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Viberate Crypto | A Beginners Guide

August 3, 2018

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Viberate crypto is an Ethereum-based decentralized talent ecosystem for live music. It connects artists, fans, talent management agencies and event organizers all together on the same platform. The live music industry has been dominated for a long time by a few leading management companies who control the vast majority of big-name artists playing at prominent venues. At the same time, smaller artists struggle to get recognition and connect with the venues that want their business. Viberate believes that the industry is ready for a shake-up.

In this guide, we will look at:

How Does It Work?

Viberate is both a business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) marketplace. It aims to integrate different segments of the live music industry. The overall business model can be complicated to understand, as it is so multifaceted.

Developments in the B2C Offering

Ticket Sales

Within the business to consumer market, its primary offering is ticketing for live events including concerts and festivals. For this particular revenue stream, Viberate has already partnered with various online booking agencies such as Ticketmaster on an affiliate basis.

In future, Viberate crypto plans to offer its own ticket booking service – the Digital Ticket Exchange (DTX). Consumers will purchase their event tickets directly using cryptocurrency and have the ticket sent to their digital ERC20 wallets as a token. Smart contracts are used hold ticket fees in escrow so that fans can get refunds if the event does not go ahead. It will also feature reseller functionality so that tickets may be resold if the original purchaser cannot attend.

Crowdfunding Performances

A second functionality in the B2C space is for fans to crowdfund performances. Groups of fans who live in areas not usually served by live music events can crowdfund to have their favorite artists come to them.

Groups stake the native token of the Viberate platform, called VIB tokens. Upon reaching a particular threshold, the Viberate app will send the campaign to a social media campaign for promotion. If sufficient funds are raised, digital tickets are sent to the wallets of the donors. The artist performs and claims their share of the fund. If the funding threshold isn’t met, those who donated get a refund back to their wallets.

Developments in the B2B Offering

At its core, the Viberate platform is a database of five different players within the industry. Viberate features a profile database for each of them, with significant numbers already listed within each sector according to the company website. Listings that are open to the general public comprise:

Musicians/performers
Events
Venues

Listings for event organizers and booking agents are kept a targeted audience, not open to the public. Viberate crypto has either already developed or has plans for various ways that the different parties can connect. The VIB token serves as the incentive for parties to interact, depending on who gets the benefit.

Connecting Musicians with Event Organizers

Viberate serves as a kind of matching platform to perform a similar role to that of the booking agent. Given that not all musicians can use the services of a booking agent due to costs or visibility of their profile. Therefore, this model opens up the booking market so that any venue can find and match with any musician, and vice versa.

Smart contracts hold artists fees in escrow, and payments made in ETH or VIB tokens. The Viberate platform takes a booking commission, but at a far lower rate than booking agents charge today.

Connecting Other Industry Partners to PR and Other Artist Contacts

Premium fees apply on the platform for users to access the manager or agent details of artists. This level of premium access requires a fee payment in either VIB or ETH. This is targeted at those wishing to connect with artists for business reasons, e.g., merchandisers.

Other connections are also possible using the network. For example, event organizers could browse available venues for an event they are looking to stage.

Earning rewards

All users of the system (businesses and consumers) can earn rewards from the VIB bounty pool. Rewards are allocated based on activities, such as registering for the service, referring friends and the maintenance and curation of the database. The latter is subject to validation by the editorial team.

The bounty pool will consist of a fixed value of 10m VIB coins, and funds will be released as follows:

5% issued at the point of the token sale (completed end 2017)
5000 tokens released each day for the first 2000 days

After that, it is not clear how replenishment of the bounty pool will work. It is only stated that it will be sourced from other streams, without issuing new coins.

Coin Supply

VIB tokens are ERC20 tokens, so they are not mined. They are created using smart contracts based on Ethereum. Viberate crypto will release a finite number of 200m ERC20 VIB tokens, allocated as follows:

60% sold at ICO to fund project development
16% to the project team
4% to early/angel investors
5% to the bounty pool (see above)
Remainder to other partners (advisory team etc)

Roadmap

The functionality of the platform is being rolled out in stages, and so it is worthwhile looking back as well as forward.

Pre-ICO, Viberate was an existing company with an active user base that had already garnered investment from several sources. The company started in 2016 as a registry of DJs. By mid-2017 after the second round of venture funding worth USD $440k, Viberate 2.0 launched. This was an all-genre music database with over 120k entries, including social media profile data and analytics, and live event booking information.

Subsequently, the ICO launched in mid-2017 with a separate website to promote the campaign. It sold out, raising more than $10m in funds.

The Viberate Token Homepage

2017 also saw the launch of the booking agency and event organizer profiles. Affiliate relationships with ticketing services were also established, allowing fans to book tickets through the platform with third parties such as Ticketmaster.

The future outlook includes the launch of the digital ticket booking platform, and the musician/venue matchmaking and booking functionality

About Viberate Crypto – Team and Company

The company was founded in 2016 by three Slovenian friends and passionate music enthusiasts. Unlike many blockchain projects, none of the founding team are blockchain developers. Founder and ambassador Uroš Umek is an award-winning Slovenian DJ and dance music composer. Known as DJ Umek, he is credited with kickstarting the techno music scene in Slovenia. He has been active as a musician since 1993.

DJ Umeks minimalist homepage

The founding team were originally friends but subsequently came together in business when Umek asked his friends to be his music managers. After creating their own music management company, the three had the idea to start an IMDb-style listing site for DJs. So Viberate began life as a simple directory offering ratings of a few thousand DJ’s.

The two founders besides Umek are Vasja Veber and Matej Gregorcic. Veber is COO and has a background in digital marketing and event management. Viberate CEO Gregorcic also co-founded Eligma, which is a blockchain and AI commerce platform.

Additionally, the technical blockchain team comprises Slovenian developers Bostjan Zakelj, Rok Bavec, and Rok Babic.

Although other projects touch on the music industry, Viberate crypto seems to be a unique operator in the field of live music. Other projects such as Soundcoin and Musichain focus on the management of royalty payments. Ceek is another project looking to the music industry, but to monetize live performances through VR broadcasts.

The company has a media partnership with Mixmag, the biggest dance music publication in the sector.

Trading View

Like most altcoins, the VIB tokens price fluctuations have mirrored those of Bitcoin and the other major crypto tokens. The price was therefore at its highest during December and January, but dropped off in February and has been struggling to recover ever since then. This is despite having added the booking agency and event organizer profile functionality since the ICO.

Future developments coming up in 2018 and 2019 include the launch of the apps that will allow bookings through the platform and payment of services with cryptocurrency. These developments may prove to have a positive impact on the token value.

Where can you buy it?

You can exchange VIB tokens with 80 other cryptocurrencies via Changelly or Binance. If you wish to purchase with fiat, then Changelly also allows you to buy Bitcoin or Ether with a credit card. Sign up and create an account, then make your BTC or ETH purchase using your credit card. Once you have your newly acquired cryptocurrency in your account, you can exchange it into VIB tokens also using Changelly.

You can store VIB tokens in any ERC20 compatible wallet.

Conclusion

Viberate has an incredibly ambitious business model. Yes, it is true that the company holds the advantage of being the first mover and currently the only player in the live music game. However, there could be some risk in trying to be all things to all people in a sector that has such a well-worn business model.

That said, Viberate crypto has already garnered more than one round of seed funding, and the team certainly have great form in the music industry. Ticket sales for live performances is certainly an area that could benefit from additional transparency and buyer protection, given the state of the market today.

It will surely be interesting to watch the progress of Viberate over the next few years. Its goal of being the only fully integrated and decentralized B2B/B2C marketplace for live music is stratospheric but motivated by genuine passion. Above all, passion is a great place to start.