Gala Music Is Deepening The Artist/Fan Relationship Through Blockchain Technology
Gamification of the listener experience utilizes rewards and ownership.
The music industry is changing yet again.
It’s a narrative that’s been pushed throughout the decades, turning contemptuous in the early 2000s with the emergence of Napster, Kazaa, and Myspace, before eventually embracing the advent of Apple Music, Spotify and other digital streamers.
Now, it seems, the music industry is poised to make another leap—this time in the area of fan interactivity and fan engagement.
One company positioning itself to become a leader in the space is Gala Music—a spinoff under its parent company, Gala Games—which is quickly gaining steam for building the next generation of music platforms by bringing an enhanced experience to listeners and artists through blockchain technology.
“I think Gala Music has the most innovative and technologically advanced platform in web3—that’s consumer-facing—by a large margin,” Sarah Buxton (Bux), chief executive officer (CEO) of Gala Music and Gala Film, said to me in a recent conversation. “It allows artists to really understand who their fans are so they can create bespoke incentives, content, and experiences for those fans as a reward mechanic.”
By creating an ecosystem that empowers artists to control, monetize, and engage with their fan base in a more interactive way, Gala Music is elevating how we think about the relationship between fans, artists, and their music.
Gala Music is a decentralized music platform powered by 25,000 nodes (not all of which are on because the company is currently in pre-token launch) and, according to Bux, works like a record player that needs a track. “The track then gets put on the player—the node—and when those two things are put together, the music becomes available for listeners and streamers to enjoy for free,” Bux said.
In addition to owning a player node, listeners have the option to purchase tracks—actions that are helping fuel the new listen-and-earn economy. If you happen to be the track owner and/or the player owner of a specific song—every time that song is played—you get rewards.
“That’s how the system works,” Bux said. “Everybody is working together and the artist is paid first, which is quite unusual. The artist is paid at the point they sell their tracks, and then the track owners earn rewards for allowing everybody else to play the music that they now own.”
Through this model, Gala hopes listeners will come into the ecosystem, discover brand new artists, and get involved in the community at a level they feel comfortable.
“People can come in just as listeners or they can also engage in an artist's career by purchasing their tracks,” Bux said. “It’s CDs and records meet something much more profound. You have that ownership level where it’s yours, but because it has that digital footprint, it can be played by many other people. Therefore, you as the owner benefit.”
That’s where the rewards come in. As a fan, digital track listener, or digital track owner, you’re able to generate and earn rewards that can manifest themselves as real-life experiences—like concerts and ticketing access, or actual interactions with artists.
“Last summer, we did a cookout with Snoop Dogg at his compound in Los Angeles for all of the people who bought and held a certain amount of his content,” Bux said. “That’s a real-life example of something that this digital technology can do that has just not been possible before, and I think that’s what’s so exciting about it.”
By gamifying the relationship between fan and artist and introducing the monetization element, Gala is adding another facet to the communities that already exist around artists, helping grow the connection between fan and artist in a more intimate way and creating a more fulfilling dynamic for both parties.
“It’s intimacy at scale, which is something you’ve never been able to do before,” Bux said. “It’s like a fan club on steroids, but a fan club the artist is in control of, not some corporate organization that sits in the middle. I think that’s where it gets more exciting for an artist as well. This is a way for them to correct the value of their music without the fan missing out. There’s no detraction for the fan, but there is a big attraction for the artist.”
So far, Gala Music’s community-building element is proving to be a bright spot when it comes to fostering connections between artists and fans in new, more meaningful ways.
“When the band drops a song, the community wants to be involved, they want to hear what inspired it, how it was made, and the bands on our platform—like City of Sound—want to share that information because they love talking about their writing, where it came from, the character in a particular song and what she’s going through. It’s a very real, very authentic, very moving relationship that’s able to be created.”
Bux believes the improved artist/fan relationship is something fans can feel and that it motivates them to support the artists they’re passionate about more fully—motivation that can also be tied back to ownership. The thought is, if you’re a digital owner of a song, you’re more intimately linked to the artist, and thus your experience with the music and the artist is now heightened.
“There is something so profoundly powerful about that sense of ownership,” Bux said. “It’s similar to how people used to buy shares of racehorses. You couldn’t afford a racehorse so you would buy 100 dollars worth of one, and suddenly you’re part of the hundreds or thousands of people who owned part of that horse. But when the horse ran, that was your horse.”
It’s the same philosophy behind owning shares of stock in the company you work for and it’s the same philosophy Gala Music is bringing to the idea of what being a fan can be.
“What’s nice about what we’ve created is we’ve given people that real sense of ownership without the artist having to sacrifice official legal ownership over their material,” Bux said. “I think that’s what’s special. We’ve created ownership in a way that matters for a fan without the artist having to relinquish the rights to their music.”
She continued, “There’s a sense of pride being part of a community around an artist. You think, ‘That’s my artist, I discovered them before they were famous, I was one of the first 100 buyers of their very first song.’ Now, the artist is performing concerts full of people—and as an owner of one of those first tracks—you get instant VIP access to a show, to the commemorative recording of that show, and to the voice note from the lead singer of the show.”
Gala Music hopes its efforts will help pioneer a new wave of music, with new styles and new names coming into the fray. There’s also optimism that more people will be able to become musicians.
“Right now, some have to have a “job” and do music on the side because 1,000 streams isn’t enough streams on traditional streaming platforms to earn money from,” Bux said. “But in this model, it is enough to live off of. I hope it brings in new talent and gives people different career opportunities that they may not have had access to.”
For its larger artists, Gala Music aims to continue its output of unique and different fan experiences to help provide value to the community.
“We really want to bring out the passion you get when you experience live music and have it carry across the in-between moments—listening parties, discovery on the platform, and interactions with artists,” Bux said. “Coming from a gaming company, gaming absolutely kills music in terms of commercial value, the rhetoric around it from players, and how much time and money people are willing to spend on games. Not everybody on the planet plays games, but everybody on the planet listens to music. There’s a huge untapped opportunity there and we’re going to start tapping on it and see what happens.”
For more information on Gala Music, listen to this week’s episode of the Lights Camera Crypto podcast August 10th and hear Bux talk about her web3 journey and how she manages her Gala team.
As part of a promotion around the episode, one lucky listener will receive the top selling hat from BTP Pickleball, so stay locked on the DeCential socials for official contest details.