Snapmuse.io is a new platform designed to help content creators monetize their audience and create a loyal community — think Patreon meets non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain. The platform has just launched on the Polygon (MATIC-USD) blockchain, an alternative blockchain to Ethereum (ETH-USD) with much cheaper fees. Mexican YouTube star Mariana Avila is the first creator to work with the platform, sharing the news with her 30 million+ followers across YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms, with a very strong community in Mexico and the LatAm region.
Snapmuse is a crypto-enabled monetization platform for content creators of all kinds, fusing the concept behind Patreon with NFT drops and crypto-based reward systems. Creators can launch their Snapmuse community by offering a CreatorPass NFT drop, which is a sale of some number of NFTs to loyal fans of the creators. The NFT is used to unlock access to special perks and rewards, including exclusive content or other gifts. For the creators, the NFT can be a good way to quickly monetize their audience from the proceeds of the initial sale, which can be tied to particular initiatives that require raising money.
Snapmuse’s launch with Mariana Avila kicked off on April 29th, with her offering her fans a custom NFT gift when registering on the website. For this promotion, the NFTs are free to mint. Fans who sign up and complete the registration process can claim the gift, which grants them access to an online event where they can watch the premiere of Mariana’s new music video alongside her on May 4th.
NFTs and Crypto for Deeper Fan Engagement
The goal of using NFTs for content creators is to enable a deeper level of engagement with fans. As a technology, NFTs can be used as a “key pass” for anything involving blockchain or non-blockchain use cases. For example, they could be used to represent tickets or as “swag” tokens to prove that their owner participated in a particular event.
Snapmuse’s unique allure is that the NFTs could be used in conjunction with its native token SMX to create gamification schemes to reward engagement and distribute unique content. For example, fans could lock some tokens for a certain period of time to get a piece of exclusive content, or they could receive SMX rewards for engaging with the creator’s posts.
The platform’s trying to bring crypto to a mainstream audience, so the complexity of setting up wallets to buy or mint NFTs can be hidden with a Google account integration, coupled with debit card purchase support, to avoid the initial setup costs of the wallet.
Empowering Creators with Unbiased Crypto Payments
While it may seem somewhat far-fetched at first, there is a clear use case for crypto in the fan-creator relationship. Classic payment providers will often threaten to cease service for platforms focused on sexual content, such as OnlyFans, who, in the absence of other realistic options, tend to back down and compromise on their business model. While everyone will have different opinions and whether this sort of activity should be encouraged or discouraged, it is a sign of the times that Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) have become “moral police” enforcers.
Neutral payment rails with crypto can help create truly neutral grounds for content creators of all types. While Snapmuse isn’t currently focusing on the OnlyFans niche, instead targeting a broader set of social media influencers and content creators, crypto can help give the entire industry a new breath of fresh air. Incentivization and gamification have been used to great success in other crypto applications, and these, too, can be quite useful to give more tools to creators to interact with their audiences.
Finally, most centralized platforms will usually take a large cut (20%) of the total proceeds, which is a significant amount of revenue trickling to a middleman.
Moris Alhale, CEO of Snapmuse.io, explained the motivation behind creating the platform: “After working with creators for years, we learned the difficulties creators face when trying to get access to funding to grow their channels and connect with their communities in a more personal way. So we decided to create Snapmuse.io to help them overcome that challenge.”
Platforms like Snapmuse are trying to bring together creators, collectors, and fans, giving the former more control over their relationship with fans. More and more creators are starting to be fully crowd-funded as they realize that it’s difficult to find sponsorships that are meaningful to their fans. If projects like Snapmuse gain traction, we could see a major shift in the balance between creators and the centralized platforms that gain the most from their hard work.
