Music on Lockdown

Emanate
3 min readMar 26, 2020

Emanate HQ checking in with thoughts, plans, and perspectives on the social and economic circumstances that COVID19 has thrust upon us.

We have entered one of the most testing social, economic and political events of our lives. On one hand, we have never been better equipped to deal with such a thing in terms of logistics, data-science, telecommunications, and health science. On the other, the hyper-connectedness of our lives and the media amplifies the fear beyond anything we have experienced and in the post-truth era, nobody knows what to believe anymore.

Some wonderful things may come from this.

A time to shine

With economic uncertainties, we firmly believe it is time for blockchain, cryptocurrency and decentralized systems to shine. We’ve taken a beating over the last two years, but now is our time.

The importance of music

We are already seeing the importance of music in our society with songs and performances from the balconies of Italy, to the numerous live shows and streams being offered by artists around the world. The stock market may have crashed but music holds its value the same as ever.

To top it off, streaming is up 400% in some countries on lockdown.

So what is Emanate doing?

1) Self Uploads.

On March 23 we performed a major upgrade to our systems which pushed the Self Upload capability to production. It is currently in a closed beta test group but will go public within two weeks.

2) Increased Rates

To help artists experiencing loss of income from show cancellations, we are increasing the per-second rate by 50% when self-uploads go public, meaning an average 5-minute long song will earn around 9c per full stream.

3) Free Trial Extension

The free trial period for new artists testing out Emanate will be extended by 60 days, so no artist will be required to pay a subscription fee in this time.

4) Cash Out

Cash-out will open at the end of April. Both EMT swaps and the first Debit Card top-ups.

5) LockDown Live

Emanate, OpenLive and Iris have started work on a new live music initiative to help bring hours of new music into living rooms around the world, whilst also providing income to artists who have had gigs canceled. More to come on this.

Anti-fraud, Anti-spoof and tokenomic measures

With the opening of self-uploads coinciding with tough financial times, the following measures will be in place to protect the community, token economy and token holders:

  1. Self-uploads are not automatically monetised. The track will appear on the artist profile but will be reviewed by the Emanate Reps before the track is pushed onchain and monetised.
  2. Zero tolerance for play spamming and play-for-play syndicates. Tracks found to break the Emanate terms of service will come off the public feed or be paused indefinitely. Emanate Reps will handle any disputes.
  3. Cash-out relativity —We are proposing a new cashout measure that will mean you can only cash out what you hold. For example, hold 5000 EMT and you can cash out the equivalent in MNX $ earnings each month. Hold 100,000 EMT and you can cash out 100,000 equivalent in earnings per month. This is still being finalized.

As tough as things are right now, Emanate is in a good position. We are in serious talks with large VC funds who are well-positioned to continue investing through the crisis.

While the economic circumstances are bleak around the world, Emanate is a product that can truly help artists during the crisis. EMT is currently speculation-free; artists are buying tokens to use as utility and we have seen very little sell-off against trading pairs in the last few weeks, sadly just the USD value of EMT being dragged down by the crypto market in general.

If any Emanate artists are experiencing financial hardship, they can get in touch with the team on Discord to discuss a fast-tracked cashout.

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