We’re excited to launch Curator Rewards. 

Collectors can earn from being a curator on Sound and showing off your music taste.

Earn 5% on primary mints generated through your referral links as a reward for introducing your favorite songs to new collectors.

TK recently launched Petal Power – his web3 “digital street team” aimed at mobilizing his community to grow and share his Eternal Garden project.

Curator Rewards are a way for artists on Sound to build their own street team and everyone in the ecosystem benefits from more organic sharing of music.

Read on for more details.

Why Curation?

It’s no question that curation has deeply shaped the music industry, rocketing new viral songs to our cultural epicenter or connecting undiscovered artists with new listeners. Today, more than 100,000 songs are uploaded each day, which means curation plays an even more critical role.

Music blogs once dominated the music industry - getting your song featured on Pitchfork, Pigeon & Planes, and Hillydilly was a key measure of success. The majority of music bloggers monetized through ads, as many did not have existing relationships with the artists or labels.

The era of music blogs ended with the rise of DSPs. Instead of bespoke music blogs and playlists, these platforms now hired teams of music curators to create branded playlists (like Spotify’s “Rap Caviar”) and teams of data scientists to create music recommendation engines. It’s a deeply curated and personalized experience, but opaque and isolated at the same time. User-generated playlists are nearly impossible to find on Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.

At Sound, our thesis is that music curation can be social, personalized, and rewarding.

• Music discovery should be powered by artists and listeners, not by Sound. 

• Listeners should have control over what type of content they see. 

• Lastly, curators should be rewarded for contributing to the ecosystem.

Curate to Earn

Anyone can be a curator on Sound. Share your favorite songs, create playlists, or embed songs and playlists into your own website, blog, or newsletter.

For every primary mint generated from your referral links, you’ll earn 5% for introducing a song to a new collector. This includes primary mints that originate from any playlists you create.

Some details:

• Primary mints only – secondary sales are not currently eligible for Curator Rewards

• Only applies to songs with Curator Rewards enabled (deployed after February 2023)

• You cannot earn from your own referral link

You can view your earnings in “My Earnings”, where you’ll see a breakdown by song and can withdraw your earnings to your wallet. 

What this means for Artists.

As we continue to scale content on Sound, music curation will play an increasingly central role in discovery and we’re excited to launch Curator Rewards as one piece to the puzzle.

Now, curators on Sound are directly incentivized to introducing new music to other collectors, ultimately leading to both more exposure and more sales volume.

All uploads starting in February 2023 will have Curator Rewards enabled by default, and artists can choose to disable the feature during upload or on the song page.

Closing Thoughts

We’re excited to continue building an ecosystem where music curation is social, personalized, and rewarding.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on Curator Rewards.

Here’s to the next generation of curators!