[INVESTMENT] Venture - Releap.io

DAO Governance
#1

We have the opportunity to invest in the Strategic Round of Releap.io, a decentralized social and exchange platform tailored for musical NFTs.

PROBLEM

The music streaming industry is fundamentally broken. The number of streams needed for an independent musician to earn a liveable wage is unattainable except for the biggest stars.

PRODUCT

Releap will be an all-rounded platform for artists to share their creations with their fans and will feature:

  • Launchpad: Spotlight venue for featured Artists to debut their prospective Music NFTs to their fans and crypto community.

  • Exchange: Bespoke marketplace designed specifically for Music NFTs with built-in music streaming analytics that serve as valuation references.

  • Array: Personalized gallery for fans to showcase their NFTs collection, follow and interacts with their favorite artists.

  • Player: A music players for Artists to share their creations to their world, and learn insights from built-in analytics.

GO TO MARKET

Releap is partnering with Impact Entertainment for its expansion and go-to-market. Impact Entertainment has conducted 500 concerts in the past five years, with ticket sales amounting to about USD 650 million per year.

Releap aims to target independent artists to gain initial traction before partnering and expanding with global superstars. This approach contrasts with other platforms’ approach of embarking for big name artists right from the start. The team is banking on its strong foothold and partnerships with Asia’s prominent music industry players.

TEAM

William is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of bWebs (e-commerce start-up) and Note13 Creatives (advisory company for artists). He’s a Hong Kong legal professional in international copyrights law and patent law, with experience handling cross-border copyrights issues. Avid crypto-investor since 2017.

Aaron is an experienced blockchain developer, who has led the development of blockchain solutions for various projects in the NFT and healthcare Circle. Winner of NIFTY 2018 Hackathon where his team developed Ethereum Mistery Boxes.

WHY INVEST

NFT on the Solana blockchain are the clear winner among other chains, the user-experience is just superior in Solana: lower cost for users, better wallets, faster transactions, etc. At the same time, current NFT marketplaces are only offering ‘visual arts’ and are missing out on a huge market (music/entertainment). Releap solves this, it has a strong committed team with a genuine vision and we want to help them on their mission to make music NFT the next big thing. Think Magic Eden meets Patreon but for music and on Solana.

WEBSITE https://releap.io/

Proposed Ticket size:

• $25-50k (Valuation is confidential, reach out in DM for info)

Tokens come with 20% unlock at TGE + 80% quarterly unlock

2 Likes
#3
#4

I’m personally against this deal as a longterm investment. Maybe if you are just expecting a short-term bump at ICO to dump it could work, but I am very weary of the underlying thesis of the project.

I’ll keep my points concise, but happy to expand on them if requested:

  1. Lots of competition in the NFT/Blockchain meets music space
  2. So far none has really made any significant traction so far, despite some high profile support and signifiant efforts
  3. “VIP fan club” has been done to death already
  4. “Music NFTs” Royalties are not worth a lot, and no one wants to jump through the hoops of paying for each individual song as an NFT just to use some proprietary player, with a very limited catalogue. Given the era of on-demand streaming with Spotify and apple music, I just don’t see this being the direction for music listening. Why would I want to pay extra for DRM?
  5. “Experiential NFTs” While a good idea in theory, I don’t see venues/ticketing having the desire or infrastructure to implement NFT checks. Maybe one day… but I doubt it will be these guys. Especially as they seem split between several different fundamental business models.

< Rant>
While I’ve always dreamed of a marketplace for people to bet on the next big musical artists and trends, this just doesn’t seem like the way to do it.
Furthermore if you are just a superfan, just go buy some songs on bandcamp, merch, vinyls and tickets.

They talk about a partnership with Impact Entertainment, but it’s not clear if this has actually been signed or what it actually entails. Would def need more clarification on this.
Furthermore at a XXM valuation, what have they actually built to date? again not super clear to me what is a promise and what exists today.
How big is the team? Who is on it besides the two founders? - We need to doublecheck their background and history as well.
< /Rant>

To cap things off, I’ll just say my opinion is pretty negative about this opportunity. Happy to hear some other’s opinions, especially if they are positive, maybe I could be swayed.

2 Likes
#5

@Crypto_notte sent you a DM on discord about the project’s valuation. But generally speaking I am extremely excited about the project. If the valuation is reasonable, I would defenitely put 50k in the project. NFT will revolutionaize how artist sell music to their fans. I believe we should be part of this revolution.

#6

Let me answer to why I think Releap has an interesting value proposition

On 1. Yes, agree on the competition but the Solana ecosystem is relatively young and there are very few players (ME and 2 others really) and they are all focused on Visual NFT. It is more likely that already successful and established NFT marketplaces integrates Solana (OpenSea - looking at you). But we still don’t have a proper Music NFT marketplace, Releap could be the one. It is likely that Solana NFT marketplaces will be able to capture and seize lot of volume from other chain.

On 4. I think that’s where the innovation is here, Releap will act as middleman and help onboard musicians on different platforms at the same time (like an aggregator), Releap will then accrue all the royalties and distribute them to the NFT holders.

There’s already a demo available on devnet here https://internal.releap.io/ and the product is nearly finished. I suggest we write a $25k check.

#7

I like this! I would invest $50k, but also stay close to the team in order to get meaningful allocations in the next rounds.

What I like:

  • music industry revenue pool is huge; monetisation model has been already disrupted a few times in the past thanks to tech innovations; today’s middlemen (Spotify, apple) revenue pool is big, so I can see how a new framework can extract a lot of value while giving back (something) to artists and listeners
  • music is by nature a catalyst of communities creation
  • blockchain companies in the space are still at the beginning. Pantera-backed Audius seems ahead and OpenSea could focus more on music, but I think there still plenty of room for new entrants; Solana is clearly better than Ethereum!
  • team seems strong and I like the copyright law background, because substantial value can be unlocked if fans will be able to acquire % of future royalties (not the base case right now)
  • partnerships with top-notch names
  • Asia-only focus is a differentiating factor

What I don’t like:

  • we can only do minimal DD, but current (small) check should be mostly seen as a ticket to see this venture from the inside
  • business model might not be the right one
  • valuation is attractive in the blockchain context, but still very high in across-the-cycle terms
#8

Thanks for sharing your views guys. I’m not sure it’s enough to sway my opinion. I feel like I have seen many similar projects, and none of them every managed to get the traction they were hoping for. I also just don’t think this is the direction for music as a whole. Combined with what I feel is insufficient clarity on the project’s current traction, I will be voting against this proposal. My votes aren’t probably significant enough to sway the outcome, but I will vote regardless. Nevertheless thanks for bringing this proposal up!

1 Like