Sound.xyz
Andreessen Horowitz led both rounds; the team left it to build something else
A platform where musicians released songs as limited-edition NFTs that fans bought directly, first through curated drops and from 2023 open to any artist, with payments settled on Ethereum and Optimism.
- Capital raised (announced)
- Estimated
Recorded announced backing; this is separate from cash received, customer deposits and money recovered.
- Paid to artists in its first year
- Estimated
Company-reported primary-sale payments to artists during closed beta, roughly July 2022–July 2023. Not company revenue or independently measured.
Funding
| Round | Date | Announced | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed | 2021 | ||
| Series A | 2023 |
Announced is what was said at the time. Cash actually received is rarely disclosed and is not assumed to match.
People
| Name | Role | Period | Now | Last checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| David Greenstein | Unknown – Dec 2025 | Co-founder, Vault.fm | Oct 2026 | |
| Vignesh Hirudayakanth | Jun 2021 – end | Shipping at @opendoor | Oct 2026 | |
| Matt Masurka | Jun 2021 – end | Music producer and DJ, performing as Gigamesh | Oct 2026 |
Timeline
2021
Greenstein built it quietly over 2021 and brought in two technical co-founders that summer.
15 December 2021
Sound was then selling hand-picked drops of 25 NFTs per song at 0.1 ETH each; all seven artists featured so far had sold out in under a minute.
12 July 2023
Until then artists had been selected by the team.
17 December 2025
This is the hardest post I’ve written as a founder. After three and a half years, we’ve decided to shut down @soundxyz_ on January 16. Sound wasn’t just a product. It shaped me, taught me how to build something meaningful, and brought together a community I’ll never forget.
16 January 2026
How it ended
Pivoted away
After three and a half years, co-founder David Greenstein announced that Sound would close so the team could put everything into its next product, Vault, saying that keeping the old platform running split its focus. Artists were given 30 days to withdraw their earnings, after which the site went offline and was replaced by a thank-you page. The NFTs stayed on-chain and the music in decentralized storage, and artists could still claim remaining funds through the payment-splitting contracts.
Still alive
Open spot
Sound.xyz is gone. Is your music platform still running?
Spotlight your project here.
Sources
13 sources behind this page.
- 1NFT Music Startup Sound.xyz Raises $5M From a16z, 21 Savage · CoinDesk · Dec 2021
- 2Snoop Dogg and a16z Back Web3 Music Platform Sound's $20M Funding Round · CoinDesk · Jul 2023
- 3Sound Raises $20 Million, Opens Music NFT Platform to All Artists · Decrypt · Jul 2023
- 4About Gigamesh · gigameshmusic.com · user-editable
- 5Contributors to soundxyz/sound-protocol · GitHub
- 6gigamesh (Matt Masurka) on GitHub · GitHub · user-editable
- 7GitHub profile of vigneshka (Vignesh Hirudayakanth) · GitHub
- 8LinkedIn profile: David Greenstein - Co-Founder @ Vault.fm · LinkedIn, as shown in Brave Search API results (self-published profile) · user-editable
- 9sound.xyz home page (thank-you page) · sound.xyz
- 10Sunsetting Sound · sound.xyz (company publication on Paragraph) · Dec 2025
Show 3 moreShow fewer
- 11X profile of @dgreenstein1 (David Greenstein) · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
- 12X profile of @vigneshka · twitterapi.io (X API), retrieved 3 October 2026
- 13David Greenstein on X: shutting down Sound · X (via twitterapi.io) · Dec 2025
Every figure above is clickable and opens the sources behind it. Copies were stored when each source was read, so a citation still resolves after the page it came from is gone.