Grey Matter is a community for sharing and discovering music, together.

It’s a social network for music where:

• music can be played and shared from wherever you stream
• moments of discovery form the building blocks for community and meaningful artist connections

Our mission is to connect people through music and build enduring value for those who make it.

Grey Matter is a working product and a work in progress. Today, we have an open beta – here’s the tl;dr:

• Share music from Apple Music or Spotify
• Express your connection with music through colorful GIFs, emojis, and stories
• Discover new songs from humans—not algorithms—and save them to playlists
• Join a Crew—or create your own—and connect through the music you love

Because music is connective but lacks a dedicated social space…

Streaming platforms aren’t social spaces. Today, to gather around music and engage more deeply, we have to use huge social platforms that are detached from the music itself.

But those social platforms aren’t going to make structural decisions to benefit music communities – their scopes are too broad.

As a result, people aren’t finding one another and that’s a problem:

• Only 1% of artists are making a living through streaming.
• Artists are reaching 2% of their fans on social platforms.

Because discovery is where the magic happens, and who we discover music from can be as impactful as the music itself.

Because acts of discovery are undervalued…

• Discovering a transcendent song is magical, but streaming platforms don’t correctly value that magic – you can’t do much more than save a song to a playlist. We’re honing in on discovery for the same reason people buy tee-shirts after a show: to keep feeling that magic, to feel part of the community you’ve just shared an experience with, and to signal to other people that you’re part of the tribe.

Because decentralized internet technology (often called web3) is enabling a reality where software serves our relationships, not owns them…

• It’s proving that people are willing to pay to support music and artists they care about. But today that means engaging with significantly smaller catalogs in more complicated and more expensive ways – we need to build a bridge.

Because more music is being released than ever before. We need human selectors and curators more than ever!

• Prioritizing human connection. Share and discover music with human beings – all from streaming platforms you already use.
• Building around “Expressions,” the vehicle for sharing and discovering music. They are vibrant points of interaction for discovering music and connecting with people.
• Verifying and cultivating acts of discovery. The moment of discovery is the perfect building block for connection – and for directing value to the people who made the song and helped you find it.

Today, it's for people:

• tired of Discover Weekly types that keep you in your listening bubble.
• looking for more human forms of discovery that are as convenient as a streaming platform.
• interested in a deeper connection with music – and with other people through that music – than Instagram can offer.

And tomorrow? That's where things really get interesting...

for casual music lovers...

• Imagine a music player that can play from any streaming source that has constantly fresh feeds of new tracks shared by people and communities you trust.
• Imagine having private and public spaces to share music with your friends and family – and not having to hassle with sharing Spotify links to Apple Music friends (and vice versa). 

for curators...

• Imagine a dedicated platform for building music influence, where you can actually earn money for discovering and elevating great music.

for artists...

• Imagine a platform where you can:
• see and connect with the people sharing your music
• promote directly to fans with the knowledge that the content will be seen and not buried by an algorithm
• activate your community to share your music, make connections to partners, and help you throw events
• access unique insights gathered from the way people interact with your music – e.g. word association, comments, hashtags, colors, GIFs, and locations
• opt in for partnership/outreach from labels, brands, venues, festivals, and radio stations
• earn passive revenue
• vote on key community and product decisions 

For any music community – from labels to radio stations to music festivals to record stores to brick & mortar shops

Grey Matter gives people a reason to keep the conversation going even after they left your party. Imagine:

• discovering artists through their communities
• sharing, tracking, and promoting your music together
• opting in for partnerships with artists – or partnering with other communities

As we increasingly move to digital spaces and trans-act in online economies, it’s essential that we don’t fall into habits of isolated consumption – lest we forget there are human beings on both ends of every song: the people who make it and the people who listen to it, support it, and amplify it.

The Crate Coalition is made up of people who echo this belief. 

• The Crate Coalition is a tangential community of music heads who believe in a more interdependent music ecosystem. 
• We organize in digital and physical spaces, honoring curators and cratediggers through content, events, and a shared love for music sharing and discovery. 
• Interested? Read more here and join us in Discord.