When you buy a song on iTunes, you’re only buying the right to listen to that song. One of the most compelling aspects of using blockchain and NFT for the music industry is the built-in provenance options. Going on-chain not only enables innovative financing, ownership and licensing models, but also offers the opportunity for artists to connect with their fan communities in new ways. Decent is a no-code infrastructure platform and SDK that empowers the music industry and artists to build rich web3 applications with little effort and expertise. Creator HQ is the company’s flagship product that enables creators and developers alike to build NFTS and smart contracts on any EMV-compliant chain. The platform is open source and offers integrations to streamline the pre- and post-minting process, including AI-powered NFT image generation using DALL-E, dynamic token pricing, profitable tokens, treasury-backed tokens, and staking. Founded by a former banker and current artist, the platform has been conceived to enable artists to effortlessly exercise ownership and copyright rights, while democratizing monetization and fan engagement, giving musicians the flexibility to focus on creating without worrying about the business end.

AlleyClock caught up with Decent’s co-CEO charlie durbin to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, the recent funding round and much, much more…

Who were your investors and how much did they raise?
We raised a seed round of $3.5M led by Archetype, Y Combinator (YC W22), Circle Ventures, Palm Tree Crypto, Road Capital, Stateless VC, AngelDAO, Coinlist, OrangeDAO, Soma CapitalY MAGIC background featuring Ilya Fushman, Kleiner Perkins, Cooper Turley, Coop Records, Ian Lapham, Uniswap, Eleni Steinman, Loop Crypto, Nick Pappageorge, above. Delphi Digital, Sapphire Ventures, Rico Mallozzi, and a handful of others.

Tell us about the product or service that Decent offers.
Decent has a codeless app and SDK that makes it easy for anyone to build innovative web3 apps and NFT releases.

What inspired the start of Decent?
our co-founder xander-carlson is a full-time artist (signed to Sony’s Palm Tree Records) and his journey through the music industry from independent artist to signed label and tours with Kygo and the Palm Tree Crew.
Our vision was also informed by my time in investment banking, where I worked on M&A for companies in the music industry and looked at the financial/analytical side of the market. Namely, that the financial condition of artists has remained restricted and unchanged over the years despite the exponential growth in each artist’s fan base.

How is Decent different?
We believe that friendly UX tools will drive widespread adoption of crypto rails, allowing creators and developers to monetize their work autonomously. This is particularly important in historically controlled industries where creators earn as a derivative of the platforms. To that end, we believe our infrastructure is the core product, and we pride ourselves on developing new primitives that take advantage of the innovations and unique properties of blockchain development.
The music industry needs new monetization channels for artists, which requires new tools. New monetizable apps rely on permissionless access to and development with music (note: access not free, access at will only) with automatic and transparent funding flow. We believe that our infrastructure is the foundation for rapid and composed innovation in the music industry. To speed up adoption, we built a real full implementation, offering open source smart contracts, a JavaScript SDK wrapper so developers can implement features without knowing Solidity, and a no-code app creators can use: Decent Creator HQ.
At the product level – we are the only full stack cross chain NFT creation product. Other differentiators:
powered by a patented cross-chain indexer

• we have the most exclusive smart contracts available
• we work with independent creators/developers
• larger companies for custom implementations

has a number of unique applications that share summary user information and payout rails. We believe it is very important to avoid audience fragmentation despite allowing a large number of unique applications.

What market is Decent targeting and how big is it?

All of our tools are based on NFTs, so the NFT market is arguably the closest competition – ~$21 billion today growing at a CAGR of 34%.
# is a bit outdated here, but it logged $160 million in NFT music sales. Fastest growing/best performing sub-sector through bear market so assume your percentage of total NFT sales will grow significantly to ~1-5% of market (full estimate but our working assumption). He believes that music NFTs are a billion dollar market of which we are able to capture a significant share due to a differentiated approach and best-in-class tools.

What is your business model?

We are ready to start charging for premium SDKs + API endpoints + premium features at HQ + a fee for sales through HQ. The protocol will likely remain free for developers to use and contribute to, and anything we see as a consumer or easily replicable feature will also remain free.

How are you preparing for a possible economic slowdown?

We have been very conservative in hiring to maximize track. The strategy is to quietly win the market and the mind share of market participants and be well positioned to really capitalize on that work in the next bull cycle.

How was the financing process?

We were part of YC’s W22 cohort, so luckily we were able to ramp up in a relatively structured process using demo day as a catalyst for investor interest. I think everyone has a different experience, but we were very lucky that Archetype committed to leading the round early on and we were able to complete a great round with his help.

What are the biggest challenges you faced raising capital?

Skepticism about the music market, new mechanisms and a more financial approach. The popular narrative w. NFTs were and still are by far the most interesting as a new way of expressing patronage. We believe that NFTs can have much more interesting implementations; however, we still believe that we bear the burden of proof for that thesis.

What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?

The investors we ended up going with were similarly believers in the theses outlined above. We also got along very well on a personal level with them and they believed in our team, for which we are grateful.

What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?

We’d like to see 100 apps built using the Decent protocol.

What advice can you offer to New York companies that don’t have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?

Submit cool feature hacky MVPs to quickly validate or remove assumptions. It will also allow you to show demonstrable traction for things that stick. Also, in web3 in particular, many protocols (including ours!) have grants for developers and content producers; these can be a great way to start a project.

Submit cool feature hacky MVPs to quickly validate or remove assumptions. It will also allow you to show demonstrable traction for things that stick. Also, in web3 in particular, many protocols (including ours!) have grants for developers and content producers; these can be a great way to start a project.

Where do you see the company heading now in the short term?

Focus on cross-chain middleware and novel smart contracts to solve scalability, improve developer experiences through incremental enhancements to the SDK, and empower creators by showcasing innovations at HQ.

What is your favorite coffee shop or place in the city to hold a meeting?

Union Square news bar.

You are seconds away from signing up for the most popular list in technology!

sign up today