Register to get $180 Welcome Bonus!What Is Song A Day?
Song A Day is a project started by Jonathan Mann on January 1st, 2009. Since Jonathan started the project he’s created a song every day for the last 13 years, which as the name suggests, “A Song A Day,” is what this NFT project is about. Each song represents a key event in the day. For example, he created a song when he experienced a breakup, the day he got married, the day his grandmother died, and every single time he felt tired or felt like not doing it. The project is a snapshot of his entire life, and his work is being called the “Beeple of the Music Industry.”
Moreover, all the songs are video recordings and are available on YouTube. They all come with an illustration that symbolizes the mood, place, instrument, beard, and many other traits related to the song. There are a lot of details in the illustration itself, which will be elaborated on later.
(Song A Day on OpenSea)
In addition, the project has a DAO of its own, and this DAO is unlike most DAOs that spin up a DAO to issue a token, pump it, and cash out. Song a DAO (its name) takes the concept to the next level. There’s no token and anyone with the Song a Day NFT can vote or issue proposals.
The Team Behind Song A Day
More important than the hype and above everything is the people building the project. In case a project crashes, a good team will never give up on the vision.
Consistency and obsession are the keys to seeing positive long-term results. When investing in projects for the long-term, this is one of the things investors should look for. Ideology as motivation is far stronger than just making money in the short term.
Jonathan Mann perfectly fits the above description as he’s been creating a song a day for the last 13 years, which is an impressive feat.
Jonathan started creating a song a day when he was 26 years old living in LA, and unable to find a job right after the 2009 financial crisis. He took part in video competitions to put food on the table for months. So he decided to create a song every day for a year, in the beginning, to explore where it would take him, and now he’s still doing it to this day.
Since he creates a song every day, in a few of his songs there are other people like his ex-girlfriend, Anderson, all the speakers from the ETH Denver event, his son, and many more.
The discord is run by Jonathan and a few other moderators, but all the videos and music are made and edited by him (and have been for 13 years). They eventually plan to distribute the work to others through the DAO.
SongADAO
Every day, a new music video is auctioned on the song a day website. All the proceeds from minting, future sales, and song rights go to the DAO, which is called SongADAO. SongADAO is a co-op LCA (Limited Cooperative Association) registered in the state of Colorado. So it’s essentially a company that runs like a collective. The DAO uses a “one person, one vote” voting strategy.
The DAO has three levels of membership to incorporate people with different levels of time commitment or skill sets. There are the listeners, voters, and builders.
Listeners
To become a listener people need to hold at least one song a day NFT, which allows them to vote on snapshot proposals (not treasury related) and access Discord.
Voters
To become a voter, individuals need to connect with BrightID. This gives individuals the ability to mint their very own PFP NFT, which represents their DAO membership. This gives them everything that listeners get plus the ability to dictate the use of treasury funds.
Builders
To become a builder, individuals must share their name and address with the board of the DAO. This information would be private. Builders can contribute to the project in any way they like, and for this, they get paid through the funds in the treasury.
Analyzing The DAO
Looking at the structure of how this is formed, it’s a very fair and efficient mechanism because, unlike other DAOs, the token often acts as a gateway for VCs or whales to influence the project a lot. The influence could be good or bad, but the volatility of the markets or VC situation would influence the project a lot.
Moreover, since the DAO uses a “one person, one vote” strategy, a VC or whale cannot influence the treasury or intricate aspects of the project. This is made sure through Bright ID, as discussed before.
Illustration Of The NFTs: Any Good?
Each music NFT comes with an illustration that captures the mood, instrument, beard, topic, and location of the song. There are other traits as well like the year, key, genre, noun, tempo, style, and much more. Each year, a new artist designs the images for all the songs created that year.
This way all the songs and illustrations are 100% unique even if they have the same traits. This is because all artists have different art styles. Here’s an example from the Song A Day website.
The illustrations make this music project more unique because it brings different art forms together and the success of any of these artists would also impact the valuation of these music NFTs and vice-versa, which is very interesting to think about.
Some popular artists that have worked on the project are Defaced Studio, Eclectic Method, and Urban Decay will soon release the PFP for the songs of this year.
Illustrations have a few hidden traits that echo the philosophy of the whole project i.e., life, death, work, and keeping your channel open.
The background color of the image changes with the day of the year. It started on January 1, 2009, with a hue of blue, and the hue shifts by 1 degree each day, so the next year on January 1 it’s the same hue. The saturation changes with time representing the eventual end/death and rarity or uniqueness of the whole project.
How To Evaluate This Project?
In every space, there are some projects, ideas, and people that are so unique that 1% of individuals take the whole space forward, and it’s this 1% that investors would want to invest in for maximum returns.
However, there are many “Thing a Day” projects now in the NFT community. Beeple’s Everyday, Ghozali Everyday, and many more. But these few projects are only popular because they bring something unique to the space or don’t seem artificial.
Beeple’s Everyday put this concept in the spotlight in March 2021, when his NFT was sold for $69 million. His art was valued so much because he’s been making 3D images for over a decade, every day! Before NFTs, Ethereum, Crypto, or any of this existed. People knew that he wasn’t trying to hack the system to make money.
Similarly Ghozali, an Indonesian kid had no idea that his NFT would reach millions in volume. This provided the art form scarcity and made it valuable.
So in art forms like Everydays; long-term consistency, some form of uncertainty about the quantity, and a unique concept is required for its success.
Beeple has shown long-term consistency. We don’t know how long he will live, so we don’t know how many every days there will be, but he’s the first person to create 3D art every day for years.
Song a Day has all the above plus a DAO to create a wider community around the idea and other artists for illustrations that tie its value to other artists.
Beeple took off because collectibles and art NFTs saw a huge boom in 202, and since Beeple has an art collection, it fits both those categories and saw a hockey stick growth.
Gaming projects took off because of the promise of the Metaverse from Facebook. It attracted a lot of retail attention since everyone knows about Facebook.
The next artistic category that comes to mind is Music. The music industry is much bigger than art and most people understand or at least listen to music. Music has more utility to broader society unlike art and it’s often easier for people to attach value to the utility.
Anyone who has lived before the 2000s has paid for music in the form of CDs, Vinyl, and other mediums. So it makes more sense for these people to attach value to music than art. So unlike art NFTs, I think music NFTs would be the ones that will take the concept of NFTs mainstream.
Conclusion: Tying A Valuation To Song A Day
Given this information, looking at the current floor price of Beeples cheapest collection — “BEEPLE — SPRING/SUMMER COLLECTION 2021,” of around 14 ETH, I think Song A Day’s floor should at least be worth that much. This is because Song a Day has fewer songs (since Jonathan started his every day after Beeple), more artists, more content, and a DAO.
Now since Song A Day has more content, it’s safe to assume it could be worth more. How much more is hard to say though. Some of Song A Day’s songs have actually gone viral or have been played by other influential people, so they may naturally have more value.
Song A Dao also has a token that is issued by nftx.io for staking Song A Day NFT called $SONG. But the platform and ideas are still very new.
