Market Report

[cob]

I think though it's kind of weird investors will put money in "notes" instead of investing in equity of the DAC.

Notes ARE the DAC units.

Just like BTSX are the BitSharesX units.

Investors will probably make a nice profit out of it, no doubt, I don't disagree with that. But it's a leap of faith, as they don't have any idea how many notes their investment entitle them to (as a percentage of the total investor's allowance).

Just like AGS donations.
When I sent my BTC and PTS to the AGS addresses, I did not know how many AGS I would receive either.

One thing for sure, is that no matter how much the music DAC is worth (even just a few millions in market cap), a few stake holders (founders) will make a fortune. I guess that's the whole point of this scheme?

If we wanted to pump and dump, I'm sure there would be simpler ways haha.

The goal is to, of course, make money. But do so while changing the world. I am from the Napster generation, it introduced me to P2P and I didn't care what that meant. All I cared was that when I typed "the real slim shady" I could download it in 20 minutes for free. AND it made a powerful industry crumbled.

We can do the same once again, introduce a whole generation to REAL decentralization, introduce them to the power of blockchains just as Napster introduced me to P2P, only this time it's fair for the artist and the listener.
This could really be the DAC needed to break out of the crypto micro-niche.

[cob]

I hope cob and crew gives the community some time to critique the plan before they make it final.. If a genius like bytemaster believes in full transparency and constantly getting people to attack his thoughts and plans, .. how arrogant do other people have to be if they believe they can get it right from the get-go? In all probability it is motivated as much by fear as arrogance.

We should observe not so much what their initial plan is, but how they respond and handle valid criticism. Wasnn't this a lesson from Shark Tank as well? But let us wait until we get something official!

THIS!
Very good point here.
Bytemaster is the man. He's the reason BitShares Music is possible and the reason we have a functioning mechanism for the value of artistcoins.
He does believe in transparency he is in the open source world.
PeerTracks on the otherhand has to watch out and be sure we have a good first mover advantage. So the secret sauce stays secret until we are just about ready to roll.

I am really happy to have posted on this forum for this exact reason: the criticism! As long as it's valid and politely presented (:

So keep your input coming guys. I will read it all and address as much as I can.

[cob]

I promised to share my thoughts on the market when I have one. Well today I do.

The topic is:
 

'BitShares Music'

Short Version:

Sell, sell, sell... whenever you get your hands on any bishashares Music shares (called Notes) sell. At whatever price the poor buyer is offering; do not give him a chance to think twice!

I don't give any financial advise so can't comment on this.

Let’s not talk about PTS/AGS holders – getting in 30 % of a worthless product is not much better than getting just 10%, I know getting 10% is insulting nevertheless.

That is why on the 8th day the lawd invented forking. PeerTracks does not have a monopoly on the BitShares toolkit.

The IPO is designed to follow all well-known path of ‘crypto space’ stupidity –Ethereum style, or ‘known number unknown quantity’ style IPO. In short you pay $5 for X number of shares, but you are totally unaware how many shares will be sold. With every passing day the new buyer get less number of shares per $5 but at least know how many other crazies have bought before them.  The total number of crazies still remains unknown, as there may be many more coming after them.

If by stupidity you mean most successful crypto IPO yet. Then yes!
Our first goal is to raise capital... effectively.
In the absence of price, this is the simplest model imo. We put up a random arbitrary price per Note. We don't know how many Notes will sell and so we can't sell out / run out. Now after the 6-8 week Note pre-sale, we use the number of sold notes to determine the total number of units this DAC will have.
If only 5 Notes sell, then the DAC will have a low unit number. If a million sell, then we base our DAC unit amount on this. People that bought Notes still get their percentage.
Similar to what AGS did really. Whenever I donated funds to the AGS addresses I never knew how many AGS I would get. I knew how many were sold that day but didn't know how many "crazies" as you put it where also going to jump in the pot.
This is the exact same thing only it's the other variable that is missing. In one case it's the fixed amount of "shares" the other case it's the % of shares.

If this is not enough, the wise DAC creators/founders not just keep the proceeds of the ipo, they also reward themselves with free shares (about 30% of the total DAC’s shares, never the less!)

Of course we are going to keep the proceeds. What do you think we would do? Give it to charity? We have an entire industry to revolutionize. We need all the funds we can get.

      -Well the IPO was the fun part, there the creators of this DAC just rob you in bright daylight and that is in a way honorable of them.
While they thought hard for their 30-35% free notes, in the business model we see that those Notes are not worth much. They entitle you to transactions fees… and that is pretty much it (well other than being a speculator and shorting musicUSDs at their own eXchange)

Yes, COB is taking around 2% of Notes. If it pleases you, I can just take all my bitcoin, send it to the Pre-Sale address so that it looks fair.
1. Seems like a waste of time to send my funds from my btc address, to the peertracks pre-sale address which I will also control...
2. this will just inflate our Pre-sale numbers. Kinda crooked imo
3. How is it so surprising that I would want stake in this project? I've been at this since Febuary it would be highly fishy if I didn't have any stake at all in this haha

As for the % going to the peertracks corporation, this is another entity.
These are the corporate funds. They are to be used in whatever way benefits the whole endeavour. We might need them for partnerships, marketing, getting big name artists to jump on, etc.
They also are used to generate revenue via transaction fees. If the fees are enough to cover Peertracks' expenses, we can then reduce (or possible even eliminate) the small fee the website charges on each song/album sale.

Also, keep in mind that at launch, Peertracks will pretty much be synonymous to BitShares Music. The blockchain itself NEEDS a platform that ties every coins together, that allows a place to actually browse and download music, etc. Without a user friendly front end, you'll only have Ode to Satoshi being downloaded lol. No offense to Lij and John. That song is badass. But a song here and a song there just is not going to get crypto to mass adoption.
At launch, no Peertracks, no BitShares Music... AT LAUNCH. Now give it a couple months or years and competitors will pop up, or maybe it'll be a site in china that does the same thing, or a spanish music focused website, or an audiobook store, etc.
PeerTracks will be the company bringing value to the BitShares Music Blockchain at first.
And yes, we are aware that no BitShares, no PeerTracks. This is a symbiotic relationship. PeerTracks will get high volume and exposure to BitShares Music, they BitShares music will be strong enough to survive even if PeerTracks disappears.

Think of a site that just sells bikes. Then a site that just sells cell phone cases. And another site that just sells 1 type of lamp.
Sure they get a bit of traffic...
Now think of ebay. The fact that it is a site where you can shop for anything is what gives everyone an advantage, buyers, sellers and ebay itself. It's a win / win / win. This is what PeerTracks aims to be.
Titiana coin was a great experiment but it lacks PeerTracks to make it successful.... not to mention our mechanism that brings value to the coin!

The other way to make money in this system are the following:
      – You lend money to a promising musician, he promises to give you something back (or not) if he is a success. Way to enforce such promises are something that the ‘founders’ will have to think of… but that is for later.

This is wrong. I'm sorry if I wasn't more clear. We'll get to the secret sauce soon. Before we start the Pre-Sale of course.
We don't have to think about it. We already have a working, regulation compatible model. Artistcoins will have value depending on the amount of content that is sold. They are not stock in the artists, they are not equity, they do not pay dividends.

     -The 3rd way the system makes money is buy selling music- on $1 dollar sales here are the proposed ratios:
95% for the musician;
4% for the ‘founders’ ? (as they have expenses for bandwidth, etc.)
1% transaction fees…

This is quote mining, cherry picking and a strawman.

First of all, the very first line in my post was

keep in mind these are fictitious %s and #s for the sake of simplicity

Then I say

If a song sells for 1 BitUSD (FROM the PeerTracks website), a couple of things happen.

So not only are you bashing the fictitious numbers I gave out to explain the concept. But also the big "IF"
In PeerTracks, the artist decides what price he sells his music for. It's none of our business!

Second, that fictitious 4% does not go to the founders at all. It goes to the PeerTracks corporation. And this is only on stuff PURCHASED ON PEERTRACKS. It has nothing to do with the Bitshares Music blockchain. ANYONE can start a website that uses this blockchain and charge whatever fees they want. We are betting on it!
It's like you are complaining that Bitpay takes a certain % out of merchant transaction. Well... Bitpay can do what it wants! If it screws up, a competitor will capitalize on their errors and take em over or just outcompete them.
You seam to be mixing up Bitpay with Bitcoin and PeerTracks with BitShares Music.

And to cover your final point, yes, the DAC makes money from transaction fees of of every piece of audio content sold. Be it, songs, albums, audiobooks, podcasts, lectures, etc. If you don't think that's a big enough market, look at the numbers more closely. Check out Pandora, spotify, itunes, google play, etc. Add up that potential.
Then realize that there are also transaction fees from anything else that isn't a sale. People trading around artistcoins for example. What if a band starts accepting it's artistcoin as currency for it's concerts? For it's merch? Think of the incentive artists and bands will have to make their coin worth more then the others.  We envision 1000 DOGEcoin type ecosystems all residing on the BitShares Music Blockchain.

By all means, sell sell sell ^^



To sum up.
This is going to be one hell of a game changer. Not only for the music world, but for BitShares and the crypto world. Whether you sell your Notes or not.

[liondani]

For 9 mo. the 'FOUNDERS" came with nothing but schemes to get bigger part of the pie for themselves.

Hopefully, it will turn out that they've been quite busy behind the scenes. Personally, I've always been more excited about BitShares Music than any other DAC. It could be the first DAC (aside from BTSX) to present something new to a potentially mass audience that doesn't know or care what a DAC is. Like others, I've been eagerly awaiting details. Until we get an official announcement, I think we shouldn't be jumping to too many conclusions. So far, I'll agree with you, Tony, that the IPO idea rubs me the wrong way, after all the money I've spent on AGS and PTS. There was a time when we were promised 50% of this DAC. That sort of promise, when people are spending money in anticipation of it, is important. BitShares Music or PeerTracks will not get another dime from me in its IPO. I've bought in heavily already, even if it's now a share of 20% and not 50%.

However, I remain very optimistic about BitShares Music. Maybe I don't need a share of 50%. If I own only some small fraction of 1%, then who knows, that could be worth a fortune. And the IPO could turn out to be a positive if that gives this business the resources to succeed. I'll be patient and see how this develops.

One more thing to consider: in this open source world, a DAC may need an IPO or fundraiser to cement its first-mover advantage. If a developer has blown his wad just to get the thing off the ground, and then someone else with more resources comes in and clones the thing right away, able to pour those resources into the next stage, then that first effort is at least partly wasted. But a first-mover with a big war chest can make it a lot harder for someone else to swoop in and compete at the same level. This helps to incentivize DAC development. Also, I have to guess that running BitShares Music will not be a low-maintenance operation. So I don't mind funding that to some degree.

If people like you had not invested in AGS and PTS, bitshares_toolkit would not exist right know so bitshares-music either, as simple us that...

[donkeypong]

For 9 mo. the 'FOUNDERS" came with nothing but schemes to get bigger part of the pie for themselves.

Hopefully, it will turn out that they've been quite busy behind the scenes. Personally, I've always been more excited about BitShares Music than any other DAC. It could be the first DAC (aside from BTSX) to present something new to a potentially mass audience that doesn't know or care what a DAC is. Like others, I've been eagerly awaiting details. Until we get an official announcement, I think we shouldn't be jumping to too many conclusions. So far, I'll agree with you, Tony, that the IPO idea rubs me the wrong way, after all the money I've spent on AGS and PTS. There was a time when we were promised 50% of this DAC. That sort of promise, when people are spending money in anticipation of it, is important. BitShares Music or PeerTracks will not get another dime from me in its IPO. I've bought in heavily already, even if it's now a share of 20% and not 50%.

However, I remain very optimistic about BitShares Music. Maybe I don't need a share of 50%. If I own only some small fraction of 1%, then who knows, that could be worth a fortune. And the IPO could turn out to be a positive if that gives this business the resources to succeed. I'll be patient and see how this develops.

One more thing to consider: in this open source world, a DAC may need an IPO or fundraiser to cement its first-mover advantage. If a developer has blown his wad just to get the thing off the ground, and then someone else with more resources comes in and clones the thing right away, able to pour those resources into the next stage, then that first effort is at least partly wasted. But a first-mover with a big war chest can make it a lot harder for someone else to swoop in and compete at the same level. This helps to incentivize DAC development. Also, I have to guess that running BitShares Music will not be a low-maintenance operation. So I don't mind funding that to some degree.

[tonyk]

tony it is very entertaining to read you sarcastic posts (not kidding) but it would give your critique more weight if you can come up with an alternative plan...

Removing the stupid  and or greedy parts of the plan will be a start.
1. If you want to give just 20% to AGS/PTS, fine, it your right. (The useless bastards are not a good marketing group anyway, why give them more).

2.If you think IPO is the best way to go - fine;
-Make a model that makes sense ('Here investor buy some notes', 'What PERCENT will 100 BTC buy me?' -'Well we do not know, but definitely 5Mil shares" - Does, not cut it! )
AGS style is a good start. Improve on it!
-Buy as much as you want through that IPO

3. Want a stability of a dollar, in the payments in the system? - Good - Make a gateway on BTSX exchange, to make trading Notes for bitUSD. (Building your own exchange for that purpose - Wistful overkill). You can have automatic Note<--> bitUSD on your site for the customer convenience if you would like.

4. Having 5% fee of every sell (for the bandwidth???, how did you calculate it will be enough?), in current form it just smells money grab, money grab. My solution leave 25% as delegate fee. Let the delegates/Note-holders decide what is a good split bandwidth/Profit (Burning)/Marketing etc. You will run quite a few of them delegates anyway.


That's me thinking 15min on the subject.
For 9 mo. the 'FOUNDERS" came with nothing but schemes to get bigger part of the pie for themselves.

[jaran]

Instead of so much going to the private corporation PeerTracks maybe those shares could go to the DAC to be used to give say 100 top artist a stake in the DAC if they agree to use it and promote it.



 

[toast]

I don't think anybody has talked about the latest/best notes model. I'm talking to eddie and cob about this.

[Chuckone]

But let us wait until we get something official!

Wise advice!

1) I think though it's kind of weird investors will put money in "notes" instead of investing in equity of the DAC.

2) The fact that 30% of all the notes will be hoarded by the centralized corporation behind it (and its founders), is kind of weird also. Let's say the DAC is worth 100 000 000$ at some point... The founders' stake will be worth 5M$ for a few months worth of work? Also they will get paid by the corporation running the whole thing (cumulating tx fees), and the corporation stake will be 25M$? (and it would be safe to assume the corporation behind it is owned and controlled by the founders). I might be wrong, but this scheme is created in a way that money will flow mostly in one direction: The founders.

I do understand the capitalism principle, and it seems very well applied here.

I might be wrong (and I really hope I am)

Investors will probably make a nice profit out of it, no doubt, I don't disagree with that. But it's a leap of faith, as they don't have any idea how many notes their investment entitle them to (as a percentage of the total investor's allowance).

One thing for sure, is that no matter how much the music DAC is worth (even just a few millions in market cap), a few stake holders (founders) will make a fortune. I guess that's the whole point of this scheme?

Ug...this isn't a scheme and although I am not a fan of Ethereum itself the way they funded it was pretty damn well thought out.  AGS, too, was very well thought out.  As far as DACs having a core group with vested interest in it...that is not necessarily bad.  Some people "hoard" what they think is valuable while others sell what they think is going to lose value.  Please relax a bit on this "hoarding" stuff Chuck...we can go the complete opposite direction and complain about Pump and Dumps for the thousands of worthless altcoins each day, mined into existence and pumped onto newbies to syphon their hard earned Satoshis.

The wonderful thing about bitshares PTS is that YOU can go buy them and get a stake in all of these.  Yeh, sure, the early adopters who took the risk will likely have a cheaper price in that stake than you, but I am sure you have a cheaper stake in other projects than others.  Does that make it unfair?  Or does it mean I didn't research enough to find those gems before they began to truly shine? 

These are things worth considering.  At risk of sounding like i'm kissing ass, Bytemaster and the I3 team--though not perfect--have always done their best to be open about the project, plans and the rollout.  We are all wading in waters no human has ever seen before much less jumped into.  Yet here we all are...so early in the game.  Let's be happy about this fact and realize that there is literally a multitrillion dollar market out there for crypto once it reaches full adoption.  It is a good idea to have a huge number of DACs that clone each other, offering competitive market alternatives and distribution models. 

I am not for the one chain to rule them all concept, so I really like the idea of all systems that invite clones to compete with each other.  This is especially true when talking about the long term value PTS brings to the equation.  It is the lowest risk asset that will pay dividends in new companies that use the toolkit.  How much better (and fairer) can that "scheme" be?  Certainly more "noob" friendly than Bitcoin...and certainly more ethical than a bunch of miners mining "shit"coins, flipping them to Bitcoin holders and exiting stage left.

I understand your point!

Honestly, I really like the concept of PTS/AGS created by I3, and I'm all in for competition between DACs with varying business models, all using the same platform. I've always respected the open-minded community that take into account valuable opinions as well as the transparency of the developpers.

I'm just not agreeing on the distribution of this DAC in particular. I'm not even saying I would prefer more for PTS/AGS, because it respects the consensus of 10%/10% and I'm perfectly happy with this. As a passive investor, I don't expect to get a big piece of the cake, I'm very happy just to be able to participate in this experiment. I'm just saying that as it is, the communications for this DAC are kind of shady and open for interpretation (interpreting is exactly what I'm doing right now), and compared to the other DACs that are currently online (or going to be), there's a lot of the "equity" that will be flowing in the direction of the founders/centralized corporation. Either they hoard those notes or they spend it, I don't care, but I'm not comfortable with the fact that approximately  30% of the total equity is in very few hands, pretty much like all the other premined altcoins (and I also include Bitcoin in that statement). 

There will always be an early adopter's advantage, I agree with that. And those working to get any DAC online should be rewarded for their effort and the risk associated (if they did put their assets/ass on the line).

Anyway, the whole point is simply to say that I disagree with the distribution as it currently is, and also that the communication with the community is lacking (to make things short).

[Riverhead]

Typically when a company's executives own a large portion of their own shares it's considered a good thing. If the founders truly believe this to be a billion dollar DAC I imagine it will take years to get there so a quick deploy, dump, and run seems unlikely.


I'm willing to see this out. Bytemaster and Stan haven't raised any flags yet but as they've met with the founders it'd be interesting to hear their perspective on the plan.

[fuzzy]

But let us wait until we get something official!

Wise advice!

1) I think though it's kind of weird investors will put money in "notes" instead of investing in equity of the DAC.

2) The fact that 30% of all the notes will be hoarded by the centralized corporation behind it (and its founders), is kind of weird also. Let's say the DAC is worth 100 000 000$ at some point... The founders' stake will be worth 5M$ for a few months worth of work? Also they will get paid by the corporation running the whole thing (cumulating tx fees), and the corporation stake will be 25M$? (and it would be safe to assume the corporation behind it is owned and controlled by the founders). I might be wrong, but this scheme is created in a way that money will flow mostly in one direction: The founders.

I do understand the capitalism principle, and it seems very well applied here.

I might be wrong (and I really hope I am)

Investors will probably make a nice profit out of it, no doubt, I don't disagree with that. But it's a leap of faith, as they don't have any idea how many notes their investment entitle them to (as a percentage of the total investor's allowance).

One thing for sure, is that no matter how much the music DAC is worth (even just a few millions in market cap), a few stake holders (founders) will make a fortune. I guess that's the whole point of this scheme?

Ug...this isn't a scheme and although I am not a fan of Ethereum itself the way they funded it was pretty damn well thought out.  AGS, too, was very well thought out.  As far as DACs having a core group with vested interest in it...that is not necessarily bad.  Some people "hoard" what they think is valuable while others sell what they think is going to lose value.  Please relax a bit on this "hoarding" stuff Chuck...we can go the complete opposite direction and complain about Pump and Dumps for the thousands of worthless altcoins each day, mined into existence and pumped onto newbies to syphon their hard earned Satoshis.

The wonderful thing about bitshares PTS is that YOU can go buy them and get a stake in all of these.  Yeh, sure, the early adopters who took the risk will likely have a cheaper price in that stake than you, but I am sure you have a cheaper stake in other projects than others.  Does that make it unfair?  Or does it mean I didn't research enough to find those gems before they began to truly shine? 

These are things worth considering.  At risk of sounding like i'm kissing ass, Bytemaster and the I3 team--though not perfect--have always done their best to be open about the project, plans and the rollout.  We are all wading in waters no human has ever seen before much less jumped into.  Yet here we all are...so early in the game.  Let's be happy about this fact and realize that there is literally a multitrillion dollar market out there for crypto once it reaches full adoption.  It is a good idea to have a huge number of DACs that clone each other, offering competitive market alternatives and distribution models. 

I am not for the one chain to rule them all concept, so I really like the idea of all systems that invite clones to compete with each other.  This is especially true when talking about the long term value PTS brings to the equation.  It is the lowest risk asset that will pay dividends in new companies that use the toolkit.  How much better (and fairer) can that "scheme" be?  Certainly more "noob" friendly than Bitcoin...and certainly more ethical than a bunch of miners mining "shit"coins, flipping them to Bitcoin holders and exiting stage left.

If I were new to crypto--I'd want to own 50% BTC and 50% PTS because PTS diversifies me automatically just as a reward for holding it.  That seems to be what dan and the team always do...ironically.   Make sure those who hold the tokens they create have an element that gives back as much value as possible to the holders.   

[Chuckone]

But let us wait until we get something official!

Wise advice!

1) I think though it's kind of weird investors will put money in "notes" instead of investing in equity of the DAC.

2) The fact that 30% of all the notes will be hoarded by the centralized corporation behind it (and its founders), is kind of weird also. Let's say the DAC is worth 100 000 000$ at some point... The founders' stake will be worth 5M$ for a few months worth of work? Also they will get paid by the corporation running the whole thing (cumulating tx fees), and the corporation stake will be 25M$? (and it would be safe to assume the corporation behind it is owned and controlled by the founders). I might be wrong, but this scheme is created in a way that money will flow mostly in one direction: The founders.

I do understand the capitalism principle, and it seems very well applied here.

I might be wrong (and I really hope I am)

Investors will probably make a nice profit out of it, no doubt, I don't disagree with that. But it's a leap of faith, as they don't have any idea how many notes their investment entitle them to (as a percentage of the total investor's allowance).

One thing for sure, is that no matter how much the music DAC is worth (even just a few millions in market cap), a few stake holders (founders) will make a fortune. I guess that's the whole point of this scheme?

[CLains]

Sometimes your creativity is downright brutal liondani.

I hope cob and crew gives the community some time to critique the plan before they make it final.. If a genius like bytemaster believes in full transparency and constantly getting people to attack his thoughts and plans, .. how arrogant do other people have to be if they believe they can get it right from the get-go? In all probability it is motivated as much by fear as arrogance.

We should observe not so much what their initial plan is, but how they respond and handle valid criticism. Wasnn't this a lesson from Shark Tank as well? But let us wait until we get something official!

[liondani]

tony it is very entertaining to read you sarcastic posts (not kidding) but it would give your critique more weight if you can come up with an alternative plan...

if I see a ugly woman and I share my thoughts with my brother, it doesn't mean she isn't ugly
because I didn't advised her to choose the right face lifter..




PS If she thinks she is beautiful, everything else doesn't matter   

[xeroc]

tony it is very entertaining to read you sarcastic posts (not kidding) but it would give your critique more weight if you can come up with an alternative plan...

constructive critique > sarcasm (although more entertaining )