1) Let’s welcome UMC again to our community. Can you give an introduction of yourself? Tell us who are your core members and what they are doing for the project.
Hello! My name is Wally Callerio I am the Creator and CEO of Echo Underground LL. I have over 25 years as an independent artist, label owner as well started one of the first dance music sales sites on the internet that ran from 2003 to 2009 called Digibag.com. The rest of my Team consist of the best and brightest within their fields.
Adriana Callerio is my sister who also works at Ingram Micro a fortune 500 technology company as a PMO and is currently working for us in the same position. Adriana has over 20 years of Technology development in Finance, healthcare, and music.
Aaron Hsu is our business strategist who we also recruited from Ingram Micro and has experience with Finance and Technology. Working for large companies such as Bank of America.
Jimmy Lam is our network and integrations guy as well as our guy who programmed the original UMC coin. He has worked for NASA as well as other major tech companies including utilities.
Raz Biton is our Chief Revenue Officer is an account services powerhouse with several Fortune 500 companies on his client roster, among them Union Bank and Viacom. Before founding Social Influence, Raz worked as an account manager for Apex Systems, the 2nd largest IT staffing and services firm in the U.S. He also has overseen our BSC Marketing side.
Elliot Zaki is our director of sponsorships who has worked and flourished with Sandisk as well as many other well-known brands.
Mike Thompson is Director of Merchandising who has worked in this position for many well-known companies in the past 15 years and is currently the director at Dark Seas an Obey clothing offshoot.
Our designer Dezeinswell is a respected underground artist who also consistently signs at Comicon shows. He is known for his Vinyl Toys and has designed our Mascot which shall be revealed soon!
We also have partnered with Qualityproduceusa.com a PR/Marketing company that has worked with Bittorrent, Kraken and Palm NFTs in the blockchain space as well as Billy Ellish and Rage against the machine just to name a couple of musicians.
If you head over to our website, you will find links to everyone’s linked ins. We are a completely doxed team and in public view. Unlike most bedroom crypto teams our company is also a California Corporation which makes us liable for any fraud that could be committed. Another reason to feel safer buying our tokens!
2) Can you tell us what is UMC? What is “The UMC Idea”?
We’re a blockchain platform that creates an ecosystem of resources and support for independent artists so they can build sustainable careers.
A fair voting system based on blockchain will allow the token holder to be involved in voting for their favourite artist, venues, promoters, and events.
Our platform will include music sales, streaming, business management tools and artist services just to name a few. We have over 27 use cases that are currently in view which you can find in our whitepaper online at umcoin.io
3) How UMC support the artist community? How different are you from your competitors?
When I envisioned this token I knew that there had to be several use cases for this to work properly to continuously feed the artist foundation wallet with funds. It needed a micro-economy on its own. The first thing I worked on was the use cases. The more this token moves on the system the more we can help the artist ecosystem. How do we help the artist ecosystem?
Once artists are ranked high enough within their genre we start to develop them as a large label would. Merchandising, branding, legal advice, and tours just to name a few. We do this unlike a large label asking for nothing in return. We build artists for the sake of art. Any profit gets funnelled back into the artist foundation wallet to help their community and keep the music ecosystem healthy.
For artists ranked lower we will be offering the same services for small monthly fees that they can opt into if they need them. We are in essence trying to create a musician’s union on some level where the costs are balanced out by the community.
Another important way we will be helping the ecosystem is music grants to venues and promoters for events. We will allow our token holders to vote on their favourite venues, promoters and events and the top % of each will get their artist budgets paid for. How is this beneficial to the ecosystem?
When we pay that budget depending on % we ask the promoter of the location to lower the door cost by an equal %. For example, a show’s budget is $5000, this event was voted up by our token holder. They agree to pay for 80% of the budget or $4000. This event now cost the venue/promoter $1000 to throw. Originally there might have been a $25 entrance fee but with our grant, the door fee is now $5 to get in.
This helps the fan by allowing them to get into more shows cheaper. This helps the venue because now they have more people in the venue spending more money at their bar. This helps the artist because they are guaranteed to have a full house.
These are just a few ways we plan on helping to make the artist ecosystem healthier.
How are we different from our competitors? In every way. We put the artist first always. We are here to strengthen the ecosystem not leach from it. There is no other system out there using token funds for grants towards small venues or artists. They simply make money from the artist not try to support them in every way.
Our core values say it all.
We find purpose in empowering others to be their authentic selves.
We are artist-centric because we know what’s best for the artist is also best for the ecosystem.
We earn trust by saying what we’ll do and doing what we say.
4) How does your tokenomics look like?
Our Tokenomics or we like to call them our Echonomics are simple. 95% to token holder 4% artist foundation wallet and 1% Burn. We are also looking to do manual burns over time depending on market conditions and market cap until we find a stable area for the token.
5) What is your marketing strategy?
We are taking a 2-sided approach to our marketing to make sure we are covering all bases. On one side we have our BSC Marketing which consists of AMAs, Call channels and shills like sweet widgets and bounty system. On the other side, we have partnered with Quality Produce which is a high-quality PR/Marketing firm located in the US. Like I stated before they have lots of experience with large companies based in blockchain and music which made them the perfect fit. They see our vision and have very much become part of our team.
6) Where are your core revenue drivers in the short and long-run?
Our short drivers consist of educating people properly of our mission, vision, and values so they can see that we respect blockchain technology and realize that we are a long hold opportunity for token holders and not a rug pull or meme coin. We have 27 use cases. We have a purpose and a cause. We are looking to change the way the entire industry has run for the last 100 years and make it a fairly equitable system that artists can support themselves and enjoy.
Our long driver consists of showing people that we have real-world use cases that they can participate in. Even before the platform is developed, we will be sponsoring events out the gate with funds created in that Artist Foundation Wallet. We will be sponsoring artists directly until we have the voting system up. We will be showing consistent movement with development, PR and marketing. You will see we are changing the industry from the first months we go live. Our long play is to prove our intentions and to show people who we are with action.
7) What partnerships have you forged? Are we expecting to see some big names creators at the start?
We currently have Partnerships with Quality Produce and Certik audit. We also just started to build a “Music Culture Advisory Board” which will consist of 2 to 3 well-respected artists in each genre. These people will not only act as our first ambassador, but they will help ensure that we build our system with the artist as our 1st directive always.
8) I saw from your website that you are seeking $1,000,000 for Round 3 – Pre-Sale. How much was raised for rounds 1 and 2? Is there any equity round?
Round 1 & 2 were friend and family rounds and we raised over 200k just in those rounds. They are not equity rounds strictly token sales to help fund the project and early entry for true believers. We are making sure that we are getting long term holders and not the pump and dump crowd. We are catering to people who believe in change.
9) Care to share with us your listing plans after the presale? Community members are always eager to know your plans.
Yes of course! Like most projects, we are starting on pancake swap and currently signing up for some of the smaller exchanges like Bitmart, Kraken and others. We also have been using resources like Binance launchpad as well as a few launchpad blockchain grant systems. We are looking to get a slow and steady launch. We do not want a rocket ship that dives in the first few days. We are looking for a healthy start and a healthy rise over the next couple of years. Rocket ships take a while to get to mars. We are looking past the moon. It is too close for us to reach for.
10) Kindly share an inspiring quote to enlighten us.
I have a couple of quotes that we have added to our blockchain contract itself at the very top.
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams…” (I have this tattoo on my arm)
And my personal quote. “Because I am you”
I wanted people to know this was created by an artist for the artist not from a business standpoint of making money as a corporation. I have struggled my entire life to be a part of the music I love. I have spent the last 25 years trying to make this industry better from the ground up. I love music as an art. I love music as a connection to people. And the only business should be what’s involved to keep artists making the music they love.
