Introducing Tamago: The NEAR Partnered Spotify Killer

4NTS Guild
7 min readJan 11, 2022

Tamago is the NEAR partnered decentralized music platform seamlessly integrating Web3 and NFT tech set to shake up the mainstream airwaves. The platform is powered by a clever streaming model that opens up direct and transparent revenue streams back to the artists with exciting potential. The project’s core team and partners are deeply rooted in the music and entertainment industry and aim to disrupt the scene by throwing head-turning high quality events and parties focused on educating and supporting independent artists all over the world in 2022 with immersive activities and platform feature demonstrations. Tamago states they serve all musicians and content creators equally by providing sustainable, fair, and far more efficient alternatives to share and stream audio content than the current lackluster and sad standards. Through the Tamago model, artists stand to gain massive returns compared to corporate alternatives such as Spotify through a Web3 meets patreon supercharged streaming solution. By providing a strict zero advertisement, zero gatekeeping, ‘anti-corporate/anti-whack vibes’ and dedicated liquidity pools that give 100% profit returns back to artists, the Tamago Alpha App is gearing up for a soft launch this month.

Tamago’s Mission and Vision

The music industry has created a barrier between musicians and their audience making creators dependent and liable to their intermediaries’ greed. According to the RIAA, 75% of the recorded music industry’s revenue in 2018 came from music streaming and only a mere 12% of that was distributed to artists. This means that the majority of artists out there are not able to make a living with their music and those that can are taken advantage of. Needless to say, this state of affairs is hindering artists’ growth and creative potential, slowly turning the music industry into a big names’ only show.

Tamago’s mission is to reverse this situation and provide an alternative to those sick and tired of the manipulative and exploitative schemes imposed by mainstream streaming platforms. Unlike any other streaming platform, Tamago focuses on creating the best environment for all musicians to thrive, as well as building a disintermediated and unfiltered space for music lovers to discover and enjoy music. With the tools and incentives mechanisms that Tamago provides, it seeks to be a safe haven for musicians and music lovers of any kind and size.

Tamago’s team firmly believes that streaming audio can be dramatically improved for artists, and users need to be able to access and consume music without participating in a toxic and exploitative system.

Tamago’s Core Features

Tamago was created from a team of critically acclaimed audio engineers, musicians and blockchain developers who know the good, the bad, and the ugly of the music industry and was designed in order to avoid the pitfalls of mainstream music platforms. In addition to providing an intuitive and user-friendly streaming service, Tamago’s core feature allows for a completely different monetisation strategy and community engagement. Here’s an overview of Tamago’s features:

1. NFT Hybrid technology

Tamago implements a NFT Streaming Hybrid technology that relies on interlocking of the NEAR blockchain to NFT and streaming activity of Tamago’s content. With this system, the Streaming Ledger will be able to provide dependable audio content and streaming metadata, artist metrics, and track content.

2. Tamago’s NFT Marketplace

Artists will have the option to sell their audio uploads as NFTs and set a royalty fee so that fans can buy the uploaded audio content as an NFT and add it to their own marketplace (or playlists) — not just as shared playlists but with ownership rights.

3. Multi Tama FS: Decentralized Storage

All audio content uploaded through Tamago is decentralized, readily available, and uniquely identifiable. By leveraging IPFS, a network for storing and sharing data in a distributed system, every piece of data is cryptographically hashed resulting in a safe and unique content identifier.

4. Transparent ledger for viewing shared audio and metadata

For greater transparency, the uploaded content and the data associated with it will be displayed on the UI and accessible via the NEAR Ledger.

5. High Speed, Low Cost Transactions, and Climate Neutral

Powered by NEAR’s climate-neutral blockchain, Tamago allows users to get a better service without harming the environment. NEAR also offers extremely low gas fees and high speed (100.000 tps), perfect for scaling and providing a great user experience.

6. Decentralized Patreon-style streaming model to return revenue to artists

Tamago has also implemented a token economy ($TAMA) that will foster engagement and support artists with better and more direct connectivity with their fans. Fan are able to easily access Tama and pay their favorite artists for special and unlocked content, special fanship rewards, and exclusive exciting content.

7. Featured Search protocol for fairly querying audio and metadata

Since tracks are indexed as NFTs on Tamago, they are easily available for querying for users. On top of offering the ability to access content quickly and efficiently, Tamago puts in place preventative mechanisms to block influence and revenue manipulation.

8. Streaming Paid for Play Model

Fans earn rewards for listening and creating popular playlists through a streaming paid-for-play model.

9. Staking on Tamago

Tamago offers the possibility to fans and artists to take advantage of what DeFi has to offer directly on the platform. Users can opt-in to hold onto or lock their Tamago holdings for increased yields on streams along with awarded consensus-taking processes.

These nine core functions enable Tamago to be a disruptor in the music streaming industry. They help artists to be fairly rewarded for their work by enabling different monetising options and creating a direct relationship with their fans.

When it comes to users, Tamago does not simply offer the possibility to listen to audio content via streaming and be rewarded with a streaming paid for play model. Tamago offers all the traditional features of a streaming platform such as the possibility to add tracks to one’s playlist and save and repost their favorite tracks. On top of that, Tamago offers some original features such as the ability to buy tickets, create their music stores, mint comments for NFTs, and have access to voting rights and staking opportunities.

How Does Tamago Compare to Other Streaming Platforms?

Tamago is a game changer in the music industry. Compared to other Web2 and We3 streaming platforms, Tamago offers the best monetising options to artists in a safe, transparent, and easy to use environment.

Comparison between Tamago and other streaming platforms

Unlike other platforms, Tamago is designed to give back to artists the value that they have created and remove the barrier that allows them to fully profit from their work.

Roadmap

Present: This project is moving fast and you’ll need to keep a close eye not to miss its upcoming launch. Tamago is currently just past its project foundation phase. Human Guild, the NEAR guild dedicated to supporting the next generation of Web3 products, is working closely with Tamago to finalize and further develop the product.

February 2022: Tamago will hold its private alpha and based on feedback will work on the necessary enhancements.

April 2022: Tamago’s MVP launch and community building.

Tamago’s Team

Clarian is a recognized developer of multiple best-selling Blockchain training modules on Udemy with over 70,000 developers currently enrolled in his NFT and Smart Contract templates. In addition, Clarian has also worked as a head engineer for major brands and indies alike from the ground up, including Universal, Redbull, FOF, along with Grammy nominated and Award winning productions over the past decade. His own purely independent electronic projects have been streamed in the tens of millions globally and have been featured in Rolling Stone, Vice, Guardian, Future, Pitchfork among many others. Clarian is also cited as the first artist to drop a music album as an NFT on Ethereum ahead of Kings of Leon (Clash Magazine, Broadway, New Yok Mag, Vulture etc).

Jeff, a veteran in the crypto industry, co-founded Tamago with Clarian and NEARHub.online, a decentralized metaverse connecting all projects in the NEAR Eco-system with an immersive social 3D environment. In addition to being a Dapp and blockchain developer, Jeff is also an acclaimed electronic music producer for more than 20 years. As a DJ, Jeff has held residencies at Stereobar Montreal, La Santanera, Blue Parrot PDC and The BPM Festival and has shared the decks with artists from around the world including Carl Craig, John Digweed, Apolonia, Timo Maas, RadioSlave, and many more. He has released on Victims Music Company, Cream Couture Records, Moehre Rekorder, Stereo Tension Records, and 1101 Records.

Gunita Nagpaul holds an MBA from Cleveland State University and completed her undergraduate at Case Western Reserve. After leaving Macromedia Inc/Adobe Systems Inc in 2006, Gunita has been a pivotal and recognized force with her SF / New York Listed Production brand for hosting astounding and high quality events, collaborations with world class festivals and booking exceptional artists globally. Gunita is also an avid burner for over 20 years.

TJ Walker is the founder of Media Training Worldwide and has been conducting media training workshops and seminars since 1984. Walker has trained Presidents of countries, Prime Ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, Super Bowl winners, U.S. Senators, Miss Universes and Members of Parliament. His book, “Secret to Foolproof Presentations”was a USA Today #1 Bestseller, as well as a Wall Street Journal, and Business Week Bestseller.

Marco is experienced in both infrastructure and development; he loves web3 and cutting edge technologies. Marco has worked for almost two decades as a system engineer in different sectors like telecommunications, defense, and finance.

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