neume is an open source, socially scalable, project to index all activity within the emerging Web3 Music industry. The neume handbook details the method on which this organisation operates, enabling contributors to quickly get up to speed and add value.
neume is an open source project funded and supported by HIFI Labs.
Web3 Music has developed significantly since the early days of 2015/16. Intial ideas have become relatively successful experiments attracting c.$90m in primary sales of music NFTs in 2021. Social tokens are starting to power artist owned universes for their fans,such as racOS.
However, challenges remain. Specifically in:
- Normalising differing approaches to the definition of NFTs, from metadata through to type of NFT, be it a 1:1, series, or something different all together
- Identity and mapping accross linked accounts is currently unsolved as a area of development, though there are significant promising projects, ranging from self-sovereign identity solutions, such as disco.xyz, through to ambitions towards a "soul-bound" decentralised society
- Complex rights and permissions are currently relatively ignored from an on-chain perspective, with resolution occuring offchain (if at all). There has been a push towards CC0 as a proposed solution for the arts in Web3, however, it's likely that a more nuanced solution is required for wider adoption.
The current state of art constrains developers that are seeking to build experiences on top of these new primatives:
- Licensing and understanding which NFTs are associated with music that can be served to users is currently extremely challeging and may result in litigation risk
- On-boarding new artists is unscalable, requiring concerted human effort
- Providing analysis to directly compare across NFT platforms is difficult without normalisation
neume is solving these challenges through social scalability by facilitating an implementation process that seeds and builds the momentum of decentralised contribution.
We believe that neume will be part of the solution to unlock the next phase of growth of the Web3 Music industry by providing open infrastructure that brings scale benefits to experimentation.
Contribution to neume can be defined across a number of categories:
- Community discussion within the relevent neume channels on the HIFI Discord
- Protocol Improvement proposals through the neuIP process, as defined in neuIP-1
- Open Source Development, through the process detailed below, focussed on defined Tasks
Entities wishing to contribute to neume should start their engagement as a Contributor, as defined within neume Roles & Responsibilities.
To start getting paid for your work on neume you will need to create a one page proposal outlining the work you intend to do, the amount of time it will take you and your hourly rate in USD. The proposal should be sent to danfowler#8104 on Discord for approval.
All work will be paid retroactively in USDC or USD, either in stages, upon partial completion of your project, or in full upon completion.
If you intend to incur outside expenditure for your project that you wish to be reimbursed for, this will need to be estimated and the amount approved in advance. A receipt for expenditure will need to be provided in order to receive reimbursements.
In some instances you will have clear deliverables as set by the neume team (e.g. tasks or chunks of work that the neume team have already provided an outline for). When this is the case, your proposal should outline how you intend to achieve these outcomes and the amount of time you need to complete them. We have an Open Task Board where issues can be viewed here.
In other instances, where you will be proposing something new, we recommend discussing your ideas and/or getting feedback from the neume team on the neume section within the HIFI Labs Discord first. This will help to ensure your intentions and the needs of the neume project are aligned.
Your proposal should be a short, concise (roughly 1 page) summary of the work you intend to do and the impact &/or reasons why the work you are proposing will be valuable to neume.
- Try to keep proposals targeted and specific. Upon successful completion of one proposal you can always submit a second
- Try to break down larger chunks of work into smaller, manageable pieces which add value
- Every proposal, once complete, should have added value to neume in some way
- If the proposal does not add enough value relative to the cost it will not be funded; this is to ensure we have a positive ROI for all proposals approved
- Proposals with a large scope and open ended deliverables are unlikely to be funded
Once you have broken down your deliverables into appropriately sized chunks, and clearly summarised the work &/or value you intend to provide it should be relatively easy to estimate how much time you will need to complete the task.
Add an estimate to each task and calculate the overall time estimate. This, along with your hourly rate will be used to calculate the total cost of your proposal. This total cost and your proposed deliverables will need to be approved before you start working.
Once approved, this amount (total cost) will be set aside for you to complete your deliverables.
Once you have received approval for your project and begin working, it’s important to keep track of the time you spend. If at any stage it’s looking like you will need to adjust your estimates, or change direction from the original plan, please check in with the team for further approvals before going ahead and committing extra hours.
Any additional hours/work you do that wasn’t approved will not automatically be funded. We know that things change as you get deeper into a project and sometimes other factors outside your control will impact your deliverables. That’s ok, but what is important is that you communicate these changes clearly with the team as and when they arise.
If your proposal has been approved, you have completed your tasks to the agreed standard and you now wish to get paid, please create an invoice and send it to dan@ hifilabs.co , referencing the work that has been done.
Note, as HIFI Labs is a company based in the US, you will be required to send over either a W-9 (US citizen) or W-8BEN (non-US cisizen) form with your first invoice.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Allow for up to 14 days for your invoice to be paid.
Each grant request must include the details below:
- Email address
- Invoice date
- Your country
- Description of payment reason
- Payment amount (USDC or USD)
- Payment details - crypto-wallet address
- Please address the invoice to: HIFI Labs, 595 Pacific Ave, San Fransisco, CA 94133, USA
We can't guarantee there will always be funding available for proposals so the best thing to do is jump on Discord and get to know more about the project, and the team. Any requests for proposals will viewable on the Open Task Board.