What was nina for?

Last week's news that nina protocol is shutting down in July was sad but ultimately unsurprising. I always felt that the application's cultural visibility far extended it's actual impact. There will be a lasting legacy for sure, I have no doubt that when we look back at the early 20s in 5-10 years there will be a not insignificant subset of music that can be dubbed "ninacore," inclusive of microgenres such as midwest ambient, laptop twee, and the company's own "cloud rock" label. But the reach of this stuff is small in the grand scheme of things and largely restricted to coastal elite hot spots such as LA, New York, and London. Hyper-visibility among the tapped-in does not a successful app make.

The success of an app is ultimately determined by its quality as a product, and this was always an area I found nina to be sorely lacking. Frankly, it just didn't meet the functionality threshold you'd expect of any app made 15 years into the streaming era. Regardless of if you were on web or mobile, nina was consistently clunky and slow; I was almost never logged in by default when I opened it, search could take forever to load, there was a decent chance that playback would fail when wanted to listen to something, and by the end you couldn't even change the email you're account was tied to. Despite all of these core issues, nina continued to deliver new features that were exciting and innovative (in-app posting, community revenue sharing), but never stood a chance at gaining traction due to the shoddy foundation they were built upon. Even if your music taste is great, people won't listen to it if they can't easily access it.

Which brings me to another point, if the app was clunky and made it difficult to take the actions necessary of an online music marketplace (namely streaming and purchasing) then what was its purpose? Who was it serving? Did any of the artists on the platform receive meaningful revenue from the platform? Did it help sustain any careers, as Bandcamp has? Granted, it was around for a much shorter period of time, but from what I could tell, most of the activity on nina happened around streaming, which was not a revenue generating activity. So it was basically pre-monetized Soundcloud for weird indie and electronica. Not the worst thing in the world, but not ultimately what musicians need nowadays, which is material financial uplift.

I can appreciate that nina's commitment to music as an art form, and not just another piece of content, helped bring visibility to a number of artists tinkering at the edges of the audial world. Also, their commitment to the written word, making blogging and editorial core components of their product and marketing strategies, was inspiring as a writer. But it doesn't appear that either made much of a difference. I'm sure there will be other music apps which follow in its wake and stand on its shoulders, which is a good thing! Though I would implore the people helming those endeavors to be more pragmatic and utilitarian when it comes to execution. Utopian visions will not just work because we want them to, there are real world constraints we must consider and engineer ourselves out of when working towards a better future.

With all that in mind, I'd like to give a quick plug to another music marketplace, Subvert, which launched to out of private alpha back on May 12. Subvert is a cooperatively owned Bandcamp alternative that seeks to make artist, labels, and patrons co-owners of the platform. The project is supporting artists by not only offering them a more favorable deal on the goods they sell (like nina, 100% of sales go to the artist, but patrons then have the option to tip Subvert during checkout) but also by giving them a vested financial interest in the success of the platform they're selling on. Of all the cooperative endeavors I saw explode out of the web3 era, Subvert, which is actually definitively *not* web3, is the one I've seen make the most good on the promise of collective building and benefit. I encourage any artist who sold their music on nina, or currently sells their music on Bandcamp, to also consider listing on Subvert.