Sound.xyz

Sound.xyz (also referred to as Sound) was a New York City-based, web3-native music platform that let musicians release songs as NFTs that fans could stream for free and "collect" by purchasing. Artists set their own prices and terms, retained 100% of master and publishing rights, received payouts described by the company as instant, and could split revenue among collaborators. Each release was issued as a numbered NFT, with earlier supporters receiving lower numbers, a mechanic intended to reward early discovery and let collectors demonstrate onchain that they backed an artist before wider recognition. Music files were stored using IPFS, and NFTs could be minted on Ethereum mainnet and the Optimism layer-2 network.

Platform features described in secondary coverage included no listing fee, a 10% royalty cap on secondary sales, aggregation of music NFT listings from OpenSea, X2Y2 and LooksRare, bulk purchasing, timestamped "ownership comments" that a new owner could overwrite, a randomly placed "golden egg" that upgraded an NFT to a 1/1 edition with special artwork, listening before collecting, and a 5% curator reward paid to collectors whose playlists or referral links led to a mint. Fans could sign up with an email address and pay with a bank card. The company also described listener-level data for artists, custom supporter perks, a viral chart driven by user activity, and work on an artist-fan messaging system.

Sound.xyz operated in closed beta with an invited roster before opening to all artists in July 2023. The platform was taken offline on January 16, 2026; the team stated that maintaining legacy infrastructure divided its focus from a successor product, Vault (vault.fm). Collected items remain onchain, with music and metadata on decentralized storage and collections viewable through wallets on marketplaces such as OpenSea, and artists can continue claiming remaining funds from the contract via Splits.

Founding story

David Greenstein began his career in music and technology with an internship at Atlantic Records and was previously a product manager at the streaming service Pandora. He said he repeatedly encountered two recurring industry questions — how to help artists reach as many people as possible and how to help them make money from their music — and built Sound as an answer, aiming for the platform to become "the homepage of music discovery." Secondary coverage names David Greenstein, Vignesh Hirudayakanth and Matt Masurka as co-founders, dating the company's founding to 2021.

Business model

Sound operated a platform on which artists uploaded music and released it as NFTs at prices they set, with fans purchasing ("collecting") editions while streaming remained free. Artists retained 100% of master and publishing rights, received payouts routed onchain, and could configure collaborator splits. Sources state the platform launched with a 0% listing fee and applied a 10% royalty cap on secondary sales; a 5% curator reward was paid to collectors who drove mints via playlists or referral links.

Sources do not state how Sound.xyz generated revenue for itself; they describe a 0% listing fee for artists, a 10% cap on secondary-sale royalties, and a 5% curator commission paid to referring collectors, plus a stated per-transaction cost to collectors of 0.0007 ETH as of July 7, 2023.

Traction

Over roughly 12–18 months of closed beta preceding July 2023, about 500 invited artists uploaded approximately 1,600 songs, and the platform paid out or generated $5.5 million for those artists. The CEO said he expected a song on the platform to reach one million sales in the coming months. The platform later ceased operations in January 2026.

Latest developments

Sound.xyz went offline on January 16, 2026. The company said the decision reflected a need to focus fully on Vault (vault.fm), a new product built around artist independence, and invited artists who had released on Sound to join a Vault beta. Collectors' holdings remain onchain and artists can still claim outstanding funds from the contract through Splits using a published withdrawal guide.