Design: Our proficient team ensures optimal utilization of resources, resulting in a user-friendly and efficient platform.
• Core Features Development: The development of secure and efficient systems on Cardano necessitates the expertise of skilled blockchain engineers, which justifies the associated cost.
• Testing and Quality Assurance (QA): Thorough testing is imperative to deliver a high-quality platform devoid of bugs or issues, warranting its inclusion in the budget.
• Platform Launch and User Feedback: The marketing and support team will spearhead an effective platform launch and gather valuable user feedback, contributing to the continuous improvement of the project.

[IMPORTANT NOTE] The Applicant agreed to Fund10 rules and also that data in the Submission Form and other data provided by the project team during the course of the project will be publicly available.

I Accept