CryptoNews Podcast

#54: Antonino Abbate and Michele Marchetto on the Future of Music and NFTs

September 07, 2021 cryptonews.com Episode 54
CryptoNews Podcast
#54: Antonino Abbate and Michele Marchetto on the Future of Music and NFTs
Show Notes Transcript

Antonino Abbate and Michele Marchetto are the Founders of Onlymusix, the first music platform for creating and selling NFTs for the music industry.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- Onlymusix
- Partnering with musicians
- Smart contracts and copyrighting
- Split payments
- Lazy minting
- Partnering with Forestmatic
- Future of music and NFTs
 
Onlymusix
Website: onlymusix.com
Twitter: @Onlymusix_NFT
Instagram: onlymusix_nft

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Matt Zahab:

Ladies and gentlemen, it's your host Matt here from cryptonews.com. And I'm very excited to have our guests on the show today. It is another dual guest episode on the crypto news podcast. And we are getting ready to talk about NFTs and the music industry. This one is going to be not so treat. Now, let's introduce our guests here. First up to bat we have Antonino Abbate. Born in the beautiful city of Sicily he then moved to Rome and started working as a cybersecurity and tech operations consultant for big companies in telecoms, banking, and big government. He then worked for a San Francisco based ticketing company. The collaboration became so good that he decided to open a new company called the eye which provides consulting services and cyber security. Present day, he founded and runs onlytech industries, which is focused on creating new products using blockchain and crypto. He's here today to talk to us about some incredible collabs with NFTs and the music industry and his partner in crime, Michele marchetto, who's born in Paducah. Hopefully I pronounced that right, and was a huge code enthusiast since a young boy. He also started programming in basic on I 386. To build his own video games. He quickly fell in love with the internet and dedicated his efforts to open source projects and got kidnapped his heart got kidnapped rather by the open BSD project, and eventually became the first ever Italian developer to join the core team. Fast forward he got a master's degree at the University of Padua and started working as a Linux kernel developer for an Italian company called alpha net that was building a portable three slash 4g core network. He's always been interested in experimenting new things fell in love with web and mobile development, then blockchain came around fell in love again, and has never looked back since 2018. I'm very pleased to welcome to the crypto news podcast Antonino and Michele. Gentlemen, hope I pronounced the name right, and welcome to the show.

Antonino Abbate:

Thank you very much.

Michele Marchetto:

Thank you. Hello.

Matt Zahab:

Thanks, boys, thanks for coming on here, really pumped to have you on. I don't think there's a person in the world who doesn't listen to music. That's sort of synchronous with human beings and just animals in general. We all love music, and everyone mostly loves NFTs. And if they don't, they certainly will a couple of years down the road once you learn more about them. But that being said, you guys are tackling a huge problem, and a massive industry. Now the music industry is a little bit of a shit show, you always hear artists talking about how their label takes advantage of them and hear all this nitty gritty and all this fun. I would love if we could start off by you guys sort of talking about the current problems of the music industry. And how you two are both helping combat them?

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah, it seems that there are a lot of stuff in the music industries that are not making money, basically, because we just saw the songs and the albums, but there are a lot of experiences in life of an artist that can be published. And that all the fan base wants to basically own, like, I don't know, the rehearsals, or the creations that are basically on the base of the life of an artist, and all these experiences created by the imaginations of the artist can became something that can be sold, and that the true fans, their real fan base, can just buy and we decided to basically build up OnlyMusix to let the fan base the true fan of an artist where they can basically get in touch more closely to the artists. And that can basically buy something that are not just songs, but can be streaming rehearsals, and all this stuff that are not just sold. But that can be transformed with the basically in a virtual art like NFTs. And so basically this is it.

Michele Marchetto:

I would add that we we aim to give new opportunities to the artists, music artists, because currently they could have the opportunity to create new connections with their fans, closer connections with this application.

Matt Zahab:

Fellas, that was great. Thank you. Now I gotta ask the name. So to my knowledge the parent company's called only tech industries and the company itself is called only musix and that is only and musix, instead of music with a C on the end. Now, I don't watch only fans definitely aware of what it is, however, did the name come from only fans? Was there any inspiration with that? You know how big only fans is? Now give me the goods on that.

Antonino Abbate:

You we imparted that inspiration for the name. But clearly this copy is different. So yes, I can say yes, we will have other products with the only suffix. It's not online now, it will be later. But there are other projects we will work on with the only suffix. So it's not only OnlyMusix or the company name onlytech industries.

Matt Zahab:

I love that. I love that only fans, you better watch out because you got a new yet a new family of companies with the prefix only that's coming at you. So get your popcorn ready. And look out for these guys. I do have more questions about the company itself. Now there are tons of incredible highlights on the company, just to name a few. I love the split payments. Of course, the smart contracts the lazy minting. That's world class, I think you guys are one of the first ones to do that. Again, we're gonna get into all of this. Forest Matic another great aspect. reforestation and sustainability giving back to the environment is so incredible, especially with climate change being rampant as it is these days. I want to go back to the NFTs as a whole though. And if you can help walk me through the process of how you partner with musicians, are you going to them first and saying, Hey, I can give you a new revenue stream, I can help you monetize x, y and Zed your rehearsals, you're on stage or backstage, wherever the case may be. Are you one of them first? Are they going to you? How does the nitty gritty of negotiations look like walk me through that process? If you don't mind?

Michele Marchetto:

Okay, let me just clarify that we all know that there are a lot of NFT markets out there. But we just want to focus on music. Because we know that it's a huge market. out there, there are not any market that focuses just on music. So we want to give the artists the possibility, the chance to focus on the main subject that is music. And so we developed a lot of stuff that are just related with music. You said that, how can you say the split payments are a good things because you know, as an artist, you are not the only owner of the music, there are labels, there are agents, there are a lot of partners that you can have. And basically when you sell your NFTs, there are a lot of parties involved that can benefit from them and NFTs so when you are maintaining your NFT you can say okay, I can get 90% of these NFTs. But the other 5% goes to my label the other 5% goes to my agent. And so there are a lot of parties that can benefit from this platform OnlyMusix. And this is not addressed just to the to the Creator, so to the artists, but to the labels as well to the agents as well. So there are a multiplayer platform. So basically, this is not interesting just for artists, but also for label and for agents.

Matt Zahab:

What do the agents in the labels think about this? Are they scared about this, that they're not going to have as much control as previously?

Michele Marchetto:

Yeah, we noticed that about with the split payment, we just mitigated a lot. Because you know, they were scared because Okay, I am not involved anymore because the artists are going to sell directly their art to the fans. And so labels and agents and stuff are basically cut off. And we said No, okay, because labels are important, even in an NFT world. So we just want to develop a platform that can help anyone in the business to basically build another channel to reach the audience. And so nothing is going to be, no one is going to be scared about our platform.

Matt Zahab:

Love that great point there. And the inception of OnlyMusix. When I was doing a little bit of research for the show. Very similar to a lot of NFT companies nowadays. It seems that this was created last year when COVID was an absolute shit show. And artists could not perform right the only way unless you're dropping a new album and you get that money from streaming on Spotify or Apple Music, or maybe a YouTube video blows up, you really hope there's not a whole lot of ways to make money. And this is why NFT's came to fruition. Was that the same with you guys? Is that why you started this company?

Antonino Abbate:

Yes, the inception is that we started to think. First of all, we started to think that we needed to do streaming, but then we shift our energies to do the NFT marketplace, because it was a hot topic now. So it was better to start with that. And yes, that is the right view about what we talked about my last year.

Matt Zahab:

So you guys started NFTs and OnlyMusix while COVID happens. You hit up some artists, they come back, they love the platform, now we're really moving. Moves are being made waves are being written on, everything is going well, and you guys are tackling a lot of the current problems within the music industry. I want to talk about the platform here because a lot of people would be like, Okay, if I'm an artist, why would I want to do this? Now, I sort of highlighted seven main highlights that your platform has. I'd love to start with the smart contracts and the copyright. How does that work? How are the smart contracts actually created? And then on the copyright side? Who owns what what do you guys own? What does the artists own? Where's the buyer of the NFT? own? I know, that's a mouthful, but I'd love if you could tackle the two areas of smart contracts and copywriting.

Michele Marchetto:

Okay, we basically speaking about the copyright, which is a hot topic, because a lot of people was asking us, okay, how do you deal with the copywriter. And so we decided to basically approach the subject in a modular way. So when you mint your NFT, we propose you default license, okay. But you can basically upload your own one. So if you have a license with your label, you can just upload your license along with your NFTs and your medias. And the license will be stick together with the media. So basically, when a user is buying an NFT he's not buying just the media, but also the license that is associated with it. And inside the license. The user can just read everything that is related to copyright to the usage, and all the stuff that are copyright related. So basically, we decided to approach the license matter. Building it inside the NFTs. And so they are strictly related.

Matt Zahab:

Interesting. And on the payment side, you guys are one of the first companies to release the split payment factor. Give me the two cents on that. How's that work?

Antonino Abbate:

Okay, basically, when you the process of minting is very simple. You just have some things to tweak. And that's it. But one of the things is that split payments. So basically you are not as a creator, you are not the only who is getting the money basically. But you can specify other wallet can can get money, when your NFT is going to be bought. And so basically, the procedure is very simple. You just have to insert another wallet address, and the percentage of the money that this wallet is going to get. And that's basically it.

Matt Zahab:

Interesting. Okay, that seems like that's something revolutionary, that's going to really take off sooner rather than later. I'd love to go back to this in a bit. But another topic that came up, especially in our telegram group, when we were asking our fans if they have any questions about this pod, a lot of people are asking about what types of NFTs the artists are requesting from the platform being you guys. So again, we talked about some backstage stuff, of course, owning maybe clips of music, some jingles, artwork, whatever the case may be, but are you guys getting any like way off the beaten path? Weird requests? And if so, what are those weird requests that you're getting?

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah, basically, we think that as I told you before, the album and the songs are just the tip of the iceberg, let's say but there are a lot of experiences in the life of an artist that can be thought as art. I mentioned before the rehearsals but also the paperwork or some kind of artwork because some of the artists and the songwriter out there not just songwriter but they are artist as well. I can mention those, but, you know, NFTs, as music are just a part of the NFTs that we are going or we are willing to display on the platform. But some artists say if they want to publish, I don't know, the cover of the album, or the artwork, or the paperwork, or the rehearsals, or...

Michele Marchetto:

Or it could be golden tickets for any event they are doing. So not only data but could be also a ticket.

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah, that's another important matter that an artist can sell basically, the tickets of the tour inside our platform. And the fans can can basically buy the tickets, not through the usual platforms, but directly. Inside the OnlyMusix as NFTs,

Matt Zahab:

I feel like it also be cool like me, personally, I listened to a couple, you know, well, maybe not new rock that much. But some old school rock bands, or even new school rock bands, maybe some of the guitar strings, you know, parts of the guitar, maybe just scrap it all up, cut it up nicely with the laser cutter, and then divvy them up, sell those as NFTs or even maybe the actual songs. I know nowadays, a lot of artists write their songs on the Notes app on their iPhone, like, that'd be cool. If you take a screenshot of that. You make that as an NFT. Or, you know, if you're an old school writer, and actually putting pen to paper, that'd be even nicer. Like having the actual written word, just maybe the corrections and the squiggly lines and lines crossed out. And maybe just given you a billion dollar idea, but hey that'd be incredible. I'd absolutely love to see that.

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah. And that's why we basically built OnlyMusix just to allow the fans to access to some kind of creations basically from the artists that are not going to be to be sold nowadays.

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Michele Marchetto:

Yeah, okay. One of the main problem nowadays with the blockchain OnlyMusix uses the Ethereum blockchain and the gas fees that are actually very high. And so basically, this is a blocking issue to an artist to publish, let's say a whole album, because it can be composed basically by I don't know 10 songs. And so there are 10 NFTs and so you are going to pay a hell of money just to mint your album as NFT. So this is basically a blocking issue not just for smaller bands, or artists, but for everyone basically. So we decided to implement what is called the lazy minting that is basically a simple procedure that allow you to postpone the minting. And so basically to postpone the payment of the gas fees until your first your first sale. So basically, what you are going to do with the lazy minting is that you are going to pay the gas fee on your first sale. And so you don't have to put money in advance to publish your NFT on OnlyMusix, but you are going to pay the fees just on the first sale. And so basically, you are not putting money in advance. But these are basically subtracted from your first sale. And so you are going to pay the gas fee only if you sell your music, if you are not going to sell them music, you are not going to pay anything. And this is basically how a huge difference from the other marketplaces.

Antonino Abbate:

Yes, the This will prevent also to create NFTs that are not sold, I believe because there could be a problem like NFTs minted that are not solved. So in this case with the lazy minting, the NFT is not minted and so is not really created in the blockchain. So we do not waste the money or energy for that.

Matt Zahab:

That's literally one of the biggest revolutions in e commerce right now. And just sort of finance in general is the whole buy now pay later thing you have firms like a firm, i klarna paybright, to name a couple, you know, you can buy something and paid in different installments. And it's sort of similar to what you guys are doing right now absolutely love that way to take advantage of a huge trend there. But this has to, be lazy minting, this has to be one of the features that artists love the most right,

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah, of course, because especially small artists that wants to basically publish their music on the platform was a little bit concerned about the gas fee. And we are explaining them that these are not fees asked by OnlyMusix, but that they are basically on the blockchain. And so this was harder to explain to the artists because they are not involved in blockchain. And so basically this was a concern that arised on the first instance, and we tried to find a solution. And we thought that this lazy minting was the best solution. And they basically pay if they sell, if they don't sell anything, they are not going to pay anything. So this is just for free.

Matt Zahab:

The way it should be. Moving forward, I want to talk about Forest Matic which is the company who you guys partnered with, that allows you and them as well, planting trees all over Italy and Europe, and that is reforestation, and sustainability. That's such, like from a social capital perspective, that's absolutely huge. You really need to obviously be cognizant of that. You can't just take take take and not give anything back. And you guys have done this right off the bat that. Did I just sort of explain why you did that? Or was there any other rationale in regards to partnering with forest Matic?

Antonino Abbate:

Yeah, I'm really proud of this partnership, to be honest, because it allows us to be one of the first in the NFT business that really care about our beloved planet. Because we are taking proactive actions, like planting a tree instead of claiming to be green using the blockchain that does not consume co2, for example. So we plant trees there, which is a proactive action. And we aim to plant a tree for every NFT minted. This is what we would like to do and we will do.

Matt Zahab:

Michele and Antonino, that is absolutely incredible. Absolutely love that you guys are doing that. Kudos to you. A lot of people talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. You guys are definitely doing that. So like I said, kudos well deserved. I want to move forward and talk a bit about the mass adoption, how we can get the general public to fall in love with crypto and NFTs. Like I spoke about first thing once we started this pot, everyone loves music. I've never met someone who doesn't love music. Not everyone loves crypto, it's gonna happen a couple years down the road. But again, it's going to take time, blood, sweat, tears and a whole lot of effort. You guys release credit card payments, which to my knowledge allows people to buy NFTs via credit cards in case they don't want to, in case they don't have that crypto. Ramp to purchase NFTs besides the credit card payments, what other aspects of NFTs crypto and blockchain do we as an Industry need to work on to really help increase this mass adoption faith.

Antonino Abbate:

So I believe the credit card payment is the first thing we thought, because not everyone is in the crypto business, and people like to buy stuff using the credit card. So there are not many people that knows the crypto and understand that they need the wallet. So we don't get a partnership with this case. Could that help the users to to buy NFT just using the credit card or Apple Pay, for example. That would help a lot because there is a big blocker sometimes for end users to adopt new technologies. So with this, we hope to help a bit the adoption of crypto and our technology,

Michele Marchetto:

Because basically our users, the fans, and the creators are not involved in the blockchain environment. So they doesn't know basically what it is a wallet, and all this kind of stuff. So basically, we wanted to build a simple platform that can be used even by people that are not crypto lovers, let's say. So we decided to integrate this wire widget. And wire is a company based in San Francisco. And so basically, one can basically recharge their wallets inside the platform. So just give the credit card, your wallet address, and you can recharge your wallet with Ethereum and then by the NFTs. So everything is done inside of the platform without going to external exchange or something. And you can do everything inside the platform, recharge your wallet, and buy the NFTs inside OnlyMusix and this I think can help a lot of people that are not involved in the crypto crypto world.

Matt Zahab:

Hey, love that. You guys got a lot poppin off happy for you guys. Tell me about the future of OnlyMusix slash only tech industries. Any future projects look forward to? I'm specifically interested in things like ticketing and Merchandising, and now on the partnership side as well, but I think those have just absolutely insane crazy infinite potential. What do you guys have planned for future projects looking forward.

Antonino Abbate:

So, we are planning after the NFT marketplace to continue working on the streaming because we started with the stream but we switched to the NFT marketplace. So, the streaming functions will be correlated to the platform, the artist, so the user can subscribe to the artists channel and support directly the artists with our streaming functionalities. We will introduce the watch and earn because we will adopt another blockchain for that for the streaming and the user, the more they see the streaming the most they can earn cryptos So, that will be a new feature we will introduce. Other than that after the streaming we aim to include the another platform which will be an external platform we think we would like to build after that which is in the ticketing business. So we will try to include that then in OnlyMusix so the fan will have the opportunity to subscribe to the channel of the artists or whatever the artist want to stream, buy the tickets using these other platform integrated and then we would like also to partner with current marketplace, real marketplace, not NFT marketplace, or other platforms that already provide services for the music business. So for sure we will, will open new partnerships.

Matt Zahab:

Busy roadmap ahead. Absolutely love to see that. Now, I one of the things that always you know, I always find it so tough to explain. Not tough, but if someone who doesn't understand crypto or who is not a crypto blockchain or NFT, native, just someone who really isn't in the space and doesn't immerse themselves every single day. How do you explain the value of NFTs? Because it's such a tough question, right? Like with what you guys are doing, it's a lot easier because you have that utility. But when someone asked like, why would I spend, you know, 100 grand, like I saw on Twitter this morning, I woke up, I checked Twitter like video every single morning. I'm addicted, I should probably stop. But I saw someone who bought a crypto punk for 850, grand USD $850,000. In Ethereum, they bought a crypto punk. It's a JPEG. Right? And, again, I have my own theories about this. But what do you guys say to someone who says Why is everyone spending so much money on NFTs? What's the answer to that?

Michele Marchetto:

Okay, we have been asked many times about this. And the answer is that OnlyMusix is not, let's say dedicated to the mainstream user, but just to the true fan that really wants to help the artist and really wants to get in touch with the artists and his creations basically. So the question could be, why are you going to buys CDs, when you can listen to the Spotify streams, okay, because you want to have the physical artwork and you want to have to support the artist, not just listening to Spotify, but having the original copy or the first release, or the paperwork. OnlyMusix want to focus just on the true fans that really wants to help the music industry and the artist and basically their creations and their fantasy, basically.

Matt Zahab:

It makes sense. Makes sense for me. Gentlemen, really appreciate you coming on. I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Any questions for me before we let you go?

Antonino Abbate:

Oh, no.

Matt Zahab:

All good? I guess I did my homework. No questions. I'd love to hear that. Michele and Antonino, really appreciate you guys coming on. Hope you had a blast and really excited for the future of your company. We'll keep in touch and would love to have you guys on for round two in the future. Thanks again.

Michele Marchetto:

Thank you.

Antonino Abbate:

Thank you.

Matt Zahab:

Folks. This was the crypto news podcast with Antonio Abbate and Michele Marchetto from OnlyMusix. Had a blast this episode, learned a ton as always big fan and of NFTs big fans and music. Even bigger fan when those two industries come together. As always, we're dropping on Mondays and Thursdays during the summer and we'll be back to 3x per week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday once September rolls around. Love you all appreciate y'all listening. Hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and keep in touch bye for now and see you soon.