Dear DoraHacks Community,
We are requesting a $100k USD grant from the Dora GrantDAO to further assist with the early stage development and deployment of Klezma. Please refer below for the project overview, milestones, team background, goals and other information for your consideration.
Looking forward to our shared success.
Best,
Asher Fishman
CEO & Co-Founder , Klezma
Project Overview
A launchpad for musicians where anyone can invest in the next biggest artist and get rewarded for using their music in videos on Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram, etc.
We are the first step in an artist’s career to help them get noticed and paid.
Goal: Bring an elegant and smooth one-stop-shop platform for independent musicians to get exposure and financial support from day 1 the same way startups can.
Independent artists are the same as startups. Only 1%-5% will be super successful (in music 1%-8%).
But unlike startups, these investments are only available to a small group of people for reasons unknown.
Content creators are best to help music spread. A tool utilized mostly by the same small group of people in the music industry.
Record labels are the same as VC’s back in the early days of tech - a small closed circle of organizations that work in mysterious ways that few understand. There is no leverage which ends up with artists losing 50-90% of everything.
Music is a $23.1B market and labels are taking almost all of it while simultaneously not letting in new investors. Meanwhile, in 2022 you can invest in literally the biggest tech ETF in seconds on your phone.
Artists most of the time, unfortunately, are not always business-minded and are treated as such. They are not shown the full picture.
Opportunity: Democratize the music industry by building a platform that connects independent musicians to content creators and rewards them for supporting artists, while doing so in their native habitat.
Klezma = Just that. A platform that allows anyone to invest in the future of music and the next big artist, while rewarding users for using the music on Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, etc, with Dynamic NFTs.
Demo: Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software | Loom
Klezma Team:
Asher Fishman, CEO (asher@klezma.io) Linkedin | Twitter
- Crypto since 2016
- Ex-Techstars - advised and worked with 22 companies through 2 cohorts. $15M raised to date. 2 Exits.
- Previously co-founder of Tezos Israel. Closed near 7-figure deal to push Tezos adoption in the EMEA region.
- On Deck Fellow
- Adweek 2021 Rising Mentee
- Built the first incubator for students in Israel’s top private university (Reichman University)
- Promoting music for 16 years
Javi Esses, CTO Linkedin | Twitter
- Developer for 15 years. 5+ years Solidity + smart contracts
- Prev. Senior Dev at RSK (Bitcoin side chain) - led decentralized identity development and RNS (ENS sign in with Ethereum but for RSK)
- Prev. Head of Development at Avenews (Israeli African fintech startup)
- Prev. Senior Dev at Truelogic (Lead software dev firm in Argentina)
- Lecturer at University of La Matanza
Current Investors
Ali Abdaal (+3M subscribers on Youtube, +640k followers on Tiktok, Instagram, and Twitter)
Sandeep Nailwal (Co-founder & CEO of Polygon)
Our Story:
Since 2007, we have envisioned a platform that could help independent artists get noticed and paid. Where people can communicate their deepest selves. A place that connects people and their emotions , in ways that only music can make us feel.
Music was our therapy.
It was how we communicated with the world and we realized that if music was a source of peace and where we found ourselves, that it had the power to help so many others express and find themselves too.
We started out just scouring the internet for new music and along the years found Machine Gun Kelly, Chance The Rapper, Tory Lanez, and so many more.
We spread the music all over social media for 1000’s of people to find, all in our spare time.
All we wanted to do was help others find themselves the same way we did, and we wanted to help the artist that helped us feel that way by getting the attention they deserve.
One thing we didn’t understand was why these artists were not on the radio. And in addition to that, how could it be we were such “early adopters” but couldn’t capitalize on that? These artists would never know who we were and that we were part of the reason they got noticed.
We didn’t know the answers, but we knew one thing: that the only way for artists to get noticed was through word of mouth. Was through videos. Was through what would later be known as the creator economy.
And there had to be a way for artists to know their “early adopters”.
Over the years, Gen-z appeared, and with it, a whole way of buying and committing things changed. People online started taking other people’s opinions on the internet super seriously, especially those that they knew.
In 2016, we discovered crypto, and vowed to figure out one way or another to merge the technology with what we knew about music, and the creator economy, to help independent artists get noticed and paid.
We knew one thing: musicians are startups, but the only people who had dealflow to them were record labels, and alot of them weren’t truly helping these artists.
And so in 2021, we started as a single founder in a basement, and bootstrapped to a full team, platform, and signups.
Then we even brought on some strategic investors such as the co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, as well as Ali Abdaal, a top 1% Youtuber.
We have come this far and built a whole lot from nothing.
And now we ask from you the community to help.
We ask you, our community, to help us with the 100k grant.
Help us continue building to achieve our mission, to democratize the music industry, let people capitalize on their “early adoption” through on-chain reputation, and help everyone in the world find peace and creativity in music the same way we did.
Without letting anyone dictate what is good and bad music.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
- Asher Fishman
CEO & Co-founder of Klezma
Milestones
- Launch Public Beta (Mid-end of October 2022)
- Launch Mobile (End of October 2022)
- Drop first artist collection NFTs (November 2022)
How we’re thinking about it:
We are getting our initial user feedback and working on that to have a great public beta . They love our product and understand the potential.
Micro-creators and fans, need and love mobile, so that is high priority
But without artists there are no creators, because they need music , and so we will have both music, and artists to support as they are ready to go.
Not only that, because we understand the power of on-chain reputation, and how much creators and people today online like both clout and proof, we are building our product to support just that. We are pushing to give creators everything that makes them tick from day 1.
Conclusion: win-win :).
Creators get rewarded for using royalty-free music while getting to share in the success of the artist.
Creators get clout and the social status of being “the first”.
Creators get to enjoy life-changing experiences with their favorite artist for being their first supporters.
Artist build deeper relationships and loyalty with their fans
Artists stay independent, get noticed, get paid instantly, and get insights on when, where, and how their music is spreading. Artists finally get leverage and options for their careers.
So why do you think this is going to work?
Musicians are the startups that always lose.
With 3.6B users across the creator economy, it is virtually impossible to get noticed as a new musician.
Because no exposure, no pay - so they can’t even run ads for themselves.
In the 1-in-a-million chance an artist gets noticed, a label will take 50%-90% of everything he/she makes.
During that time, there is very limited transparency, so artists really don’t know where they stand in the market in terms data and pay.
Currently, if you want to make it, you have no choice but to go to a label and as such, begins the black hole of no return.
Bottom line: The only way to avoid all this is to stay independent.
Content Creators undervalued and underpaid
- Music takes way too much time and money from content creators
- Can take weeks to find songs and permission to use them (If they don’t have permission content is flagged and eventually deleted/banned - Example: Twitch)
- Creators pay 100’s, if not 1000’s of dollars a year for license-free music
^ Which is super expensive considering 99% of creators do not make enough to live (less than 1% have 1M subs, which gets roughly $60k/year) - Micro-creators do not fully capitalize on their influence
Okay, but how do we know the market is ready? Why now?
The independent artist market is growing at an exponential rate, and faster than the record label. (Source: Midia)
As the creator economy grows more and more - many forget that independent artists are a part of it, and are constantly looking for new ways to empower themselves and they are gaining traction (as shown above)
Gen-z and Millennials run the internet with Gen-Z being the future, and have alot of influence of how things go viral, making the following stats interesting:
- 55% of Gen Z is most influenced by a recommendation from a friend or peer when discovering a new brand.
- 72% of Gen Z and Millennials follow influencers, with Gen-Z more likely to follow many.
- Influencers hold more sway than celebrities for Gen-Z consumers (36% vs. 24%).
- Today, a whopping 36% (almost 3x more than the second-largest category) of Genz users find new music via social media (Source: Spotify), with 42% of Gen-Z saying they heard a song on social media before streaming it.
It’s clear how that in the case of Gen-Z Word of Mouth Marketing is the strongest form of marketing today. Example: Andrew Tate
Klezma is taking these stats head-on by creating a marketplace that harnesses the power of the creator economy to increase the success of independent musicians, by creating a solution where everyone truly wins.
Sounds interesting but what makes your approach different from others?
Great question.
Besides truly solving the 2 biggest pains of independent musicians (getting noticed and paid - by connecting them to content creators), we are working past the hype that is NFTs today.
See our Preseed Memo for more
https://www.notion.so/asherfishman/Klezma-Pre-seed-Investor-Memo-45b1e695544a48a4868e31a980fbc148