Mint Songs Ceases Operations
Crypto Winter is cold blooded and vicious. Businesses come and go. This was the one that I personally engaged with the most, and now it's gone. But I see two clear lessons from this experiment.
In January, I think I checked Mint Songs on a weekly basis, at least. Fast forward to October 5th, and I’m just now learning the company ceased operations… in mid-September. I figured this out when I wanted to go look for some new music for the first time in weeks. Typing in the URL sent me to Mint Songs’ Opensea collection. Hmmm, odd. So I went to Twitter and found this:
There wasn’t much warning and there isn’t much of an explanation in the letter. But one of the founders did respond to a question on Twitter and just simply said they could never manage to create a sustainable business model that worked.
Fundamental Issues
What was the business? It was essentially a marketplace - and marketplaces are really hard to do right especially in such an experimental asset space like NFTs. For Mint Songs, this was a massive undertaking because the company had to have essentially started as an idea; musicians and fans transacting without middlemen. The problem is Mint Songs was fundamentally a middleman. And a middleman that tasked itself with educating both the musicians and the fans about blockchain is a fish swimming against the current.
Perhaps the model can work when times are good but not when times are rough. And right now times are rough; particularly in crypto. Obviously, I personally stopped buying music NFTs through Mint Songs. There are two main reasons for that:
The markets are all getting crushed and we’re experiencing a reverse wealth effect, so I’m personally tightening my belt
Mint Songs changed from no curation to more of a curation model and I lost interest in the main site
What originally made Mint Songs so much fun to me was that it was the Wild West of music NFTs. As I detailed in my music NFT coverage earlier this year, competitors Catalog and Sound.xyz went with the higher asking price, highly curated approach while Mint Songs just made a marketplace and let people do what they wanted. Got a song? Throw it up there and ask for whatever you want. Artists decided price and supply figures. The listeners voted with their ETH. It was the freest market in music NFTs by far.
As someone who has spent years curating music for a radio audience, I felt like I had an edge in a totally free market and thoroughly enjoyed discovering musicians that I never would have heard if it were not for Mint Songs. Many of these artists I still listen to on a regular basis:
Dom Deshawn
X&ND
Ayotemi
Yatte
Xeon Bell
I had the pleasure of even chatting with Dom Deshawn earlier this year. And I’m thrilled to see that this news doesn’t appear to have impacted his drive for success as his offerings are diversified among the various platforms. I’m still rooting for that man in a big way.
The Market Has Been Hammered
There is no doubt in my mind Mint Songs struggled because of the general crash in NFT sales. According to CryptoSlam, total NFT sales closed September at $507 million - while still an absurdly high number in the eyes of many, that’s a 90% decline from the $4.7 billion in January.
The trend has been relentless. September was the 8th consecutive decline in total month NFT sales. It isn’t much better for Polygon either (where Mint Songs operated). Mint Songs didn’t launch until July 2021 so I’m a bit surprised the company only made it a year.
They raised $4.3 million in VC money from firms like Dapper Labs, Coinbase Ventures, and Castle Island - it’s hard for me to imagine such a small company burning through that much capital in such a short amount of time. But it’s also possible they’re just seeing the writing on the wall and have returned some of the capital rather than incinerating it while hoping crypto turns it around. I really don’t know. But I’d love more details.
Lessons Learned?
Beyond buying the NFTs for my own personal enjoyment, I was really rooting for this company to succeed. Selfishly, I was hoping the company would create a token model and do an airdrop to some of the original users (I was one of the first 200). But, this was always a very large gamble and I treated it as such. To be clear though, the NFTs didn’t go anywhere. You can still buy or sell the Mint Songs NFTs through any marketplace that supports Polygon NFTs.
I think that means we now have an interesting Web 3 case study happening here. If Spotify goes bust, all of the music goes away. Mint Songs is gone now but the music remains. Why? Because it was never centrally controlled and lives on a public blockchain. As long as the blockchain is there and IPFS storage remains, the music will be there and ownership rights will be retained. We may look back at this years from now as a moment that proved the entire point of the decentralization movement. Bitcoin exists without Celsius Network or Voyager just like I can still listen to my music NFTs even without Mint Songs.
For other builders who may be reading this, I think the other lesson is stay true to what you are. Mint Songs changed from non-curated to curated. I didn’t personally care for the move because the platform lost its differentiator. But that isn’t ultimately why it closed its doors. The other lesson is when you’re educating the masses on a secular trend that possibly eliminates the need for your service entirely when done correctly, you should probably charge more up front.
Disclaimer: I am not an investment advisor. None of this is investment advice. I still own music NFTs even though the company that previously facilitated the transactions doesn’t exist anymore.