Making a Scene Presents – What is a Music DAO? How to Start or Join One and Take Control of Your Career

If you’re an independent musician, chances are you’ve felt that nagging frustration: the music industry is built to keep power in the hands of labels, managers, and big platforms. They control the money, the exposure, and too often, the rights to your music. For decades, artists have been left fighting over scraps while corporations cash in.

But what if you didn’t have to play that game anymore? What if you could gather your fans and collaborators into a community where everyone contributes, everyone benefits, and the rules are clear from day one? That’s the promise of a Music DAO.

Don’t worry if the word sounds like alphabet soup. By the end of this article, you’ll not only know what a Music DAO is—you’ll also know how to join one, how to start one, and most importantly, how it can completely change the way you run your career.

First Things First: What on Earth is a DAO?

DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. That’s a mouthful, but the idea is surprisingly simple once you strip away the jargon.

A DAO is basically a digital community that runs itself through transparent rules written into code (called smart contracts). Instead of a manager or label executive making the final call, decisions are made by the members of the community—people like you, your fans, and your collaborators. Money and decisions flow through a shared wallet that everyone can see, so there’s no shady accounting.

Think of it like this: you and your fans create a digital co-op. Every person who joins gets some form of membership—maybe it’s a token, maybe it’s an NFT, maybe it’s both. Those memberships give people voting power and access to decisions. Do we spend money on vinyl pressing or on a music video? Do we fund a tour or invest in better recording gear? Instead of one person calling the shots, the community votes and the majority wins.

That’s a DAO in action. And when you wrap this idea around music, you get a Music DAO—a structure where artists and fans work together to create, fund, and grow music projects without middlemen.

Why Should Musicians Care About DAOs?

Here’s the big reason: DAOs put power back in your hands.

For too long, labels have dangled funding in front of musicians like a carrot on a stick. They’ll give you money for recording and promotion, but only if you give up your masters or a chunk of your publishing. Fans, meanwhile, have mostly been stuck as passive listeners—they buy, they stream, maybe they come to a show, but they rarely get to play an active role in shaping your career.

A Music DAO flips this on its head. With a DAO, you can raise money directly from your community. Instead of signing away your rights to a label, you create tokens or NFTs that let fans buy into your career. Those tokens can give them perks—access to private chats, voting rights on projects, or even a share in revenue. Now your fans aren’t just listeners; they’re stakeholders. And because all the decisions and money flows happen on the blockchain, everything is transparent. No hidden contracts. No secret cuts.

This matters because it creates a tighter bond between you and your audience. Your fans stop being customers and start being collaborators. They become invested in your success—not just emotionally, but financially too. That’s powerful.

Real-World Music DAOs You Can Look At

Before diving into how to build one yourself, it helps to see some examples that are already up and running.

There’s Good Karma Records DAO, and Dreams Never Die which acts like a community-run record labels. Token holders there get to help decide which artists to sign and what projects to fund. Platforms like Zora have also built DAOs where creators can mint, share, and monetize art—including music.

Spawning (Holly Herndon): The creative endeavor of musician and artist Holly Herndon, Spawning remains an active and influential project. In 2025, Herndon has released new music connected to her “Spawn” AI, which is a core component of the project. Spawning is also recognized as an organization focused on developing tools for AI and artistic consent, and is notably backed by the investment DAO, NOISE DAO.

Hume: Functioning as a web3 record label, Hume is actively creating “metastars” – virtual artists with their own music and narratives. The project continues to build out its roster and engage its community in the creative direction of its virtual artists.

These aren’t small experiments. They’re proof that artists can use DAOs right now, not five years in the future.

How to Join a Music DAO

Let’s say you’re not ready to start your own DAO yet—you just want to dip your toes in. Joining an existing DAO is the best first step.

Here’s how it usually goes:

The first thing you’ll need is a digital wallet. Think of this like your Web3 bank account. The two most beginner-friendly options are MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet. Once you’ve set one up, you’ll need to add some cryptocurrency—usually Ethereum (ETH) or Polygon (MATIC). You can buy these through exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken, and then transfer them into your wallet.

Now that you have your wallet set up and funded, it’s time to explore. There are directories like DAOhaus where you can browse different DAOs, or Snapshot, which is where most DAOs hold their community votes. Some DAOs also use platforms like Guild.xyz to manage membership.

When you find a DAO you like, you’ll usually buy or claim a token to join. From there, you’ll be able to participate in votes, contribute ideas, and hang out in the community spaces (usually on Discord). It’s like joining a band, but on a global scale.

How to Start Your Own Music DAO

Now let’s talk about launching your own DAO. This can sound intimidating, but it’s actually more doable than you think thanks to platforms that handle most of the heavy lifting.

The first step is deciding what your DAO is for. Every great DAO has a clear purpose. Do you want to fund your next album? Do you want your fans to vote on setlists? Do you want to build a community label where supporters help discover new artists? Your mission is the foundation of everything else.

Once you’ve got that nailed down, you’ll need the right tools. Platforms like Aragon, Tally, or DAOhaus let you spin up a DAO without needing to know how to code. If you want to issue tokens for your fans, tools like Coinvise or Zora make it easy to create your own tokens or NFTs. For gating access to fan communities—say, a private Discord—Collab.Land is the go-to.

Here’s how it could look in practice: you launch a token through Coinvise, which becomes the membership pass for your DAO. You use Aragon to create the DAO structure and set up rules for voting. You then open a Discord server where fans who hold your token get exclusive access. You hook it up with Collab.Land so the system automatically checks who’s holding your token before letting them in. When you need to make a big decision—like whether to fund vinyl pressing—you set up a vote on Snapshot, and everyone with tokens gets to cast their vote.

The money side of things is handled through the DAO’s shared wallet. You can fund this treasury by selling tokens or NFTs, or by directing revenue from your shows, merch, or streaming into it. Because the wallet is public, everyone can see how much money is in it and where it’s going. That kind of transparency builds huge trust with fans.

The Resources You’ll Actually Need

To pull this off, here’s what you’ll want in your toolkit:

• A wallet like MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet.

• An exchange account with Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken to buy crypto.

• A DAO platform like Aragon, DAOhaus, or Tally.

• A token/NFT creation tool like Coinvise, Zora, or Manifold.

• A governance/voting platform like Snapshot.

• A fan community hub like Discord, connected with Collab.Land or Guild.xyz.

• Music-focused Web3 platforms like Audius, Catalog, Sound.xyz, or Royal.io to distribute your music and tie it into your DAO.

It might look like a long list, but each of these platforms is designed to be user-friendly. You don’t have to be a developer—you just need to be curious and willing to experiment.

Why This is Bigger Than Just Tech

At the heart of it, DAOs aren’t really about crypto or blockchains. They’re about power. They’re about rewriting the rules of the music industry so that artists and fans share control instead of handing it over to corporations.

When you launch a Music DAO, you’re not just setting up some digital gimmick. You’re creating a space where your community has a real say. Fans get to feel like they’re part of the journey instead of just watching from the sidelines. You get to fund your projects without selling your soul to a label. And together, you create something that feels bigger than one artist—it feels like a movement.

Wrapping It Up

So here’s the bottom line: DAOs are one of the most exciting tools available to musicians today. They give you a way to raise money, engage your fans, and stay in control of your music. You can start small by joining an existing DAO, or you can take the plunge and launch your own with the help of beginner-friendly platforms.

The traditional music industry has never been designed to serve independent artists. But DAOs are. They let you and your fans decide the future together, out in the open, without middlemen.

If you’ve ever dreamed of running your career on your own terms, this is the moment. Music DAOs aren’t some far-off idea—they’re here, they’re growing, and they’re waiting for artists like you to take the leap.

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