In 2019, the global music market (recorded) grew by 8.2%, reaching $20.2 billion. This industry has had sustained growth for more than five years but still faces a financing problem. In fact, Artists still have difficulty in getting loans from traditional banking. Why is it so? It’s because all the creative content they make doesn’t make it as collateral for the bank. Due to this, there is a significant gap between the music industry and capital markets. However, with the introduction of Web3 and DeFi subsystems, many expect to solve this problem very soon. Moreover, one project has identified this issue and created an ecosystem to tackle it: Opulous.
Overview
Opulous brings the power of Web3 and DeFi to the music industry, changing the way musicians manage their funding. Through the platform, musicians can launch copyright-backed Music NFTs. Moreover, the platform also offers token holders a share in the music’s future royalty earnings alongside exclusive rewards and fan experiences.
Opulous is built on the Alogrand blockchain. It is one of the most advanced and exciting blockchain projects in the world. The blockchain is mainly renowned for its security, efficiency, and scalability. In fact, Alogrand can handle 84 million transactions a day and completes all transactions in under 4.5 seconds. Also, the blockchain is built around its permissionless Pure Proof-of-Stake protocol.
Team and Advisors
Opulous has a team of 7 full-time members heading the platform.
- Lee Parsons – CEO, Lee is the founder of Ditto Music, a music company that supports over 500k independent artists.
- Miles Carroll – COO, Miles has previously worked at an investment firm named Kosmos Capital. Kosmos helped blockchain startups scale and integrate their products into enterprises.
- Mike Prince – CTO, Mike is a vastly experienced tactical engineer with a passion for the future applications of blockchain as well as designing & developing technologies needed to bring products to market.
- Fenando Cruz – CMO, Fernando has worked with music and marketing companies over the last 10 years. He has previously worked in Ditto Music alongside Lee Parsons on all major projects.
- Mark Fitzgibbon – CSO, Mark is one of the leading crypto writer and investor involved with cutting-edge blockchain projects including API3.
- Mark Haldon – Head of Marketing, Mark has years of experience working on music industry projects across blockchain, copyright, distribution, publishing and more.
- Clara Lo – Business Operations, Clara is an expert in blockchain business operations and analysis. She has spent many years working closely with technology companies and financial services.
To help in assisting and bolstering the platform, there are seven advisors:
- Nick Gatfield – Former Sony Music CEO
- David Garcia – CEO Borderless Capital
- Taylor Bennett – Manager, Chance the Rapper
- Michael Kiook Jeoung – CEO Trustverse
- Clarence Liu – Head of Business, Elastos
- Brad Laurie – Blockchain Researcher and Investor
- Sébastien Lintz – Revealed Music Label Director
How Opulous differs from other DeFi platforms?
While Opulous is a new entrant in an untapped segment, there are more challenges to the underlying system it’s based on rather than the platform itself. What this means is while DeFi has many advantages over traditional banking, it still has its disadvantages. The major of them is that the price of crypto, in general, is notoriously unpredictable.
So, if the value of the crypto kept as collateral drops, does the value of the loan’s collateral. So, in an unfortunate case, it may not be enough the cover the loan amount. This can cause real problems for both DeFi lenders and borrowers. So, how does this platform tackle this issue?
Opulous loans are backed through future music royalty earnings and copyrights. Thus, unlike crypto assets, these assets have a predictable future value and carry less risk.
Moreover, through analyzing the borrower’s music data, the platform can decide the borrowing limit. Also, they can establish a custom loan repayment plan based on their predicted future earnings.
Features
The Opulous platform has three main features:
- NFT Launchpad
Opulous features a launchpad where musicians can launch copyright-backed Music NFTs. Moreover, Opulous token offers holders a share in the music’s future royalty earnings alongside exclusive rewards and fan experiences.
Whoever owns these NFTs will get paid every time the song is played on Spotify and other major music services. Also, Fans and investors will receive roya6lty payments and exclusive rewards such as backstage passes, gig tickets, and merchandise.
- NFT exchange
The platform also features its own NFT exchange, creating a new sharing economy based on music. Anyone can buy and trade copyright-backed Music NFTs and earn a share of royalties. So, for example, a music fan can potentially find an underrated song that could become more popular over time. On a side note, users buying music through the platform also support upcoming artists from starting their careers.
- DeFi Loans
With this feature, Opulous targets the main issue that musicians face. The platform offers low-risk DeFi loans with the backing of real-world music assets & future royalties.
By evaluating an artist’s royalty reports from previous years, the platform can accurately predict how much money the artist will generate. Furthermore, it can check for it over a fixed period of time (for example, the next 12 months) and offer this amount as a loan.
On the other hand, investors can stake their crypto assets on the platform, generating high returns. Also, an expert team verifies the music assets that back the loans making it a trusted and secure agreement. Moreover, to avoid loan defaults, Opulous will hold copyrights used as collateral.
$OPUL Token
Transactions within the Opulous platform will rely on the $OPUL token. The token has a fixed supply and is purchasable through multiple decentralized and centralized exchanges. In addition, users can purchase NFTs directly using credit or debit cards.
Moreover, users can also stake $OPUL tokens in high-interest lending pools. In fact, token holders also receive special discounts on certain transactions, and exclusive access to NFT drops in the future.
The total supply of $OPUL is 500 million. The hard cap of the platform’s launchpad on TrustSwap is $800,000. The token offering price is $0.05, with an initial market cap of $1.265 million. Opulous is currently offering $OPUL in Presale at $0.03. Users can buy the token using ETH/USDT/USDC/BNB.
| Percentage | Allocation | Percentage unlocked at TGE | Vesting Schedule |
| 12.5% | Team | 0% | 25% at 12 month cliff, 25% at 24 months, 25% at 30 months, 25% at 36 months. |
| 5% | Advisors & Partners | 0% | 25% at 12 month cliff, 25% at 24 months, 25% at 30 months, 25% at 36 months. |
| 10% | Seed | 0% | 10% at 4-month cliff, 10% at 10 months cliff, and 10% every other month after. |
| 12.8% | Private | 10% | 10% at TGE, 10% at 4 months and 10% every other month after. |
| 0.768% | Strategic | 15% | 15% at TGE, 25% at 3 months, 30% at 6 months, 30% at 12 months. |
| 3.2% | DAOMaker Pre-sale | 10% | 10% at TGE, 10% at 4 months and 10% every other month after. |
| 0.8% | IDO DAO Maker | 50% | 50% at TGE and 50% at 7 months |
| 3.2% | TrustSwap Pre-Sale | 10% | 10% at TGE, 10% at 4 months and 10% every other month after. |
| 17.5% | Liquidity Pool | 10% | 10% at TGE, 10% at 2 months, 10% at 5 months, 10% at 8 months, 10% at 11 months, 11% at 14 months, 11% at 17 months 11% at 20 months, 11% at 23 months, 6% at 26 months. |
| 17.5% | Ecosystem | 5% | 5% at TGE, 10% at 3 months, 5% at 6 months, 10% at 8months, 5% at 10 months, 10% at 12 months, 5% at 14 months, 10% at 18 months, 10% at 20 months, 5% at 22 months & 5% every month after. |
| 16.732% | Foundation Reserve | 0% | 25% at 12 month cliff, 25% at 24 months, 25% at 30 months, 25% at 36 months. |
$OPUL Token Release Schedule is given below:
Roadmap
As of now, the company hasn’t released the roadmap for its platform yet. However, it is expected that it will launch this month. Moreover, the platform had released its MVP a couple of months back and is expected to bolster it with new and upcoming features in the future.
Final Thoughts
While Opulous aims to tackle the perennial problem of musicians with funding, it has also spawned an arsenal of opportunities for them. Not only do they have a new playground to showcase their creative content, they’ve also found new ways to incentivize their own music. Moreover, the public has also found a new ground to enjoy and even incentivize from a new music streaming source. Also, with the concept of Music NFTs, Opulous is bandwagoning on the highly popular NFT segment to drive up its growth. In fact, to avoid any potential mishaps due to high demand, it has opted for a much more scalable blockchain that not become a point of contention in the platform’s future.
Overall, Opulous is poised to become one of the most popular platforms for various young music artists and many famous music agencies.
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