Hi everyone,

So this month’s update is a little different, and a little ahead of time! Earlier this week we shared a ‘to do’ list, which was put together by Taco, based on community questions, concerns and feedback.

I set myself and the team a challenge to get through as many of the items as we could and below you can see the update, activity or action for each one.

Ahead of the list, a couple of key data points for you, for July 28!

We have:

More than 76k tracks now paired and available to the platform

More than 21k unique BEAM holders

More than 70 artists with:

• Jewel Chang
• PLS&TY
• September Mourning

Having the most BEAMS held against them

The most engaged artist in our community this month was Wrighteous J from City of Sound, followed by Emily Lazar of September Mourning and Darren Claxton (thanks guys!).

We have now had more than 70k people come and play now.

Our top three countries for listeners are currently:

• The US
• Brazil
• South Korea

We also hit 3 million streams — not bad … but there’s still a long way to go yet!

Okay on to Taco’s list:

1. Jane Handcock collectibles

These were sent out to eligible holders on Thursday (July 28)

2. Stash Box new drops

We have just received and are currently reviewing the casting tapes for ‘Snoop’s House’ the show that as mentioned in my last update will be tokenized for qualifying Stash Box holders. I will also be syncing with team Snoop around both a UK and US meet up later this summer and we have the Making of the Chronic Film collectibles to deliver soon — we have one more legal hurdle for their release to you.

3. Monthly platform draw (plus prior months)

We haven’t done this (in honesty I am unsure as to why), but we will get up to speed and do the April-August draws in August, and may well use AA experiences as well as tracks.

4. Orb Utility/BT update

We are currently working on our line up for EDM week and will ensure there is a bonus drop for orb holders within this too.

5. Node owner love

We do — we also have been talking about legacy beams (the ‘campaign’ was somewhat hard to ignore …) and while no commitment has been made, there have been discussions on how this would be viewed ahead of token launch (time legacy tracks held rather than plays).

6. Legacy beams

See above

7. Bridging back to ETH

This will be available next week — I was hoping for this feature to be released Monday (July 31), but I think with QA, the guys are more comfortable with a deployment anytime from Wednesday (August 02) — we will confirm.

8. Purchasing directly to GYRI

This update will happen with the above — and we will have a write up on the full capabilities and impact of our contract upgrade coming out next week.

9. Algo V2

Our popularity algorithm has been updated to better reflect plays off of the Gala Music platform — we have done this ahead of names with significant fan bases coming on to the platform (starting in August) and would note to you all that Snoop, Mount Westmore and other more established artist tracks are likely going to fair better, distribution wise than they did previously. A full write up around this as well as BEAMS versus Points in the All Access Store will be dropping Monday (July 31)

10. KOL details

Unfortunately we cannot speak on this yet.

11. More Giveaways

Doing much more of these, right now focus is on UA (user acquisition), but also ensuring that community members who engage with activities on the platform are able to opt into competitions via our ‘stages’ and/or ‘spaces’, as well as by watching and listening to content such as Top of the Drops.

12. App release date

We will have the Beta version of the App ready late August! And are going to be asking members of the community to lean in a little with testing too!

13. Taco merch/experiences in All Access

While not a priority (… I know mean Bux), we have done 3 Taco inspired giveaways this week alone — the TACO CHICKEN for GET PLUCKED! (the new game coming soon from VOX), the $250 food voucher (well, you can buy tacos with it …) and the Taco jacket giveaway which you can enter via this week’s Top of the Drops.

14. Review TOTD feedback

We have gathered feedback on this and some other high level engagement aspects — bringing new listeners and supporters in is key, but it’s much easier (and more realistic) when the others already here are having an optimal experience!

15–19

We didn’t get to (… I guess we do need Taco)

• Scavenger hunt across Music/Film/Vox
• Support socials on TikTok engagement
• Exclusive Sound Booth activities
• Dial in audio in stages for live music streaming
• Finalize Spider Tanks Tourney planning

As always the team and I will be in and around discord to ensure we’re answering questions and keeping you up to date. There will, as the list says above, be updates on BEAMS/Points in relation to All Access and information around the technical updates and enhanced experience releases (including App testing) during the first week of August.

In the meantime if you would be kind enough to show some support for artists and what we’re doing on socials (including watching Top of the Drops!) and/or perhaps fill in our feedback form (doing so before Sunday 12PM PT means you’ll also receive a special Taco, VOX Chicken), it would be greatly appreciated,

Sending my best to you all,

Bux

We’re leveling up our mission to recognize and reward emerging talent and their fans.

Today we’re proud to announce a partnership with Catbird Music Festival, in association with Live Nation, to create an unprecedented opportunity for artists by giving them the chance to perform on stage at the festival!

The indie, country, and folk music festival will take place on August 18th and 19th at the historic site of the 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair in Bethel, NY.

To seize this exciting opportunity, artists and bands will be able to submit an original song video from July 19th to July 24th. From July 25th, fans will then play a vital role in the selection process, casting their votes for their top three artists or bands to grace the Catbird stage.

The artist with the most fan votes will earn a coveted spot on the Catbird Music Festival lineup, performing for tens of thousands of attendees.

More information and complete terms and conditions will be released on July 19th.

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this transformative experience and make your mark on the music world.

Get ready for this unforgettable collaboration!

Follow Gala Music to stay tuned.

Today we’re excited to introduce something the Gala Music community has long requested — incorporating third-party streaming data into our BEAMS distribution algorithm.

TL:DR

• If you own an artist’s track that’s performing well on other music platforms, you should benefit from the popularity.
• We want to recognize the success of artists outside our walls, and reward the fans who support them.
• To pilot this idea, we’ve picked a Gala Music favorite: PLS&TY and a couple of their tracks
• If successful, our plan is to incorporate third-party streaming data into all Silver Tier and above tracks in terms of calculating BEAMS rewards

BEAMS beyond our walls

We know that music extends beyond the Gala Music platform to services like Spotify or Apple Music. If you own an artist’s track that is performing well on other platforms, you should benefit from that popularity. While listens on Gala Music will always be prioritized in BEAMS distribution, we want to recognize the success artists are having outside our walls, and reward the fans who support them.

Piloting the idea

We’ve picked a Gala Music favorite to help pilot this: PLS&TY. Starting May 25, we’ll include third-party streaming data in calculating rewards for “New Color.” One week later, we’ll extend this feature to PLS&TY’s new track, “Yours,” exclusively available on Gala Music before other platforms. This way, both Gala Music listens and external streams contribute to the track’s success.

Longer term roadmap

Our plan is to incorporate third-party streaming data into all Silver Tier and above tracks, as third-party streams will be a significant factor in total rewards generated. As Bronze artists qualify to “level up” to Silver, their tracks will level up with them, and also include streams from outside the Gala Music platform, benefitting the early supporters of those artists.

Test and learn, test and learn

It’s important to remember that this pilot is a learning experience for us all and it’s a necessary step in creating a more equitable distribution algorithm. We’re excited about this update to Gala Music and hope you are too!

With so much happening, and of course a lot more planned. I wanted to take a moment to share some key thoughts, news and updates across a few topical items that impact not just the platform, but of course all of us connected to it.

With much ground to cover, thought it sensible to share these updates from me (perhaps every 3 months, maybe more if/as you would like), using a logic that will stay constant, even as news and key areas to cover/debate change and progress.

In short — I’ve tried to make this easy to navigate.

Back (Jan-Mar):

Acknowledgements and achievements

Beats (Apr)

Updates on current key items and issues

Beyond

View of upcoming timeline and deliverables

Please Note — these will not be the only official communications or writeups!

BACK

As those who were tracking Gala Music know, the platform launch date was pushed back a couple of times, from Autumn 2022, to January 2023 — launching as a ‘tech rollout’ on March 28, 2023–410 days after we made our intention to enter the music space known.

For those who aren’t aware of the proposition (the what, why and how), you can dive into ‘the source of truth’ to learn more. This document is ‘living’ and as such, it will be shortly updated with any/all relevant information from this post.

So March then … Well we saw more than 10,000 nodes activate and welcomed 19.4k new visitors to the platform. While this is of course an early version of the ecosystem and only a slice of what it will do — there were some pretty neat tech pieces that went live during deployment:

• Decentralized Track Hosting
• Community Track/Node Player Pairing
• Daily Distribution Rewards

As with all new things, there is always a lot to learn and some ‘kinks’ to work through, track pairing (since updated) and player node owner rewards were both hot topics at release and in the case of nodes, still very much a big theme of conversations. You can keep up with these in our discord, but for those who like a more considered communication flow we will be introducing longform updates to let the community know about key decisions and changes ahead of releases and/or key activations.

Ahead of our launch in March, BT Orb Holders were dropped tracks with ‘listen-enabled reward’ utility in the Gala Music ecosystem. Jane Hancock fans expecting their digital collectibles (non-earning) were still waiting (…) and the promised October London tracks, being sent to player node owners and buyers of the artist, were placed on hold. The reason for this is that an artist holding too much of the content (%) on platform would create an imbalance across a number of platform features. We will of course revisit and make sure we’re aligned with October London, as we do with all Gala Music artists, to ensure we can strike when the time is right (note: this doesn’t impact a track release if that’s something he and the community are keen on). Stash box holders and gold chain owners — in March plans progressed with Snoop Dogg concerning a unique (free) release that will forever remain exclusive to holders. Due to previous announcements and restrictions around this, a separate communication will be shared in May to make clear who will receive the item(s) and why.

BEATS

We are now well into the technical roll-out, exactly a month at the time of writing. Some interesting stats for you, if you’re in the Gala Music Discord you would have seen these already!

• There are now over 66,000 music tracks being hosted on player nodes.
• April saw the platform serve over 1 million (decentralised) listens
• We also saw a 141% increase in visitors to the site (47k)
• A further 3.6K nodes came online (10,033 came online in March)
• More than 1.6k community members are now showing their support by putting tokens in Gala Music artist’s pools

It would be remiss of me to highlight only the wins, we of course have had some bumps. A few delays to daily minting (although note all BEAMS have been distributed without loss to those qualifying) and a specific error around an overmint, which the team will be addressing in the coming weeks to ensure balance is restored — this will not be through the distribution of ‘additional’ tokens.

For those not following in our Discord, during this early test phase, we are minting 250k BEAMS each day for distribution. This distribution only goes to those who own tracks and/or player nodes, who are also meeting the required 20 hours ‘up time’. BEAMS are calculated based on listens — unique listens have a higher weighting than repeat listens. No BEAMS are allocated to Gala Music for operations/costs, and none are allocated or distributed to artists at this time.

Along with much other background work, April also saw us launch the leaderboard, a first step in what will be a platform that encourages people to sign in and play …

Another aspect we rolled out this month was tiers, thought this was a good opportunity to share some more information with you all.

There are 5 tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond. These tiers will now have fixed track amounts going forwards. While the quantity will now be set across tiers, artists will have a price range that they’re able to operate within, based on their needs and what they believe their fan base(s) will be open to.

To determine if an artist is able to rise to the next tier, Gala Music have implemented a points system, this includes items such as:

• Sold Out Tracks
• 70% sell outs
• Held BEAMS
• Track Performance
• All Access Fulfillments
• Exclusive Track(s)
• Exclusivity Window
• DSP Streams

An artist, group and/or band can of course join Gala Music above the Bronze Tier. Their entry level is based on external performance indicators, as well as their agreement with Gala Music (such as exclusivity, engagement and their contribution/content for The All Access Store).

Criteria becomes more stringent as an artist rises tiers, and artists may only jump Tiers once per every 90 day period, no matter their performance on or off the Gala Music platform.

When an Artist rises to the next Tier, the rewards rate for BEAMS held in their Pool decreases by 2%.

However, for fans that have already held BEAMS in their pool, the previous rate is honored. This rewards early supporters for holding BEAMS against the artists they believe will successfully grow with Gala Music.

While we’re here a little note on Access Pools.

Access Pools allow you to support your favorite artists and earn points for unique experiences, merchandise, items and music. Each month, the top artist in each tier with the most BEAMS held unlocks marketing and promotional benefits from Gala Music.

The points a supporter earns from holding BEAMS in an Access Pool can be spent in the All Access Store to unlock exclusive experiences, content and items. While points are universal, you will receive a discount on content from artists whose pool you hold BEAMS in.

Beyond

The All Access Store. As many of you know, this was intended to be an April launch, however, due to some recent complexities surrounding redemption, we have taken the decision to delay its rollout until later in May, in order to deploy our best version of V1.

The All Access Store is not just an important feature for BEAM (and of course soon token) holders, it is also an essential part to our UA strategy which, with our first month now behind us, is top of my mind.

Along with the All Access Store, May will welcome the first notable partnership of many. Attendance at VeeCon (May 18–20), will bring with it a huge moment for 18 emerging artists — 3 of which will take to the main stage to perform.

The activations before, during and after, will be focused on the VeeCon community (not just their conference attendees), to increase sign-ups to the platform — and drive those all important listens.

Going forwards, I will share key stats on the activities happening on and around the platform, so that you can see the impact of campaigns, releases, content, features, partnerships and of course that all important token launch.

I hope this has been useful to you. Please know your support and input is of great importance, not just to the team and I, but to all those who we believe will benefit and of course enjoy all that Gala Music will bring to life.

Here’s to a better way for us to play — together!

Bux

The newest feature on Gala Music’s community-powered platform allows users to see track and artist performance, as well as total BEAMS rewards in one dynamic dashboard.

Today is an exciting step forward, we’re hyped to roll out the first iteration of our ‘Charts’ feature, enhancing our user experience and giving artists, fans and music NFT collectors more visibility over what tracks and artists are hottest right now.

TLDR — Charts mean you can:

• See how your favorite artists or tracks are performing and trending in terms of BEAMS rewards distribution and total listens
• Discover the top performing artists and tracks and whether they’re trending up or down (compared to the previous day, week, month or all-time)
• Maximize your rewards by understanding what’s most popular
• Easily find specific artists and learn more about them and their music
• Share your favorite tracks with friends through social sharing, buy tracks through the platform and view the tracks on Opensea
• This is just the beginning and we’re super excited to show you what’s coming next…

Find more detail about the Charts feature below.

Track what’s hot right now

The central idea of Gala Music is to give artists and fans a better way to play by rewarding both musicians and their supporters. With Charts, everyone has the opportunity to see which artists and tracks are getting the most listens, and distributing the most rewards. Charts lets you break this down to see daily, weekly, monthly and all-time performance for BEAMS distributed, and track listens — as well as giving you the opportunity to check out and listen to the most popular music on the platform on any given day.

Maximise and monitor rewards

On Gala Music, NFT track owners and Music Player Node owners are rewarded in BEAMS. With Charts, you now have the power to understand which artists and tracks will give the best rewards and see how any tracks you already own or host are performing in terms of listens and reward distribution.

See what’s trending right now

As well as tracking daily listens and daily reward distributions, Charts allows you to search and see whether artists and tracks are trending up or down on a daily, weekly or monthly trendline. Fans are quickly able to see the artists and tracks that are gaining or losing position and therefore maximize their rewards by understanding what’s most popular.

Making sharing simple

As well as giving you the power to see what’s hot and giving the most rewards, Gala Music exists to empower artists and fans. With this in mind, we know it’s critical to make it easy to share your favorite tracks and artists across your own networks, giving more people a chance to experience tracks you own or like, and in turn increasing the strength of the overall Gala Music Community. Charts makes this simple, letting you share tracks and artists with a single click across social and digital channels.

Explore GALA Music and Charts here: music.gala.com/charts/top-tracks