NEWM | More from Music

?? Sound on It's official, NEWM Studio is LIVE and serving up music distribution with a twist! If you're ready to start releasing your music on your terms, head to buff.ly/3RmupGh to get started. Spread the love, share your music! ??

Are you an explorer when it comes to music, or do you prefer to listen on autopilot? This week, we’re diving into passive vs. active listening – and how your listening habits shape the music industry. How do you consume music? The average person listens to around 961 hours of music per year – that’s about 18.4 hours a week or 2.38 hours daily. But how much of that time is spent actively choosing what to listen to vs. passively letting autoplay take control? What is passive listening? Passive listening happens when music is served to you by editors or algorithms – think autoplay, AI-generated radio, playlists, or background music. It’s effortless, but because you’re not actively engaging, your habits are being shaped by platforms and industry leaders behind the scenes. And that has real consequences. According to BuzzAngle Music, more than 99% of all streaming goes to the top 10% of most-streamed tracks. That lease less than 1% of streams for every other song.? Passive listening reinforces this imbalance, making it harder for new or independent artists to break through. Meanwhile, your own listening experience can become a repetitive cycle of overplayed tracks. What is active listening? Active listening means intentionally choosing what you want to hear – seeking out artists, exploring full albums, and engaging with music beyond just what’s recommended. Why does this matter? Because data drives the industry. Streams and engagement determine what gets pushed forward – and what gets overlooked. When you actively seek out music, you send a message that you want more than just the mainstream, helping diverse artists and music gain visibility. How to become a more active listener: Want to take control of your listening experience? Here are 6 ways to start: ? Search for music outside your usual playlists ? Listen to full albums instead of just singles ? Attend live performances – concerts, small local shows, or even livestreams ? Buy physical or digital music – albums, vinyl, digital collectibles, etc. ? Curate personal playlists to highlight songs and artists you love ? Share music with friends – word-of-mouth recommendations help artists grow Your active listening challenge: Take some time in the next few days to discover a new artist or album and listen with intention. No skips, no distractions – just the music. Then, come back and tell us: Who’s your latest discovery? Let’s start a conversation. ?

Back from #SXSW, and we’re more energized than ever about the future of music — especially how blockchain can drive real change in the industry. ?? Our biggest takeaways? The music space is rapidly changing, and we’re uniquely positioned to make some (sound)waves. Here’s what stood out: ?? The industry is hungry for change. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) models are taking off, cutting out middlemen and putting more power in artists’ hands. As a Cardano-based music ecosystem, we’ve been championing this for 3+ years — the mission remains the same: amplify the artist-fan relationship. ?? Onboarding needs to be seamless. Web3 adoption in general won’t scale unless we make blockchain intuitive and accessible. Frictionless user experience + Education = mass adoption. ?? The music fandom space is fragmented. Despite passionate fans and artists eager to connect, there’s no single platform fostering deep, meaningful artist-fan interactions. That’s a massive opportunity, and we're right at the center of it. ? Artists want ownership (as they should). Emerging artists (with ~10K monthly listeners) are getting poached early with predatory deals that generally strip them of their rights. As a non-profit, protecting artist ownership is at the heart and soul of our project and always will be. ?? AI in music? Still a hot debate. Artists have been pretty outspoken about where they stand on this. Right now, DSPs (aka distros, online music stores and/or streaming services) are actively working to exclude AI music from their platforms. But, if AI tools can ensure proper attribution and fair compensation to the artists' works that are being used to train these models, we may see more industry adoption. Beyond the insights, SXSW was all about great music, inspiring conversations, and yes — some incredible tacos. ?? We're stoked for what’s next! If you’re working on the future of music, let’s connect. ?? #Blockchain #MusicTech #Web3

Super hyped to talk about the NEWMusic Movement at #SXSW, where #Music #Tech & #Innovation are shaping the future of creative industries! At NEWM, we’re empowering artists with ownership and control over their royalties – while giving fans new ways to engage with and support the music they love.? Our ecosystem brings it all together: music distribution, music rights marketplace, digital music collectibles & a mobile streaming app. If you’re at SXSW, let’s chat! Or peep the site → newm.io

The NEWM team has arrived at #SXSW in Austin, Texas!? We're looking forward to discovering new tech, great music and connecting with tons of innovators, artists & ofc music heads ?? If anyone is around, don't be shy – hit us up while we're in town & let’s connect!

Here's a #MusicFunFact to kick off your Monday! When a song uses simultaneous, overlapping lyrics that differ from each other within a vocal composition, it's generally known as a polyphonic counterpoint (although there's some debate around the actual terminology). This is a technique used to create texture by using harmonies to support a single melody that is more dominant ?? Here's a good example:

When you click “buy” on a digital product, what exactly are you purchasing? You may think you own a copy of a song, an e-book, or a video game, but if that media can disappear from your library in an instant – can you really say that it’s yours? In the digital world, the concept of ownership is all but dead, but blockchain technology can – and is – bringing it back. Check out the full article to discover how…

The NEWM Music App is officially LIVE on Android AND iOS! Enjoy your digital music collectibles on-the-go. Simply connect your wallet & listen to your music.? Download the app & share your thoughts ?? ?? https://newm.io/app

Like all great relationships, we forgot our first anniversary, which is Valentine's Day (does that make it worse?).? NEWM Studio distro for artists has officially been live for 1 YEAR!? So, in our last-minute attempt to not fumble this one and show our appreciation to all the pioneering artists that distro'd music via NEWM Studio over the last year, we did a thing...? Every artist that released music, got a little 5K $NEWM in royalties! If you're an artists, head to newm.studio to claim it in the wallet section of your account, and distro more music while you're at it! Everyone else, join us in celebrating 1 YEAR of NEWM Studio changing the way artists release and monetize their music. ?? With love & music, Team NEWM <3

Back to Spotify because oh boy it’s getting bad. Living legend Reggie Watts is retracting his music and is just flat-out saying it: “F*ck Spotify”. Nice one, Reggs. Liz Pelly wrote Mood Machine and it’s making minced meat of the platform. So I thought it was time to follow up on my story from last time to see what other ways Spotify has conjured up to make money off the backs of the musicians that bring value to the platform. Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild one! In the previous instalment, I mentioned how the big labels basically own the platform and use it to funnel money into their pockets. Taking away money from artists is not enough though. The way they use playlists also diminishes the artist-fan relationship, as they playlists rather than albums so you might never know the original intent of a song as it’s presented on the album. On top of that, they are filling those playlists with cheap music made by ghost artists that please the algorithm and guess who takes the royalties from those tracks. Last time someone checked, Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify,?made 340 million in one year. I am just putting it in here and let you decide what you think of that. Spotify made deals with artists so they would receive less royalties in exchange for more exposure but forgot to tell the listeners that if they listened to those playlists they were supporting, well… that guy I just mentioned, I guess, instead of the artists they were listening to. And then there is a lot of fraud on streaming platforms. People upload hours and hours of music to the platform and then use click farms to boost plays. One guy made $10M in streaming of which $60k came from Spotify. The thing is, we all get paid from the same pot so if Spotify doesn’t care too much for taking on fraud, we all lose. Add the fact that they are allowing a lot of AI crap on the platform too you can see how they are making it harder and harder for artists to make a decent living out of streaming. “So what do we do?”, I hear you ask, my attentive reader. If you want to do something right now. There are two things: Start spending money on music you really love. Go to a record store and buy some black gold or be social and go to a concert. The second is to get away from Spotify and go to TIDAL. They pay a lot more per stream and they offer a similar catalogue. Also, they give you access to the masters which means the best possible sound you can have. Good for you audiophiles out there. In the long term though, I am very optimistic about all the platforms that are popping up and some that are already out there, Bandcamp being the one (for now). I love what SmartLabel is and there is much more on the horizon. Platforms like NEWM, Supercollector, and Subvert are building the future and it looks a lot brighter. Thanks, Liz for pointing everyone in the right direction!