[DAO:c71546f] Chorus - Licensed Mainstream Music for Venues in DCL

Governance
1

by 0xb9d4e75f6cb09d8ae722ea94d5d5286922234da2 (Gary)

Should the following $32,025 grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

The goal of this grant proposal is to fund the pilot expansion of Chorus to venues across Decentraland. Chorus is the world’s first turnkey music tech and rights solution for Metaverse platforms. You can license popular mainstream music to your geofenced virtual locations via ready-made tech and curated playlists.

Increasingly, commercial music rights holders are investigating the use of their music illegally within metaverse platforms. Chorus protects venue owners against any DMCA takedowns and removes the burden of royalties and the music industry.

The pilot will cover the license fees for 15 venues across Decentraland and provide 24/7 background music into those venues for up to one year.

Grant size

32,025 USD in DAI

Project duration

3 months

Beneficiary address

0xb9d4e75f6cb09d8ae722ea94d5d5286922234da2

Email address

garyrutland@lickd.co

Description

The Grant

We previously submitted a poll to establish appetite for the service and how the community would want to manage the process:

Feedback was positive and has given us a guide on how to manage the selection process.

Grant Size - $32,025

The grant will cover the setup costs, supply, ongoing management and royalty fees for 15 venues for up to one year of use and 24/7 coverage of background commercial music into those venues. The aim of the grant is to improve the engagement levels in venues across the platform by providing high quality, recognisable music into venues that wouldn’t otherwise have the means to directly pay for this service. If the pilot is successful and there is more interest from additional venues, there would be an additional grant request for further expansion in future.

The $2,135 per venue per year will be used in the following way:

  • The majority of the fee goes to commercial music rights holders in order to pay royalties to their artists.
  • Around 50% of the remaining fee goes to Lickd (builders of Chorus) to cover the setup of the tech and player along with management and curation of playlists.
  • Around 50% of the remaining fee goes to an “umbrella” company to manage implementation for each venue and ensure usage meets the requirements set out in rights holders agreements (i.e. no firearms venues). On acceptance of the grant, LickD will consult with the community to accept tenders from any company that wishes to take the position of Umbrella company.
  • Lickd & Umbrella Company will co-own oversight of the music use and ensuring venues stick to the usage policies around venue types and usage.
  • Part of the fee will go to the panel selected to approve venues from the application process, we propose this to be around $50 per individual per session required for the pilot which we expect to be 2-3 sessions overall

The Value of Chorus

There is lots of research that tells us selecting the right music for your retail outlet, restaurant, bar or social space in the real world is critical to driving customer or visitor behaviour and engagement in the real world:
https://www.lsretail.com/resources/7-reasons-play-music-store\
https://thinkgrowth.org/stores-are-using-music-to-make-you-spend-more-d6c85974b20b\
https://www.startlemusic.com/blog/create-perfect-soundtrack-your-business\
Chorus aims to translate this science and research from the real world into the metaverse by providing access to playlists containing recognisable music and enabling venue owners to create more engaging experiences for their visitors

More about the tech

Chorus is a location based (x,y,x) authenticated music streaming system, where a player that enters a scene that is integrated with Chorus we check that the player is in a permitted location to connect using a combination of DCL signed requests and the catalyst server(s). We continue to check the players position while listening to the stream through heartbeat monitors. When a player leaves the scene or the heartbeat monitors detect that the player is no longer where they’re meant to be (i.e. closed browser, internet disruption) than that player is disconnected from the Chorus stream.

More information on our Chorus DCL library: GitHub - lickdltd/chorus-dcl: Lickd Chorus DCL library

Roadmap and milestones

Application & Selection Process

If the grant proposal is approved, we would open up two application processes:

  1. Application process for the umbrella company and two members of the DAO community to join the panel that selects venues and the order in which they would receive the service as part of the pilot.
  2. Application process for land/venue owners that are interested in receiving the service for their venues or scenes within DCL.

The selection panel would be made of 4 members - 1 member from Lickd, 1 member from Umbrella Company, 2 members from the DAO community. The DAO community members would be voted in via a poll. The panel would meet after the application process to review applications and select venues. The aim would be for the panel to select a set of 15 venues for the pilot that would then receive the implementation before the end of the year. All pilot venues should be set up and live within 3 months of the close of the application process.

Timeline

  • October - DCL Fund Application Process
  • October - Umbrella Company, Panel & Venue Application go-live
  • October - Panel Selection Poll go-live
  • November - First panel meeting to select 15 phase one venues
  • November - Phase one venue implementation
  • December/January - Panel meeting to review pilot and build report to send back to DCL

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

1 Like
2

Hi all,

Josh here from LICKD - one of the co leads on the grant proposal for CHORUS.

I wanted post in here to give a little more context on who we are, some thoughts on the metaverse and on why we are hoping for you to vote ‘yes’ to this grant proposal.

LICKD has been fighting the music industry to innovate since its inception. Just like the metaverse and DCL have democratized ownership and platform decisions (by this very vote in fact) - we believe that music should be democratized and be available for digital creators of all types without fear of repercussion. CHORUS is the first step towards this in the metaverse, and a successful grant approval helps to legitimise this concept of democracy using copyrighted music. Music for the many - not just for the few.

Our business has successfully convinced the music industry that they and creators in the UGC space don’t have to be rivals, and relationships can be symbiotic. This is what we are hoping to achieve with CHORUS in the metaverse too.
This service is the first that covers all the rights you need, is fair to artists (who are paid), is not a forced compulsory platform license, and will allow you the freedom to use music without it eventually leading to issues for landowners or DCL via a very litigious music industry.

We believe the metaverse is still the next big thing, with the mass adoption of VR and AR as inevitable, leading to the boundaries between the physical and digital world becoming blurred.

This presents huge opportunity for landowners and businesses such as yourselves to capitalise as early movers. But one of the key things we believe will hamper mass adoption as things begin to blur is that avatars are still people - and people want the familiarity of the physical world in any digital one. Recognisable music is generally a big part of people’s lives - it invokes emotions, memories, associations.

Why is this important? Because the further immersed people are in the physical world and the unparalleled emotional attachments it offers, the less they will engage with a digital one that doesn’t offer it. Music can be a bridge. It helps retention, engagement and spending re: retail, and if it is easy to license and affordable will attract more brands to DCL. Brands that will pay landowners for activations, because they have always seen music as key to any successful marketing strategy.

It is for this reason and more that we ask for your vote, so that we can help move the metaverse forwards alongside landowners in DCL

Below is an article featuring our CEO and founder, and his thoughts on the metaverse and on the topic of licensing in general.

I have also attached link to a Spotify playlist containing a small sample of tracks currently included.

Many thanks, and here for any questions.

Josh

CHORUS sample music playlist

https://www.beyondgames.biz/37307/empowering-creators-through-music-licensing-interview-with-lickds-paul-sampson/?amp=1

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3

We already pay people to run/host events w/ live DJs and music, and I do not see why they couldn’t work out a deal with you personally to run this on their land, although most successful venues have this solved/figured out already.

I don’t see a real need for this when we already have a multitude of DJs that can remix work to be acceptable levels of copyright.

It doesn’t benefit everyone, as only lands selected would be enabled and feels limited.

Nothing of this would really progress DCL itself, it would just progress your companies influence here, which I’m not sure why we as the DAO should pay for that.

4

Hey Morph,

I know we have had a great talk about this already on discord (thank you for being so open and helpful!), but for the benefit of those who haven’t seen the conversation in the DAO Discord #general:

We believe this will really help advance DCL and that is our primary goal . The biggest problem with metaverse adoption is the fact it is too detached from what the physical world offers. Music is a great bridge between these two worlds. That’s because people engage with mainstream music in emotional ways. Brands know this fact more than anyone else, and they use music constantly to build their identity and appeal to audiences who they sell their products to. All IRL research shows the music increases browse time, loyalty, spend and many other things. The DCL community has no access to these benefits due to copyright issues.

We believe that offering mainstream music to an initial pilot of 15 venues for free for a year will enable them to entice more brands to spend on platform for activations and increase adoption / retention as a result. Not only that, but music rights are complicated and even with best efforts - the venues that you mention who have used music (remixes, djs, YouTube video embedding, paid for artist livestreams) are almost always infringing someone’s rights, because the music industry has broken the rights up between so many different parties.

If this continues, it is inevitable the music industry will try to initiate legal action against DCL which will affect the whole community. We hate that idea, and as a business have spent our entire time fighting for the rights of creators like the DCL community. Our service protects both landowners, and DCL from legal claims, and we can back it up contractually . We aren’t looking to dominate DCL, but provide protection and opportunities for the community to make more money. We think music will help that, especially when approaching brands!

In terms of scope, we were initially hoping to apply for a grant to cover 100 venues, but due to the smaller funding pot this quarter, we wanted to start smaller and come back with a grant proposal next year that could allow much wider implementation. We have already integrated into DCL, so none of this money is for us to set up the service. The vast majority will go back to the music industry, with the remainder split between Lickd and the umbrella company.

In addition as an added benefit we could potentially look to explore future rev. opportunities that allow the DAO to directly benefit from helping us gain adoption for the service in the community. We are looking for community support as much as we are looking to support the community. We believe this is a true win-win for all, but are aiming to start small with this grant. And my apologies if it appeared to be selective.

Would really appreciate you and the other ‘no’ community votes reconsidering, as we have always and will continue to be in business only for the benefit of creators of all kinds; and to help all parties make money in new areas.

Thanks again and look forward to talking more!

Josh

5

Hi there,

Couldn’t help but stop in my tracks to read more about this proposal. Not often do proposals raise my eyebrows and keep me curious.
What your project is aiming to accomplish is a need in the web 3 space. Yes, there is a problem right now when it comes to music Licensing on the Platform or web 3 Platforms in General. Using DCL serval years now and playing music, there is always a lurking thought in the back of my mind about the repercussions about Decentraland not taking the necessary actions when it comes to streaming music without permission. No remixes are going to stop Major labels from coming after you if they want weither thats the platform and/or creators. I noticed maybe some individuals may not understand the legality of this matter and how big these label are and what they are capable of doing, there may be lack of knowledge on the subject. I am assuming they may look at it as maybe the platform is unpopulated so what is the use case for right now ? But i do know for a fact taking the right mesaures to protect the platform from lawsuits in the future is something to think about and take seriously, if we want to be taken seriously. I use music on my parcel serval times a week, and my fellow artists, musicians, streamers, venues can take use of this type of product and feel secure within Decentraland Platform that we are not breaking copyright claims and following the guidelines like every major platform like YT, twitch, spotify, We know Decentraland is not exemted. Playing by the book is always the right thing to do even in Decentralized enviornment. Heading in a path that protects the platform for creators and artists is the type of mentaility creators should want to aquire and sets a good precedent.

Did a little background check on the project, seems like you had some solid reviews, used by many popular influencers. I believe what your product offers is great and would love to see this on the platform.
I’d like to add a few questions…How long is the use case for ?
I saw that there could be future grant requests. Can you tell me more of what that would be used for and why ?
How can venues in Decentraland continue to use lickd.co ? i saw there was a subscription base ?

Can artists and streamers within Decentraland be added to the catalogue ?

If you can simply it for me that would be great. Its just a little confusing that its only 15 venues, I was hoping it could be accessable for all of Decentraland just like any other platform would like Twitch, Youtube, Spotify ext. Can a creator like me just pay 8 $ a month now ? and use ? Just not sure why would we have to funnel threw this grant then just going directly on the website and using it that way.
Hope you can clarify on that a little bit so I can understand how it is used and operated.

Thanks :slight_smile:

6

There was a grant to do something similar already, don’t remember which one or if it passed or not, do someone remember?

7

I believe the one you are referring to was this prop that didn’t pass

8

Hey Serena, thank you for your support! I’m really glad you see the need for the service we offer, and personally love that you provide so many opportunities for Artists on your land. I also wholeheartedly agree with what you’ve said on the current challenges for DCL, creators (DCL community and musicians alike) and the understandable bullishness of the music industry to protect their artists and rights.

To be clear, it isn’t our aim to fear-monger or for the community to see our service as purely a cautious preemptive measure, far from it. Music is a beautiful thing that is complimentary to visuals with many ancillary benefits, and first and foremost we want to be able to allow the community to use it to their benefit to make their creations even more engaging with a great soundtrack. This we think will help adoption, retention on platform and be more enticing for brands who regularly rely on legal music as core to their marketing.

But secondly, absolutely there is a huge problem with illegal usage, most of it totally innocent. The problem is music rights are complicated. Paying an artist doesn’t mean their PRO, label or publisher are paid. And even unsigned artists who only have a PRO don’t realise they no longer own the rights to their compositions fully by signing up to that company. So they can’t give permission on their behalf. This leaves both the community and DCL exposed in a big way.

And really glad you checked out our company and saw we legitimately work with creators such as Mr. Beast and others as their legal music provider. I just wanted to point out that as a business, we offer two products at present:

And, the product you saw on our home page for influencers and creators on YouTube:

  • UGC: claims free licensing for YouTube creators ( app.Lickd.co )

The distinction is because you referred the starting from $8 price point which is for UGC creators - and rights wise - is an infinitely easier solution than for the metaverse.

The normal pricing for CHORUS starts at around $190 PCM for background music (which is what we are proposing to offer in this grant). it’s much higher because it includes unlimited music, needs more people paying by us, has to be near global, allows for certain brand activations , and protects DCL as well as the venue. We also have different prices depending on how music is used - but that’s not for this grant!

On your other questions:

The use case would be for 1 year, and we could cap the number of listeners to 1499 unique listeners a month so as to not trigger additional payments by the venue (the pricing works in tiers ordinarily based on unique listeners).

If successful in this proposal, we we look to ask for an additional grant to offer music free under the same terms to more land owners in DCL. We initially wanted to ask for for than 15 venues, but given the funds available we wanted to be sensitive to others in the community asking for grants.

If venues would like to use CHORUS past the initial grant period, we would need to charge for the service - but our hope is that the DAO money would help the community onboard revenue generating partners through having music available as a selling point, and / or increase user activity on platform for DCL through better experiences being made that new users want to visit because music is available.

The subscription we offer is sadly only for our UGC product and is royalty free music. Not mainstream music, which starts from $8 a track.

Artists could definitely add their music to the service! It would depend on who they are distributed by though, and their home country as well as publisher and PRO. We have to be quite strict because we don’t have deals with everyone yet - and to make that happen we need to grow the service and show the music industry there is worth in legally licensing music to VR platforms.

The reason we are going for the grant is because in a bear market $190 approx a month (which is very affordable compared to any licenses the industry would be willing to grant you directly), still adds up - and we want to give the community the opportunity to have something valuable they can use in this tough time to move DCL forwards and continue to grow.

Thanks again and sorry for the late reply! :laughing:

Josh

1 Like
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New user account limit kicked in and had to create another to reply :sweat_smile::

Yes saw that one! The difference is our solution allows landowners to make the choice themselves as voted for on this poll. Thanks for referencing @jar0d .

Also worth mentioning that SOCAN could not grant anyone a license unless you could guarantee the person listening to music was connecting from Canada. And then there is the label to worry about and SOCAN can’t license for them . Music rights eh? :man_shrugging:

10

Thanks for getting back to me. Took a look at the other proposals about this, and it looks like this proposal covers alot more countries and has alot more contracts in place besides canada. I think this project can help DCL and would be useful if it got approved. Before i cast my vote just have just a few more questions and thats it. . .

Although im a independent artist working in web3 and have left the traditional way of using music by using platforms like audius, gala music… there will always been great tracks in web 2 that will never go out of style and will always be played as long as music exist. Saw you were partnered with a few labels.

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Which is nice to see you have these connections and contracts with that are solid.
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Also noticed we can stream 24/7/365 if this service is provided… I think this also is a great thing. I know you mentioned there is a cap of 1499 Listeners per month on the package you are talking about … If Decentraland was to increase its user base … would that subscription price increase as well ? …

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Just want to calculate, if we were to use you as our service provider every year… would the price stay the same ? There are more then 15 venues, if Decentraland was to expand x5 next bull market what would be our solution ?.. here is a list cheddar Quesso provided. Some venues are more active more then others. But i guess we would have to choose from who would get these services or if they find it useful.

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Just want to have a round about costs if it continued subscriptions or expanded the amount of venues… trying to keep costs in mind.

11

Just mentioning Universal Music Group is a no for me, I don’t want to give a single cent to those assholes.

12

Hi @HPrivakos, we aren’t working with Universal on this product yet.

13

Really glad you think so Serena. Yes CHORUS covers all countries exc. Mexico and Argentina (for licensing reasons). For users accessing venues in there countries we would provide high quality production music as the alternative - making this a global service.

Couldn’t agree more re Web 2.0 music, and we hope in time to offer all musicians and artists in Web 3.0 the same opportunity.

We do indeed have agreements with all the major labels, and work with some of the biggest influencers in the world - however i just wanted to note that for CHORUS, we currently don’t work with all those partners you saw. The reason why is simply because the major labels are harder to get to agree to the protective terms we want for the community and DCL - although we are actively negotiating. Some of the labels and publishers we do work with for CHORUS include EMPIRE, Kobalt, Monstercat, CloudKid, Nettwerk and many more.

On the unique listener cap - the limit for this grant is 1499 per month per venue. When DCL does become more popular, the next price bracket which is 1500-2999 unique listeners is an extra $95 per month it’s over 1499. Basically the more people the higher the fee - but relatively the amount paid per listener actually decreases - meaning it’s still affordable.

If you were to use us as your service provider every year for just background music as per this grant. The price would stay the same if we were to cap the number of listeners. There could always be the option of allowing venues to have a capped amount funded by the DAO, and any venues would wanted the cap lifted could pay the additional themselves.

It’s hard to say exactly what the fee would be if you were just paying for the service during a bull run as it really depends on a venue by venue basis depending on how popular each is - but I have attached a snippet of our rate card for CHORUS for background music here for visibility.

However as I say, we could always cap the number of unique listeners per month if funded by the DAO, or if anyway would want to use our service without DAO finding they could refer to the rates attached.

Thanks again!

Josh

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14

Hi,

I’m going to vote yes. I know we need a license in DCL. I hear music all the time that is being streamed and it’s only right to pay the artists correctly for their work, whether we like labels or not.
I see the value in this and the vision, that seems like a fair price point for a monthly subscription for a platform.

Although not to many votes on a yes, (walking to the beat of my own drum here) :wink: eventually Decentraland is going to have to either give in or get called out on it when the situation where it escalates.

Thanks for your proposal. And Good luck. :four_leaf_clover:

1 Like
15

Hi all, just wanted to post another article here on our product from the music press:

We will be at the town hall later today and would love to tell you more about the proposal there.

Thanks, Josh

16

Chorus - Licensed Mainstream Music for Venues in DCL

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 14% 2,320,245 VP (33 votes)
  • No 79% 12,759,557 VP (69 votes)
  • Abstain 7% 1,160,220 VP (6 votes)