Matter

For the Culture

Music streaming is unprofitable, filled with rent seeking actors, and does little to empower the artists

The legacy structures of the industry hampers profitability

We are nowhere.

• Spotify has only ever had 1 profitable quarter due to increased COGS from highly active users. ³
  • ​Sony, Universal, and Warner all divested in Spotify. ⁴
• ​Soundcloud is a dead platform. ⁵
  • The community died after artists migrated because Soundcloud didn't provide monetization.

What is the future of music streaming?

Enter:

Matter

Our technology automates the licensing and publishing process for distributing music

Paying creators 10x faster and preventing cuts from rent-seeking actors

Blockchain driven efficiency

Data Ownership

Transparency

Scalability

Reduced Cost
​Servers

Payment Processing
Options

Security

Global Reach

Internet 2.0

Congressional
Support

Our blockchain platform allows best in-class:

Our vision sets us apart

Matter provides a frictionless transfer of value between artists and listeners, automating all third party interactions, and removing cross platform engagement slippage

Our roots are in the music industry. We have experienced major problems with the current structure and realized the opportunity to transform the industry infrastructure from the ground up.

By focusing on the future and creating a platform that allows people to interact within music, we are creating a community that has never existed before. We built a platform for an underserved market segment that is poised to become the largest.

By aligning monetary incentives for all creators and fans, no incumbent can directly compete. In doing so, we are eliminating opaque supply chains, rent-seeking actors, and exploitative agents.

Core Addressable Market

0.5% of our core addressable US market represents the conversion of  ⅙ the people who follow our initial artists on Soundcloud.

Matter Makes Streaming Profitable

Furthermore, based on the initial artist onboarding and the velocity of new artists signing on to the platform, 2.5% is accomplishable within the first year.

This limited outreach to artists and their participation not only reflects loyalty to the platform, but the scale of the market opportunity and our ability to capitalize.

Turning Indie into Billions

9 of today’s top 25 artists were discovered on Soundcloud. In 2014-2016 Soundcloud was able to provide necessary engagement between artists to propel careers.

Where will the next Post Malone be found? The answer is Matter.

Independents are the fastest growing sector of the global recorded music industry, accounting for 39.9% of global streams.

Matter creates a platform shaped by the needs of the independent creator.  

Making artist to listener engagement frictionless, Matter is positioned to dominate the global streaming market of the 2020's. 

Artist Engagement

Artist growth on closed Alpha

• average time spent on the platform has been  30% higher than leading competitors

• average pages viewed per session = 29.3

• 7 day k factor = 1.7

  • With only 200 invites sent for testing, each artist is organically bringing on almost 2 more per week.

Private Alpha Traction

30m monthly

streams on Spotify

3m followers

on Soundcloud

1.5m followers

on Twitter following

4.5m followers

on Instagram

If we went live today, we could capture our artists' fans:

Why do our users

us?

Stream exclusive content

Chat with your community

Buy artist's merchandise

As a user

Direct uploads for monetization

Host livestreams or use the marketplace to monetize more from your biggest fans

Use Analytics to improve engagement

Connect with Artists globally

As an artist

Paul Meed:           CEO

Created and sold his cryptocurrency trading firm, then got over 5 million streams with his first releases as an independent artist.

Ryan Klaus:             COO

Lead 98% yoy sales growth at Neighborly and 400% yoy growth at Sangha leading to his first successful exit.

Josh Pan:       Creative Director

MBA graduate and active musician signed to OWSLA, a top electronic label founded by Skrillex. Hear his music on EA’s Fifa 19.

Boris Adimov:       CTO

Years of experience building and shipping promotional websites, complex services, startups and mobile apps.

Bogdan Kovtun:
VP of Engineering

With over 20,000 career hours spent as a backend developer, he is practically a machine himself.

Here’s who we are

Tigran Tumasov:
Product Manager

Exceptional productivity and problem-solving skills combined with outside-the-box thinking to design the best possible product.

We are raising $4 million ​

bringing Matter past product market fit

• Full-time engineering team

• Product Marketing

• 2 strategic hires: VP of music and Senior UI/UX developer

• Team development

Appendix

6-month Launch Plan

1/17

Private

Alpha

2/7

Artist Onboarding

Launch of streaming features

3/1

User onboarding

Launch of social features Bring initial users into the Private Alpha. Enable them to invite 5 friends with referrals

5/1

Paid Subscription

Completion  of mUSD integration to be used in weekly smart contract distributions

5/1

Shop

Completion of digital marketplace and commerce stimulus plan

6/1

IOS + Launch

Completion of iOS media player . Launch of shop, iOS and platform monetization, proprietary sync listening

Initial invites sent

Available non-core Growth Strategies

We convert high activity users into fuel for what will be the highest volume music commerce market in the world.

Matter’s platform analytics support high daily activity for its users who spend 83 minutes per day listening to music. Because their cost of goods is agnostic to user activity, Matter is able to broaden product scope to make even more money.

Matter’s community-first approach enables the company to enter adjacent verticals, driving platform revenue and increasing monetization opportunities for creators, thus further establishing a deeper wedge between us and our competitors.  

The network
enables revenue

Diversified Revenue Streams

We convert high activity users into fuel for what will be the highest volume music commerce market in the world.

Matter first focuses on creating a comfortable and community-oriented streaming platform in order to support the average American, who spends 5 hours a day listening to music. Doing so, allows them to solve one of the worst commercial conversion rates across the internet; artists selling goods and services to their fans.

While creators receive a majority of their impressions where their content is published, they ultimately fail at driving this traffic to off-platform commerce channels.

Matter provides an opportunity for artists to instantly sell to their biggest fans while avoiding click falloff.  In the marketplace, they can offer goods such as merchandise, tickets, beats, and gear as well as services like mixing, mastering, features, and cover art. Along with limitless  'live sessions', where artists stream exclusive content like behind the scenes, q&a interviews, intimate acoustic shows, or even a 1 on 1 video lessons.

Profit
Potential

As streaming consumption increases, incumbents are unable to absorb increasing licensing costs.

If music consumption trends continue (8.96%+ YOY), current industry leaders will be vulnerable to a company that can offer a more expansive product with lower price points.

Because we provide more value than just streaming, we can effectively double the margin's of industry leaders, regardless of product pricing.

Of the 71% of Americans who do not use music streaming, 55% cited high subscription costs as the number one reason.

The Breakdown

$43,000,000,000 of revenue was generated in 2018,
with over $29b going to non-content creators

 Artist Streaming Payouts

Are you able to earn minimum wage?

With the advent of the digital age, artists have been unable to monetize their work. Forcing them to come up with other ways to make ends meet. Such as performing live shows and selling merchandise.

**artists typically only receive distributions every 3-6 months.

Structure
of the
Industry

The present internal structure of the music industry was born when the radio was king, the record store was queen, and the labels were small and independent.

Principal Organisational
Structures of the Music
Industry

Smart Contract Revenue Distribution

Here’s why we are defensible

Artists already onboarded support our pricing model

We are addressing an unaddressed and underrepresented market. Forcing incumbents to abandon current business practices to compete on our terms

Pricing model

• Non fixated payouts

Paradox of high activity platforms is non-linearity of cost of goods vs. subscription revenue

• Reducing several layers of “middlemen”

• Aggregate several industry value props at lower price

Rounds of funding completed by direct competitors

Spotify

24

Pandora

10

Soundcloud

9

Matter is operationally profitable from streaming alone after capturing 0.026% of their core addressable US market. Matter will not need further rounds of funding in any foreseeable future.

Strong results with only $350k spent

5,180 hours of development

3 platform designs and iterations

1 re-brand

NAL draft submission

Initial Artists with over 31,000,000 monthly streams

Core functionality with highly scalable codebase

Surpassing of the competitions user behavioral  analytics

Patentable IP

Building the infrastructure for a fully digital industry

The platform

Investors and Advisors

Sonic Ark Publishing LLC

The initial backer and investor that took Old Dominion from a bar band to one of the largest touring bands in the world

TXV Partners

Alan Loudermilk

• Patent Attorney
• Founder 511 Technologies
• President Spectral Sensors

Curated Capital Group

Citations

1. Winberg, Sampo. “Constantly Evolving Music Business: Stay Independent vs. Sign to a Label: Artist’s Point of View,” n.d., 68.

2. “The Average Person Spends Less Than $15 Per Year on Streaming Music | Digital Trends.” Accessed February 2, 2019. https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/nielsen-streaming-music-spending-news/.

3. “Spotify Just Turned the First Net Profit in Its History (but It’s Not Particularly Happy about It).” Music Business Worldwide, November 1, 2018. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-just-turned-the-first-net-profit-in-its-history-and-its-not-particularly-happy-about-it/.

4. “Here’s Exactly How Many Shares the Major Labels and Merlin Bought in Spotify - and What Those Stakes Are Worth Now.” Music Business Worldwide, May 14, 2018. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/heres-exactly-how-many-shares-the-major-labels-and-merlin-bought-in-spotify-and-what-we-think-those-stakes-are-worth-now/.

5. “The SoundCloud You Loved Is Doomed | Pitchfork.” Accessed February 2, 2019. https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-soundcloud-you-loved-is-doomed/.

7. “Declining Audience, Rising Revenue For Pandora.” Insideradio.com. Accessed February 2, 2019. http://www.insideradio.com/free/declining-audience-rising-revenue-for-pandora/article_f0f129be-9556-11e8-b009-5fa5684f0ca0.html.

8. Kafka, Peter. “Spotify Has Guaranteed to Pay Big Music Labels Billions over the next Two Years.” Recode, June 15, 2017. https://www.recode.net/2017/6/15/15807382/spotify-revenue-2016-financials-guarantee-payment-universal-merlin.