Looking at music on Steemit, what you see now is a mirage.
It’s a nice mirage. At the moment, we’ve got tons of artists from newbies to professionals sharing their work, interacting and collaborating, earning decent money in the process.
Some artists, especially new ones with support from Curie, earn $100+ on their best posts. Phone videos of acoustic performances can generate these kinds of rewards a few times a week, creating an incredible new income stream!
Behind the Mirage
The music ecosystem on Steemit will look nothing like this in the future.
It’s important to think about all blockchain projects in a 24 month window and beyond. This technology is evolving rapidly.
It’s not algebra, it’s calculus. The ecosystem is in constant flux.
With that said, let’s compare how musicians and listeners interact on Steemit today with what will occur in 24 months.
Now vs. The Future
The music community on Steemit is strong right now despite a lack of good tools.
Open Mic Project
The Open Mic project, run by 
Steemit's layout is woefully inadequate for the Open Mic project. There is no good way to poll people for the winners - using upvotes on comments is a crude method. There’s no good way to listen to submissions, although Luzcyper makes an effort by compiling all entries into each week’s thread.
Imagine a Steem project 24 months from now. What if you went to “steemitopenmic.com", submitted your video through a form there, and then could click on the “Listen” page to hear and vote for entries from other users?
What if it was easy to sort through entries based on tags: Original, Cover, Acoustic, Full Band, Instrumental, and so on. What if you could get notifications for your favorite artists, specifically for the open mic submission posts?
You see what I’m saying? The current layout is awkward, whereas a few well designed apps could change everything.
Music Distribution
Music distribution is an even more extreme scenario. Right now if you want to release music “On Steem”, all you can do is make a post about your new song.
You can’t even upload it directly to the blockchain. You have to upload your track onto YouTube or Soundcloud and embed it… blech! Talk about centralized - this is a huge problem, when you rely on an unstable third-party service to enable your decentralized blockchain platform.
The future is remarkably easy to imagine: Spotify on Steem. Just a simple streaming service that works fast and well and pays via Steem royalties.
It could be as simple as this: There’s a default royalty, perhaps the Steem equivalent of one American cent per listen. You load Steem into the app and it stores it in a “wallet” which automatically depletes over time.
Artists would receive all of this money, or at least the lion’s share.
If I could navigate the library of Bandcamp or Soundcloud, but pay my way via Steem / SBD payments and even upvotes (as 
It will funnel money back into the hands of musicians, away from bloated music industry companies. It will create a larger number of financially independent musicians - people who can learn a living creating art and entertaining other people, WITHOUT signing away all their freedoms or rights.
Longer term, this reduces advertiser influence in art by reducing the amount of ad money that artists need to take. They’ll be more independent, more free - so on a huge picture scale, this makes the world a healthier and happier place.
The Future is Not Now
None of this amazing stuff is happening yet. We’re only at the very beginning of our Steem journey.
Everything we do as musicians on the blockchain now is being hacked together via a clunky online interface. We’re trying to build businesses on the blockchain through a web forum. It’s going to be awkward.
In the future, when the best aspects of Soundcloud, Spotify, and Bandcamp are combined on a Steem-powered service… there will be Steem-based management companies, Steem-powered distribution networks… Rad shit is going to happen.
Right now, it's like a small community sharing songs with each other. It's fun and I like it a lot. In the future, though, imagine it like an agency of the world's greatest artists, performing in sold-out arenas and at huge festivals. That's what Steemit looks like in 3-5 years.
Stay Tuned
For now, the only option we have is to contribute and try to do our part to move towards this bright future.
Even if you have no technical inclinations, just making the best music you can and blogging about it here on Steemit is a great way to help.
What do you think? Do you see a revolution around the corner for musicians on Steemit?
