Oli Fletcher / Dubplate Trade

Oli Fletcher on Dubplate Trade's music industry blockchain solutions

InterviewJune 6, 202114:49

In this episode

Ashton Addison speaks with Oli Fletcher, the CEO of Dubplate Trade. Oli discusses their NFT and Blockchain based solutions for the music industry, breaking down barriers for underground and up-and-coming artists to release their tracks directly to their audiences, maintaining ownership rights of their content, the DUB token ecosystem, and the upcoming release of the Dubplate platform.

Key takeaways
  • Dubplate Trade is building an NFT-based platform and exchange for artists to sell unreleased tracks directly to fans while maintaining digital ownership rights.
  • The music industry lacks digital ownership mechanisms, allowing unauthorized sharing of tracks; NFTs on blockchain create verifiable individual ownership and collectibility.
  • Artists face revenue challenges from Spotify, piracy, and pandemic-related gig cancellations, making new revenue streams through NFT sales essential.
  • The platform removes middlemen from music distribution and allows artists to mint NFTs at no cost, with flexibility to sell on Dubplate's exchange or other marketplaces like OpenSea.
  • Early marketing strategy targets crypto-native audiences first before expanding to music industry users, with an MVP planned for release within weeks.

Transcript

Read the full transcript 2,582 words, auto-generated and lightly edited

initiatives in revolutionizing the music industry through blockchain and nfts and I'm really excited to dive into those details so I would love for you to just kick it off with us for an overview of dub play trade and then we can dive in deep fantastic thank you I guess it would be prudent to start with that in terms of blockchain we see digital

Sorry decentralized applications as the future of not just blockchain but a lot of industry problems that are facing a lot of people so we see we see doublet trade as a solution for a problem with an industry that's not really utilizing blockchain at the moment what we're trying to do is combine the music industry and the digital ownership value that

nfts bring to the block 10 blockchain industry so what we're doing at the moment is we're building an MVP right of a platform an exchange that allows artists to submit their tracks or exclusive tracks specifically unreleased tracks as nfts and then an exchange to which they would go and sell these nfts to their fans and so those are really the people that

we're reaching out to so at the moment what you've got is an economy of artists who are creating tracks and they're putting them as mp3s and putting them on USBS and selling them to 200 people 300 people which kind of works but the problem is that there's no digital ownership nobody owns that so they don't feel like they shouldn't share it they send

it to their friends and slowly but quickly those tracks become easy to find on the internet essentially what we believe in and what we're trying to do is harness the power of nft technology to create individual ownership on the public Ledger of blockchain so that people can own collectible individual prints of nft tracks very interesting Ollie and

thank you for that intro and there's definitely a lot of issues in the music industry specifically for artists I feel like they get the short end of the stick quite often and you did mention a couple different solutions there digital ownership and providing more clear path from from the fans to the artists could you elaborate you know being in

the music industry on some of those other main issues that you think are most predominant in the music industry and how dubplate is going to provide those Solutions yeah also I think I think you've hit the nail on the head there you say artists have had the Short Straw like since the 90s where you would print a track onto a vinyl and it's a physical asset something

you can earn something you can value and something that you know isn't going to be duplicated a thousand times tomorrow morning alongside Spotify piracy and more recently covid which has stopped artists actually making any money from playing gigs really the whole reason for this project was was kind of empathizing with that and realizing that artists need a

new Revenue stream the thing with dubs or dub plates is that they're specific tracks that have immense value because because they're unique they're special and they're collectible the fact that they get shared around and devalued because of the digital Revolution is in our opinion a cardinal sin and what we want to do is we want to take the technology that's coming out now and

admittedly no one understands it properly and especially not from industries that aren't for technical we want to harness that we want to revolutionize the way that industry works and we want to ensure that the future is bright for artists who really have had a rough couple of decades I think the other thing that as a team we primarily feel as crypto heads

and as as techies is that there's a lot of middlemen and so like our artists have so many different people taking cuts from their music from their art and you've already seen this like huge success of various different nft exchanges and artists why music should be treated differently as

Is kind of silly like that's the problem we're here to solve definitely and I saw that you're already working with a bunch of underground artists and there are a lot of EDM Artists that are coming out with their own nft plays right now and I think it is an ideal time with this Resurgence of digital copyright issues digital it seems most of the nfts are digital art

but they also and what's underrated right now is digital music and digital tracks so as you're working with this nft play maybe you could explain a little bit more about the artists they create their nfts into tracks and then they're able to put them on the exchange how does that work for artists what are their limitations in selling their nfts off

and then how can viewers and listeners acquire those and utilize those yeah so you've got exactly like you say Azealia Banks has a vinyl on Open Sea at the moment that's worth five million quid amazing that's fantastic but I think that dapps and the crypto Community is actually far more about community and

far more about giving power back to the people right these massive artists creating huge running streams themselves is great but what we're trying to do is we're trying to build something that's accessible for everyone so we're going to be creating the a platform where you can go through and you can create your own nft you can value it yourself it's at no

cost it comes back to you think of us kind of like a vinyl pressing place free it goes straight back to your wallet and then we'll have the exchange there as well the world's first nft music shop inherently will have its own audience but if you feel like it's more appropriate to go and sell on open C or another NFC exchange then that's your right like it's your nft at that point

It's built on the ERC 721 platform so that's yeah that's that I want you to do whatever you need to do with your nft definitely and I love that you have that open ability you know you're not siloing them in like they are in the traditional industry where you're able to sell them through the dub plate nft exchange but also have them on the

other marketplaces which are you know they more have digital art but there also is just a wider fan base on there like like openc or wearable or other marketplaces and I know there is this sort of mini competition between different marketplaces and where the network effect is going to be and where people will be able to see these nfts and acquire them and with dubplate

creating their exchange more focused on the music industry how are you going to incentivize more users fans and listeners for user adoption on the dub plate exchange and to grow the exposure to the nfts on your platform in the early stages of launching it yeah look I think you're right likes to wear very early in the stage of our project we've only been doing this for you

know 2021 right at best and so as much as we feel that we have a revolutionary idea and we feel that is something that is going to fill a hole in Industry we also need to have a number of marketing campaigns that appeal to the right people so for us there's like two very clear streams we've got we've got the crypto side of things

who are like we understand how that market works and we understand what you're trying to do and then we've got the music stream who are like a lovely bunch of people but they can be very stuck in their way and so we've spoken to a few people from the music industry and they're keen and they want to know how they can help but realistically at this stage in time

What we're doing is we're creating a solution to a problem so primarily with the marketing to the crypto side of things for the time being we've actually got three really big marketing campaigns lined up for following our next round of token sales which we're really excited for at that stage in time will actually have an MVP we'll have something that musicians

and fans can go and touch and feel and be like okay so this is actually the value that I get by using this platform so we're hoping to have that in a couple of weeks which we're super excited about and then fundamentally we feel that will help provide the value that the artists need to understand how this can be a revenue stream for them and

fans how they can be acquiring exclusive music definitely and thank you for that and yeah I think starting with blockchain oriented crypto oriented groups to build a foundation is a smart move especially because the nft marketplaces do have technical barriers to entry although they're not that tough and they are easier to learn when you get when you have a bit of a

tech background I think the crypto Foundation is a great place to start and you did mention the token sale there and I know that you have the dub token that you've created within the ecosystem can you talk about the dub token more is it required to Mint nfts or to buy the tracks or how else is it used within dub play trade and does it create a sustainable ecosystem for dub play trade

as a whole yeah 100 so the dub token is really the fuel for this project we're like three fairly normal guys other than our like love for crypto and subsequently I love the music but so the dub token was something that we put on pre-cell at the beginning of May and so all we've done is put 500 000 tokens into circulation

And essentially what this token will have is three primary use cases the first of which is going to be a governance token right we're building a decentralized app we believe in that being powered by the community you have tokens you can make decisions on what happens on the project the community is the decision maker and fundamentally like we believe that's

the way the decentralized apps should work the other piece is you will be able to use dub on the platform as a currency you will also be able to use if you will also be able to use usdt so you'll have a number of currencies we're not saying that everyone has to exchange their East Exchange their E4 dub to be able to buy the nfts we don't want to restrict the

platform in that way however that could be something that goes to the government and gets changed and then finally we want a reason for people to be able to take their tokens so alongside 10 of each of the nft sales will go back to the original artists which is one of the primary things we're doing to help support that artist Revenue goal of ours as a

business we'll also be taking two percent obviously nft sales to redistribute to token stakers so those that have held and decided to stake their tokens through our app will fundamentally be rewarded as part of that economy and self-sustaining ecosystem very interesting and I'm interesting that you mentioned the staking there as well and you did mention that you have

some updates coming out in the coming weeks here and I would love to just get an overall snapshot and a forward-looking road map on what are the major Milestones as you continue to launch out the platform between now and you know the end of 2021 yeah so essentially what we did with our first round of token sales the support was overwhelming it felt like

people really understood the idea we had two major things and that was marketing we need people to hear about this and know about this and as I mentioned that was really to the crypto Community because they understand decentralized apps they understand the blockchain and it was also demobilizer Dev team and the dev team have been working away really hard

Doing some great stuff we're now in the integration stage so integrating our smart contract with our UI we are very close to releasing our kind of like first edition of the exchange and then we'll be iteratively building on that and as I mentioned taking advice from the community on how we want to how we want to build that our next steps I will be doing some some next

rounds of token sales to increase the liquidity as we build awareness I mentioned we're working with some big names in the music industry to build Awareness on that side as well we just want to make it accessible for everyone we want to make it an application that music artists can come to and feel like they can use without necessarily needing to know all of the ins and outs

of you know how smart contracts and the blockchain works definitely and for the viewers listeners music fans and artists that want to get involved with dubplate in these early stages and start minting nfts and start downloading tracks what's the best way for them to get involved and to get more into the community easiest way jump on Twitter we're on

Twitter and we update every day we've got a telegram Community as well so come in ask us questions we're very transparent we just want to talk to people and reassure them that we're doing what the community wants providing a service and as I said filling a hole in the market but also our website as well so trade check it out sounds great Ollie I will leave those

website and community links in the description box below all the best with the continued launch of dub play trade and let's follow up in the near future appreciate Aspen thanks for having fun

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