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FAQ of Songs for Tunes

Songs for Tunes lets artists upload songs to sell on an open decentralized marketplace with other artists. The goal is to fund music artists to keep producing great music.

To mint, you need music.

1. How do I mint an Original Song?

You must be the owner of an original Tune NFT. You can buy one here: https://opensea.io/collection/tunesproject

After that, you can mint directly from our web app: https://songs.tunesproject.org

1.1 Can anyone mint a song even if they don't own the original NFT?

Yes but it will be a "remix"

2. Does my audio have to be a remix of an actual Tune song?

No. Remixes are different in this world. You're remixing a Tune NFT (w/o the audio) so you can upload an original audio track as a "remix."

I repeat: you do not need to base a remix based off the composition of the Original Tune.

Tunes originally omitted art to make them interpreted by artists.

3. Why does "(remix)" keep showing up instead of "(Original)"?

The website automatically detects whether you're an original owner of a Tune NFT. If you aren't, it assumes you want to mint a Remix

3.1 What if I have some original music?

Mint it as a remix if you don't own an original Tune or buy an original Tune. Don't read into "remix" too much.

4. If people can mint Remixes, what's the point of owning an Original?

There are two reasons:

(1) There are only 5,000 original edition Tune NFTs that can show up for Song for Tunes so there's a quality of rarity. This might give them more authenticity since people are less incentivized to burn them with low quality music. There can be many remixes per Tune but there is only one marked Original.

(2) There's an NFT royalties proposal called ERC 2981 that the underlying smart contract implements but most (if not any) marketplaces enable yet. Each sale of a Remix will pay out 15% to the original holder of that Tune as a dividend of supporting the ecosystem. As of Sept 22, 2021: Remix owners get 100% but that's not guranteed in the future.

4. The "Mint" button is all greyed out - what gives?

Are you sure you filled out all of the fields especially providing a valid Tunes OpenSea URL? You must pick a song from here and only here: https://opensea.io/collection/tunesproject

Other URLs will not work.

5. What URL do I use to mint on songs.tunesproject.org?

We need a URL from an actual Tune from https://opensea.io/collection/tunesproject

For example, to mint a Remix or the Original Tune "Parental Discretion Is Advised" we go to the Tune and copy and paste this URL: https://opensea.io/assets/0xfa932d5cbbdc8f6ed6d96cc6513153afa9b7487c/4297 into the "Tune OpenSea URL" input field.

The last digits 4297 are the Tune ID we're looking for.

6. Can I change the audio after I mint?

Yes but it's a little complicated and might require more technical expertise. Here are the rough steps:

  1. Go the Songs contract
  2. Upload your new audio to IPFS
  3. setAudioTrackURI from the contract to the new URI (it will cost gas)
    • token_id is the last 4 digits on the OpenSea URL of the Song for Tunes NFT (not the Original Tunes NFT)

7. Can I change the cover art?

No - it will always use a beautiful (in my opinion) AI-generated art piece. If you see just the Songs for Tunes logo, OpenSea hasn't updated it yet. It can take up to an hour so be patient.

7.1 When I mint a Song is the cover artwork generated for me or do I have create cover art?

It automatically chooses a beautiful AI-generated piece based on the title of the song. You don't need (and can't) to upload your own cover art.

8. Why is minting costing me thousands of dollars in Gas?

I haven't looked too deeply but there appears to be something broken about MetaMask's gas estimator or there's a sudden spike of transactions causing prices to explode temporarily? I am not sure.

I would just reject the tx and keep trying every few minutes until you see gas fees in the $50-120 range. It's best to mint off-peak times like 11 PM PT - 8 AM PT.

For the more daring, you can try to guess what it should be and edit the gas limit yourself.

9. I want to mint a Song for Tunes but I don't make music - what do I do?

Having you a part of the community is valuable and holding a Tune means that you're part of the community that is investing in Tunes. Here are some options:

  1. Learn to make music (Ableton, Logic, FL Studio, etc.) — watch YouTube tutorials!
  2. Split earnings with a musical friend who mints the Song for you

Do not upload copyrighted music that you don't own—that's not very nice and people will notice and not buy your song. You might trick some poor soul and make a couple hundred bucks but is that really the impact you want on the world? Don't be unkind.

10. Can I change the future royalty from 15% to higher or lower?

No - it's global royalty. Why? I went back and forth on making it customizable but decided it would be too confusing for the ecosystem to not know which Original Tunes had certain royalties.

After talking to some music friends, we decided 15% was fair. This means an artist selling their "Remix" edition Tune for $1000 will make $850—a bulk of the money while paying a small dividend to the HODLer.

11. How long does it take for the audio and cover art to show once minted?

It ranges between 2 minutes to over an hour. This is out of our control and related to how OpenSea caches and gets content.

To make it go faster, there's a "refresh metadata" button on the top right of every NFT page.

12. Where can I listen to the music?

Many players are being built and we'd love more developers to help contribute to building. There are lots of things that need to be built from: playlists, artist verification, visualizers, etc.

DM Merwane, Sudo, or Oksami if you want to help in Discord (all of them are mods)

  1. https://songs-visualizer.vercel.app/
  2. https://player-snowy.vercel.app/
  3. https://tunes-viewer.web.app/

13. I think certain songs should receive more or less prominence than other songs - how do we do that?

Like Spotify, my guidance is to make Song discovery occur through audio players and playlists. That means the community needs to help build ways for people to discover the music. I think that will be a superior way to discover Songs to buy by collectors and that feels more exciting, organic, and surfaces the best art to the top.

14. I am from the music industry, not an artist, and want to get involved - how can I help?

There are common ways right now:

  1. Get your artist to drop minted NFTs as part of Song for Tunes
  2. Publicize minted NFTs your artists drop
  3. Create marketing promotional material about Song for Tunes (3D animated art, Videos, etc.)
  4. Talk to bloggers about the future of how Songs for Tunes helps artists capture more of the money they deserve

15. What are resonable gas fees to pay?

$30-120 depending on on-peak and off-peak hours

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