Tag Archives: Pilot Program

The Hard Data and Musicoin Pilot Program Report

The Hard Data is an electronic dance music magazine, both print and online, that focuses on several small sub-genres of EDM music. The Musicoin Foundation oversees the maintenance and promotion of a music-focused cryptocurrency called Musicoin. In August of 2017, the two entities endeavored on a pilot program to find out how Musicoin might positively effect a small music scene, and at the same time see if that scene would embrace Musicoin. The program lasted until August 31, 2017. This report was written on the evening of August 30, 2017.

The 31-day program consisted of the following aspects:

  1. The Hard Data would pay writers, photographers, web developers, social media sharers, and artists with Musicoin for the month, in an effort to familiarize the creative base of The Hard Data with the cryptocurrency.
  2. The Hard Data would encourage user sign-ups for Musicoin.
  3. The Hard Data would accept Musicoin for magazine subscriptions and t-shirt sales.

Results

During the pilot program, theharddata.com doubled its readership. Over 2,500 unique users visited thehardddata.com in August, only a little over 1,200 users had visited the site in June and July, respectively.

theharddata.com also greatly increased its flow of content.
23 unique articles were published on theharddata.com during the program, four posts were on its Steemit.com page, three posts were translated to Russian for Golos.io, and a press release and a unique Facebook photo album were uploaded to The Hard Data’s Facebook page. As of this writing, there are still a few articles and photos expected under the program that still need turned in and published after the August 31 deadline. However, the bulk of expected content (35 articles) was on schedule.

The type of content expanded.
During the program, several articles were translated by the community from English into the following languages: Russian, German, and Spanish. This was a new development for theharddata.com, and seemed instigated by the offer of Musicoin for the work.

Adoption of Musicoin by The Hard Data’s creative community was good, especially considering the vast majority of the community was only barely familiar with Bitcoin.
A total of 15 creative contributors were paid with Musicoin during the program, of those, and only four had ever owned a cryptocurrency previously.

During the program, the price of Musicoin tripled.
On August 1, Musiccoin was priced at about .015 USD, and rose to  .048 USD by August 29. This of course intrigued the new adopters. However, many have not taken the required steps they would need to actually sell the Musicoin on Bittrex or Cryptopia because the process is still confusing to them.

During the beginning of the Pilot Program, the biggest hurdle was simply talking to potential users to get them to sign-up for an account and get in the system. About a week-and-a-half was spent focusing on this before the bulk of content could be created in the program.

Users were also paid to share content via social media.
This part of the program was less successful than the content creation in that not as many users signed-up for this task. This was perhaps because The Hard Data was primarily focused on content creation, and spent more time reaching out to those potential users. That said, by the time this article is read by the majority of the public, over 1,050 links back to content generated during the Pilot Program will have been shared on social media. So, the word got out none-the-less, but it would have been nice to have a larger number of users aggressively sharing the content.

67 New Users signed-up via The Hard Data’s sign-up link during the Pilot Program.
12 of these would release music on the platform. Two of these users also contributed to content on theharddata.com. So, of 67 sign-ups, 24 (36%) were active creators in some way to the music ecosystem facilitated by Musicoin.

0 subscriptions or t-shirts were purchased with Musicoin during the Pilot Program.
This was disappointing. However, there was no real online-shopping cart for users to make a purchase. Essentially, the purchase would have had to be made via Musicoin’s commenting interface built into musicoin.org, and would have required theharddata.com to comment back and then contact via email to complete the transaction. So, this aspect of the Pilot Program I believe is only a failure because of the technical handicaps and time constraints.

An unexpected result of the Pilot Program was that the first blockchain-enabled DJ mix was created, which garnered outside press on at least three well-known cryptocurrency websites and brought attention to Musicoin.

Pending Results

There are still a few loose-ends to tie-up to relevant to the Pilot Program. These pending results of the Pilot Program won’t have much directly measurable results with the public though, and as such were considered a secondary priority. Nonetheless, they are expected to be completed shortly.

These aspects currently in process are: a modified version of this report will appear in the print version of The Hard Data magazine. There are several jobs for the print issue that still must be finalized by its publication on September 21. Initially, the print magazine was scheduled for the last week of August. However, Insomniac Eventsthe USA’s largest EDM show produceragreed to buy an ad in the upcoming issue, and the artwork will not be ready until the first week of September. I decided it would be best to delay the printing a week or two to facilitate the nation’s largest event company in the magazine’s space.

3.5 hours are still pending on web development tasks. The proposed tasks were integrating Musicoin with theharddata.com via API more directly, and streamlining various aspects of the site.

Conclusion

Obviously, I have a biased conclusion being the publisher of The Hard Data. However, I think the numbers support my view that the Pilot Program achieved important goals.

  1. It introduced users unfamiliar with cryptocurrency to accept the currency in exchange for services.
  2. Because content creators were paid, it doubled the readership of the site, and generated more, better, and wider-ranging content, expanding the music ecosystem with which the magazine and Musicoin was involved with.
  3. Musicoin tripled in price. Though the Pilot Program was not solely responsible for the uptick in price, it was an active and visible participant aggressively spreading the word of Musicoin’s adoption to crypto and non-crypto users, which was recognized by the crypto community.

Ultimately, I believe the Pilot Program demonstrates that Musicoin can have a profound impact on a small music scene and these techniques can be extrapolated to larger music ecosystems. It can be reasonably concluded that the only things delaying Musicoin’s greater adoption can mostly be solved by mere manpower. The Hard Data/Musicoin Pilot Program has established that non-crypto users will accept and adopt the usage of Musicoin in exchange for services and listening to music.

The Hard Data and Musicoin Pilot Program

The Hard Data readers may have recently noticed the addition of banners and price trackers for “Musicoin – The World’s first smart cryptocurrency for music” on theharddata.com. Recently, The Hard Data and the Musicoin Foundation agreed to conduct an experiment to see how Musicoin might interact with The Hard Data’s readers and contributors, in essence: to see how its cryptocurrency would be used by real people, in a real market. Most cryptocurrencies are pure speculation at this point, but Musicoin has the distinction of being the first operating blockchain platform for music streaming. Think of it as Spotify combined with Bitcoin.

The Hard Data Wizard and Musicoin
The Hard Data Wizard and Musicoin

At the heart of the Musicoin system, each time someone plays a track on its platform the artist receives (almost instantly), 1 Musicoin, which he or she can split with other people that contributed to the track’s production. As of my writing of this article, 1 Musicoin or “MC” is worth about $00.02. Artists can opt to hold on to the Musicoin, or sell it on a cryptocurrency exchange should they want to sell the MC in exchange for US Dollars.

For the Musicoin system to work, it is thought that perhaps MC should be used for other purposes in the music world, such as event tickets, t-shirts, and other goods and services. So, a plan was drawn up where The Hard Data would catalyze this agenda item by trading MC to its work-for-hire contractors such as writers, photographers, social media experts and artists for their services. As online contributors to websites are often paid nothing at all, it is thought that the MC contributors receive would at least be some compensation for their efforts.

A schedule of tasks and compensation was then drawn up for a pilot program that will be in-effect until August 31, 2017.

Tasks and Compensation

Online (http://www.theharddata.com) :

Writing an at-least 500 word online article = 500 MC compensation

Sharing an article at least 30 different times (for example linking to the article in Facebook Groups, forums and other online gather places) = 500 MC compensation

Photographs (published) = 10 MC each compensation (most photographers upload a lot of photos)

Editorial overview of web article = 100 MC compensation

Share Checker = 100 MC compensation (this person would coordinate shares and check that the Share Reward links were valid).

Web coding/development = 1000 MC per hour

Print (The HARD DATA magazine):

Written Pages = 500 MC per page (or roughly 500 words)

Artwork or Photo (full page) = 500 MC per page

Content Photos/Artwork = 500 MC per page (half and quarter sizes are divided by that amount, so a half page photo is worth 250 MC for example).

Magazine Layout = 5000 MC

Editing Magazine = 100 MC per written page.

Proofing = 100 MC per written page.

Using Musicoin

So after a contributor receives Musicoin for what they did, what do they do with it? Here are the options:

  1. Hold onto it, hoping that it will become more valuable. Musicoins have traded for as high as $00.041. So, a 500 word article written and shared would be worth $41.00 at that exchange rate. Today, 1 MC is worth about $00.02, so the same article traded or shared is worth approximately $20 if the MC was exchanged for US Dollars.
  2. Should the contributor want to exchange their MC for US Dollars, the following process is currently necessary.
  3. The contributor sells their MC in exchange for Bitcoin on either Bittrex.com or Cryptopia.co.nz.
  4. The Bitcoin is then traded for US Dollars on Coinbase.com which will deposit the USD into your Paypal or bank account.

There will be small fees associated with each transaction, but if your Paypal account is connected to your Coinbase account, you can receive US Dollars instantly.

  1. Use the MC to buy things or trade with friends and associates. For example, The Hard Data offers subscriptions and T-shirts in exchange for Musicoin. Soon other goods and service providers will too.
  2. Simple use it for listening to music, tipping artists, or sending to your friends to enjoy the Musicoin platform.

Sign-up

  1. In order to take part in The Hard Data-Musicoin Pilot Program, you first need to sign-up to Musicoin. Use this link: https://musicoin.org/accept/bd71b3b7
  2. Send an email to writers@theharddata.com and tell me what you want to do for the magazine, i.e. Writing, Vidoe/Audio stories/interviews, Photography, Art, Editing, Layout, Web development, Social Media Sharing, and or checking.

Those are the basics. For transferring Musicoin to US Dollars, you will need to do the following.

  1. Download and install the Musicoin Wallet: https://musicoin.org/wallet.html
  2. Sign-up for an account on Bittrex or Cryptopia. https://bittrex.com/ or https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/
  3. Sign-up for an account on Coinbase. https://www.coinbase.com/

Conclusion

We hope that you find this pilot program intriguing and an opportunity to take a more active part, and to gain some compensation, from something that you are truly interested in. The Hard Data is honored that the Musicoin Foundation believed in it and its readers to undertake this musical journey.