Muzika Network ICO Review

In today’s music industry, the challenges around the ownership, monetization, and distribution of content make it harder than ever for artists to establish a sustainable career. To combat this problem, Muzika is developing a brand new, self-sustaining digital music ecosystem on the blockchain, one that connects content creators and fans directly with one another without the need for intermediaries.

The company already has access to 2 million active users from their founders’ previous venture, Mapia Company. In addition, Muzika has established a technical partnership with Ontology, as well as business partnerships with Blackhorse, Panony and Duane Morris & Selvam LLP. Their current investors include NEO global capital, Ontology, 256 Ventures, Blackhorse, and other well-established players in the blockchain space.

The Muzika team consists of 3 entrepreneurs who have been successful in their previous ventures and were also featured in Forbes ’30-Under-30’. Together, they plan to take on a $45 billion music industry by eliminating unnecessary intermediaries, empowering musicians and consumers, decentralizing the distribution of power, and restoring the balance of economic distribution among market players.

How it works

Muzika’s digital music ecosystem will function as a channel for distributing and publishing music content while providing fair compensation to artists. Fans will also get to partake in all stages of a song’s lifecycle, ranging from sponsorship and production to consumption.

Overview of the Muzika Ecosystem:

Within this self-sustaining ecosystem, community members are rewarded with loyalty points for a variety of community activities, including voting, commenting, posting, and sharing songs. These loyalty points are then converted into Muzika’s utility token, MZK. The ecosystem also provides a direct link between sponsors and artists, enabling sponsors to pay artists directly for their music.

All transactions between sponsors, fans, and artists are recorded on the blockchain, which is a decentralized, secure, and immutable ledger. Outside streaming services are also able to participate in the ecosystem using the same shared blockchain ledger, which ensures ultimate transparency when accounting for the number of streams and subsequent royalty payouts.

Loyalty program breakdown:

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The interaction between artists and fans

The Muzika ecosystem makes it very easy for artists to be supported by their fans. First, artists share their demo tapes, video clips or new compositional ideas with the community members. Next, they can begin fundraising for their music project once their posts receive enough votes and pass a number of copyright verification processes. Lastly, community members will become the patrons of the artists they like by sponsoring their work with MZK tokens. Smart contracts help facilitate the transfer of funds between parties on the Muzika blockchain.

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The MZK token

The MZK token is used to gain access to the Muzika ecosystem. It serves 4 main functions:

Community building: MZK tokens are used as an incentive mechanism to foster greater participation amongst community members. Members earn MZK tokens for creative brainstorming, exchange of feedback, and more.
Means of making transactions for commercial items and services: Ecosystem participants can exchange digital music, sheet music, musical instruments, recording services, and much more using MZK tokens.
Sponsorships opportunities: Users can sponsor artists and become patrons by paying monthly subscriptions to their content using MZK tokens. Patrons will receive exclusive access to the products and services offered by the artist. They will also get to be more involved in the creative process of the music.
Community programs: MZK tokens will also help fund community programs and events like auditions, contests, live streaming sessions, etc. All of these activities help strengthen the Muzika network.

MZK tokens can be obtained by participating in Muzika’s upcoming ICO, or by purchasing the token on cryptocurrency exchanges. They can also be mined through active, loyal participation in the community.

MZK is an ERC20 token built on top of both the Ethereum and Ontology blockchain network. However, in the future, Muzika plans to develops its own protocol blockchain specialized for community-based applications that facilitate all digitized forms of creative works.

Team

Muzika’s team consists of 3 young founders who initially started a company called Mapia Company. Mapia Company is a successful venture-funded music platform that reached over 2 million users from across 150 nations as of December 2017. The team behind this successful venture sought to expand into the blockchain space because they believed that the decentralized technology could be utilized to create a more transparent and fair ecosystem for the music industry.

The founders are CEO Inseo Chung: a former pianist and high school dropout who built an e-commerce startup and a prominent social media marketing agency.

CTO Sangmin Heo: a prodigy developer, deep-learning expert, and leader of a top‑notch tech team.

COO Jangwon Lee: a professional pianist and business administration major who was the top graduate of both the most prestigious high school and the top-ranked university in the nation and has founded multiple organizations and startups.

The founders are among the youngest in the blockchain industry nationally and internationally with an average age in line with that of Vitalik Buterin, now 24, when he founded Ethereum at the age of 21.

Pros

Muzika’s ecosystem is able to leverage an existing audience of two million active users across 150 nations. These users are already exchanging their own musical ideas, sharing performances, composing original pieces, and trading various digital forms of music.
The founding team is highly talented and experienced in the music space through their previous venture, Mapia Company.
The company is backed by Naver, Kakao, and Samsung executives; famous Korean angel investor Michael Cho is also their advisor
They have successfully raised private funding from Asia’s prominent VCs, including Neo Global Capital, Everest Ventures Group, and T3 Ventures (from 8 Decimal)

Cons

Blockchains are great at providing a transparent and secure way to store information about music copyright holders and royalty payments. However, that information has to be accurate prior to it being entered into the blockchain. Muzika needs to develop a very precise way to guarantee that all music registered on the platform truly belongs to the copyright holders; otherwise, you could have a situation where someone claims ownership of a song because it is registered on the blockchain, even though they did not originally write it.

Roadmap

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ICO details

Muzika is launching a reverse-ICO, leveraging the 2 million users from their existing business, Mapia Company to help raise a hard cap of 20,000 ETH.

Conclusion

Muzika is creating an autonomous, self-sustaining ecosystem that aims to empower musicians to take back their ability to monetize and be properly credited for their work. The platform utilizes blockchain technology to develop a token economic system that creates incentives for fans, publishers, and artists to connect with each other and exchange value throughout the various stages of the creative process.

The music industry has always faced challenges when it comes to digital copyright management, and although blockchain technology will help participants make great strides in solving those problems through greater transparency, Muzika will still need to solve the problems around verifying the authenticity of ownership prior to the work being registered on the blockchain. With a team of highly talented and experienced founders and developers, Muzika is well equipped to solve these challenges and finally disrupt the stagnant yet increasingly valuable digital music industry.