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I lead Social Impact at PizzaDAO/ RarePizzas

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I lead Social Impact at PizzaDAO/ RarePizzas

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🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate! 🍕

It all started with Laszlo, 10k Bitcoin, and two pizzas. Now, 11 years later, pizzaDAO is throwing a global pizza party in his honor.

On Bitcoin Pizza Day in 2021, we spent over $300,000 at more than 300 pizzerias in over 60 countries to throw the World Largest Pizza Party Ever. And you're invited for 2022!

Our mission: Pizza, the formation of Spaceship Earth's largest pizzaiolo community, the digitization of all the world's pizza knowledge, and the creation of the open source francheese Open Pizza!

Want to get involved? Keep reading!

Congratulations to the
three winners from our merch contest.
‍
⚫ Frog Legs - T-Shirt
⚫ Za Rule - Hat
⚫ Turkey Sausage - Sweatsuit

We'll be launching a merch store soon, but look for us at NFT.NYC for your chance to get some hot pizza outfits early! Join us on discord for more updates.

Whether you're a pizza lover who wants free pizza on May 22nd, a pizzaiolo who wants to get involved, or an aspiring member of the Pizza Mafia, find the deets below!

Want Free Pizza?

Click through to find out if any of your local shops are participating, or to learn how to get one on board!

#FreePizzaDay

Are You a Pizzaiolo?

We'd love for you to join us in throwing the world's largest pizza party ever! Click the button below to sign your shop up.

Pizzeria Sign Up

Ready to Help?

The pizza mafia is a global community of over 2,500 pizza lovers. We would love for you to join us! Click below to join our discord and help us organize the future of pizza.

Join Our Discord

Who's Behind all this?

We deliver to any address in the galaxy. Learn how to place your order, step by step.

What started as a small group on Clubhouse, the PizzaDAO are now over 2000 members world-wide. Want to learn more about who we are or how you can help?

Enter the Pizza Mafia

We LOVE to Tweet!

We like to say this is a "DO-acracy", every little bit helps! Following, liking, and retweeting Rare Pizzas Twitter could make the difference!

Follow the Twitter

First of all, you can't eat it. It's a piece of generative art. Well, eight pieces, to be exact! Each pizza is lovingly hand-crafted by our algorithmic chefs from a randomized selection of toppings submitted by our 314 Rare Pizzas artists!

Many will be made from traditional pizza ingredients, but you may come across rarer ingredients that you might never have expected to be found on a pizza, let alone be eaten...

Download and install the Chrome browser plugin MetaMask. This is a secure Ethereum wallet you can use to interact with websites.

If you made a new account, buy some Ethereum or send some to yourself. The MetaMask plugin has a button that will allow you to buy Ethereum from Coinbase.

Once you have some Ethereum in your wallet, you can buy Rare Pizzas directly from our price curve or on the secondary market on Opensea.

Pizza Pop and Pizza Sticks are the antipasti to go alongside your Rare Pizza!

Minted and available for sale on Cargo.Build, these tasty treats are served up on the Polygon (MATIC) network! That means low network fees and a great addition to your Rare Pizzas collection!

We are the Pizza Mafia!

Rare Pizzas is a project founded by the decentralized autonomous organization PizzaDAO. We are a global community of artists, creators, and pizza lovers who believe that pizza shud b free.

We've come together since February 18th, 2021 to make this dream a reality at pizzerias all over the world on May 22nd, for Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Want to join the Pizza Mafia?
Join Us

Subscribe to get pizza in your inbox.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

RarePizzas.com, Copyleft © 2021 PizzaDAO

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🍕Come visit us at our IRL NFT Launch in New York City on November 2 🍕 We're launching our NFT IRL at Latitude in NYC during the NFT NYC Convention! Come see us and eat free pizza and celebrate!

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Over the past year, multidisciplinary artist Dave Curry (aka Black Dave) has continued to rise through the ranks of the NFT music ecosystem. A unique artist even by NFT standards, he's channeled his sense of humor, love for anime, and musical prowess into an intriguing mix of art that is known throughout the crypto community.

Having first tried his hand at NFTs towards the end of 2020, Dave is now miles away from his early beginnings, which saw him minting anime characters. But although he has branched out significantly, he hasn't lost his roots. His current NFTs still encapsulate the whimsical and passionate nature of his own personality.

In fact, it is precisely this branching that placed Dave on the fast track to establishing himself as a jack of all trades, and it is ultimately what placed him on nft now's Next Up: 22 Ones to Watch in 2022. Recently, we sat down with the self-proclaimed "aspiring Gundam pilot" to deep dive into his career as a rapper, producer, and visual artist.

Credit: Black Dave

Early Beginnings

Black Dave's story is one that any 20-something NFT enthusiast can relate to. In the wake of a global pandemic, Dave doubled down on what he was passionate about, putting a large amount of his time and energy into music. "In 2020, I was making a beat every day, and I was putting it out for sale every day. So they're 400 or so beats for sale on the internet right now," Dave said in an interview with nft now. "I was writing a three-song EP every month. I would produce, it recorded, mix it, master it, and make the cover art," he continued.

He first became aware of NFTs in 2020, thanks to an old friend who had been flipping the art on Nifty Gateway and accruing decent profits. Dave knew that flipping wasn't going to work for him, but he took an interest in the idea of minting his own NFTs after this introduction.

"I was really trying to be a rapper. Really trying to be a producer," Dave says about his early beginnings in NFTs. "I just kept making music. Then, in December of 2020, I got into NFTs for real and minted my first NFT." According to Dave, his first NFT was a callback to the type of visual art he had already been working on. Specifically, his first minted NFT was an unused piece of cover art that had never been released.

Credit: Black Dave Website

Notably, Dave's visual art style sometimes relies heavily on customizing and collating anime and manga art produced, in part, by other creators. As a result, his first few endeavors didn't go over smoothly with everyone.

"Artists in the space, especially artists that were doing anime style, said, 'you're just taking other people's art and making it your own,'" Dave tells nft now. "But that was literally was the point. So much of my aesthetic is taking things that exist and reformatting them. That's just rap music too. You know? Production of rap music is sampling. Even streetwear culture can be just flipping logos."

Nonetheless, Dave decided to pivot away from his first few endeavors to begin working on 2D and 3D art. And, of course, music.

Music on the Blockchain

These days, Black Dave is generally best known for his contributions to the NFT music landscape. He started off on his NFT music journey with his edition piece " Black Dave, Black Comet." Shortly after, he took NFT music innovation into his own hands.

In July of 2021, alongside some 3D landscapes and his final few Manga Tears pieces, Black Dave minted a "Verse Token" as part of his BlackDave.io 002 collection. It was the mechanics of this single token that were truly the centerpiece of the collection. The " Black Dave Verse Token," as it was titled, presented its collector with the ability to redeem a verse from Black Dave at any time. While projects like Arpeggi Labs had previously presented the idea of blockchain music collaborations, Dave's drop was possibly the first collaborative rap NFT ever created.

The Verse Token is available for auction now. It has been kicked off with a bid of .25 ETH and you can jump in now to claim it for yourself or someone you represent or to sell or whatever https://t.co/ateYs7We7Q
- blackdave.eth (@BlackDave) August 2, 2021

Dave explained the basic mechanics of the drop, noting that it allowed individuals to incorporate both general themes and music. "The unlockable content for the NFT is a link to a Google Form. In the Google Form, you can type in what you want me to rap about. You can upload a beat in the Google Form that uploads to Google Drive for me to rap to, and then I send it back," he said.

The "Black Dave Verse Token" ended up selling at auction for 0.33 ETH ($1,089), which was Dave's biggest sale at the time. According to Dave, the winning bidder had realized the potential of the token prior to bidding and was surprised to acquire it for such a low amount.

"The person who collected it was like, 'I bid on it, but I wasn't expecting to win it because I thought it was going to be the biggest thing in music NFTs,'" Dave tells nft now. "Which is the story of my life, right? Everyone's like, 'What a genius idea - this should have sold for way more!' That's like the epitome of my whole existence in web3."

From there, Black Dave went on to mint two new songs, " Appreciate It" and " Kaioken 10," via the BlackDave.io 002 collection before being accepted to mint his music on premiere music NFT platform, Catalog.

Black Dave: Curated

In the winter of 2022, Black Dave was tapped for a release on Catalog - setting him on a journey to his current prestige in the music NFT space. His record " Sharp " was minted on Nov. 8, 2021, ultimately raking in 3 ETH (around $10,200) at auction on Jan. 6.

"Sharp" was sold using PartyBid, a service that allows a community of collectors to come together and incrementally contribute towards collectively bidding on an auction. With PartyBid, once an auction is won, every contributing member of that party receives a token that represents fractional ownership of the NFT that was purchased.

Cover Art for Black Dave's "Sharp" release. Credit: Black Dave

Most of the time, this feature goes unused, leaving collectors to hold the token with the option of selling down the line. But Dave, being Dave, took it upon himself to give his NFTs corresponding $SHARP token an extra bit of value. How? By giving token holders a say over what happens with the "Sharp" NFT.

"What I did was I tied the $SHARP token to governance. Right now, there's a vote happening around whether or not I should put 'Sharp' on streaming. The people who participated in the PartyBid are the only ones who can vote," Dave said "I'm putting my spin on fan ownership by allowing them to actually vote on decisions surrounding my music. In the future, they'll vote on [things] like: should the song have a music video, how much money should I spend on that music video, how much money should I spend on marketing?"

From there, Dave made the jump over to Sound, a service that combines streaming with minting and community listening. On Sound, Dave continued his hot streak, dropping " Triple Beam " on Feb. 2 and generating 2.5 ETH ($6,440).

Next Up: Black Dave

What's coming up for Dave? Well, for starters, more music.

Now, only three months into 2022, Dave is already gearing up for his third drop of the year, this time via curated NFT music platform MintSongs. With this drop, Dave will present one of his most unique projects to date - an EP titled WOLF that he says will be primarily rock-focussed - in an effort to feel out if and where the genre has potential in the NFT space.

"I think testing rock music is going to be really fun. I've never written a straight-up rock EP, even though I've been in bands," Dave said "Normally, it's me and another person. This is me doing all the music myself, recording everything myself. I just want to see if there's a home for rock music in the same way that there is rap music."

Cover Art for Black Dave's upcoming WOLF EP. Credit: Black Dave

Once the WOLF drop is complete, the NFT space will see Dave in attendance at SXSW as part of ZORATOPIA - an event being held by community NFT platform and marketplace Zora. The event will feature four activations, two of which will see Dave speaking and performing at SXSW for the first time ever.

After WOLF and SXSW, Dave says it's back to working on his solo projects. While he continues to make his way across the wide web of curated music NFT platforms, he has pivoted back to figuring out ways to innovate with his own solo projects. On the horizon, Dave has plans to create a tier of NFTs for his top supporters. He hopes to bridge digital and physical to create a more immersive experience for his collectors.

After all, Dave isn't completely confined to the blockchain. He had been making music long before he started minting it. And in some ways, his goals then are the same as they are now. NFTs are a great means to make internet money and cultivate community, but Dave is still aiming to bring his art to a wider stage as a musician.

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How Black Dave Is Defining What It Means To Be a Web3 Music Artist

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Over the past year, multidisciplinary artist Dave Curry (aka Black Dave) has continued to rise through the ranks of the NFT music ecosystem. A unique artist even by NFT standards, he's channeled his sense of humor, love for anime, and musical prowess into an intriguing mix of art that is known throughout the crypto community.

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Latashá runs this biweekly onboarding event. Sign up ASAP

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Latashá runs this biweekly onboarding event. Sign up ASAP

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So you heard about NFT's but don't know how to get started. well we got you covered. RSVP and join ZORATOPIA, @callmelatasha's bi weekly NFT virtual hangout

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w Louie C Rhymes x JarrodT and our beloved producer NFTYQ. We interview some of the most amazing musicians in web3. Tune in every Monday at 6pm PST/9pm EST.
If you'd like to be a guest, LMK

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MUSIC MONDAYS ft. AURORA MENDEZ, MUSIC NFT NEWS DISCUSSION

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Stop PAYING people to teach you Crypto / NFT's.

The information should be freely given.

NFT's / Hip Hop / Fancy Sandwiches

The crypto and art space is what we talk about, the hip hop is what's pl...

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Stop PAYING people to teach you Crypto / NFT's. The information should be freely given. NFT's / Hip Hop / Fancy Sandwiches The crypto and art space is what we talk about, the hip hop is what's playing in the background (because otherwise its super quiet and you have to hear people's mouth noises), and the "fancy sandwiches" is what I call all the fun silly conversations we have in between your questions.

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Connect

Share

ZORA
chose me back.

"don't rush it, it's gonna align. way better when you take your time."

the words in this song speak of newfound prosperity and consistent elevation. that's what i want for me. that's what i want for you. i want every trial to end up being worth it. i want all the pain to transmute into purpose. i want us to unlearn everything that made us feel undeserving. i want to keep growing at God's speed.

inspired by 2 corinthians 5:17, "behold, all things become new."

produced by rexx life raj, written by me. shot by elyse thoms. directed and edited by me.

the winner of this NFT will receive a personalized orange abundance tee (like the one i'm wearing), framed lyrics + a handwritten note.

wishing you love, peace, and newness. - iman europe

NFT Details

Token ID 6414

Refresh Metadata14 days ago

There are no open offers Make Offer

The NFT Marketplace Protocol © 2022 Zora Labs. All rights reserved.

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Connect Share ZORA "don't rush it, it's gonna align. way better when you take your time." the words in this song speak of newfound prosperity and consistent elevation. that's what i want for me. that's what i want for you. i want every trial to end up being worth it.

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NFTS + Music: How Music Lovers Can Start Exploring Web3

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Helps run Cipher and a number of events in the community

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Tweets by Ezincr

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Soulection talks about Splits and credits x web3

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Soulection talks about Splits and credits x web3

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Soulection - Soulection+ Radio: UNTITLED 001

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TOTAL RAISED

USD VALUE

$93,258.32

33.3 ETH

Rewards

Available from collecting this song

Golden Egg

Egg is hidden in a randomly selected timestamp. The winner is revealed only when the song sells out. The winner's NFT is then upgraded to a unique 1/1 chosen by the artist.

Behind the music

Read a bit about Soulection+ Radio: UNTITLED 001 directly from Soulection

Soulection+ is the Web3 extension of our company and culture. It's where we as a community of creatives and supporters will experiment with art & music on the blockchain. "Soulection+ Radio: Untitled 001" is our GENESIS Web3 radio show, brought to you in partnership with Sound. After over a decade of using our Soulection Radio platform to share & support the music we love, we are excited to finally be able to break bread with artists on a mix - and share the earnings from the project in real time! This Soulection+ Radio mix features all of our great artists who have been essential to the Soulection legacy over the past 11 years. Many of the artists on this mix have never released anything on Web3. We truly appreciate their trust and willingness to experiment with us. Part of our goal as an entity is to make it easy for the creatives we support to comfortably explore how art & music can intertwine with blockchain technologies, and carve a lane for themselves to travel forward independently as they see fit. This radio show is curated and mixed by Joe Kay, the recording is approximately 62 minutes, and contains unreleased gems from our closest friends and family. Collectors will get access to our Soulection "Holders" channel on discord. It will be a space for deeper level conversation, music discovery, and will provide an organic opportunity for us to grow and explore together. And to our golden egg holder, we have something truly special planned for you. Tracklist: Monte Booker - MINE IAMNOBODI - gettoknowu J.Robb & Sango - under Jayla Darden - TOO CLOSE Esta - typical Jarreau Vandal - dub for Joe J. Robb - dubby Monte Booker - DONUTSSSS Rose Gold - Addicted (prod. by Brody) Mars Today - absinthe J. Robb - ultra1 Esta - rawww Jared Jackson - Jus' Lay Back Kenyon Dixon - Hard Way (Mars Today & Jordan Brooks Remix) Krs. - ISLANDS Esta - smoggg LAKIM - a cruise down pch Sango & Jared Jackson - Calder Program: 002 Jared Jackson - Foe Riddim LAKIM - thekey2u IAMNOBODI - Wings LAKIM - prince's castle IAMNOBODI - visitors J. Robb & Elijah Fox - miss the rain Esta - pluckkkk Monte Booker - PINEAPPLE Esta - belllll IAMNOBODI - honey J. Robb - elbows Jayla Darden - Run it Back Sango - Hot Springs Kyoto J. Robb - kickback Monte Booker - Voice Her AbJo - Quartz

Audience

By purchasing a limited edition NFT of the song, supporters can claim a permanent seat in the audience. Seating is determined by time of support.

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Soulection - Soulection+ Radio: UNTITLED 001

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Available from collecting this song Egg is hidden in a randomly selected timestamp. The winner is revealed only when the song sells out. The winner's NFT is then upgraded to a unique 1/1 chosen by the artist. Read a bit about Soulection+ Radio: UNTITLED 001 directly from Soulection Soulection+ is the Web3 extension of our company and culture.

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How to Make it as an NFT Rapper - Black Dave

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How to Make it as an NFT Rapper - Black Dave

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Hello, again...or for the first time. Whatever. Just wanna dump a bunch of thoughts on you guys about what I think it takes to be able to see success in the world of NFTs as a rapper in this current arc of the story of the space. I'll spare you the rant about how bad the laundry list of rappers drops have been thus far - if you follow me on twitter you got that, so let's just dive right into the reason you're here. After finishing it (I'm adding this sentence as the last thing I type in the post), I realize this is very long so take your time or take it in doses.

To start, there are a few important things to get out of the way before you even think about what you're gonna make as an NFT. First, and this will likely be the case for many people reading, you gotta own your music. If you're in a deal or an agreement or whatever with someone else surrounding the rights to your music, there's gonna be trouble when you start getting to the bag, so that's the first thing. The next most important thing, in my opinion in having an understanding of what NFTs are further than it being something that can give you a percentage of secondary sales of the NFT. Rappers especially are so excited about being able to receive continuous royalties from the sales of their work after initial sale but that dream isn't even fully realized yet. I remember Dame Dash saying that once he heard about the secondaries, he was sold on NFT. There's a lot more to that than the meets the eye. The last thing in the "first thing" section will get it's own paragraph, so I'll jump there now - even though this isn't really a complete feeling sentence.

To round out the important things to get out of the way before thinking about what NFTs you'll make, making an effort to learn and be involved in the NFT community at large is MASSIVELY important and potentially the most underrated thing for rappers in the space. We recently saw this happen to a massive effect when Jay-Z purchased a Cryptopunk and changed his profile picture on Twitter to it. If you have the means, spending a little money on an NFT and publicly announcing that is a very very simple way to start building up the current that will be the wave of your entry into the space. I always say that in order to be successful in NFT, you should think about three things:

1. Authenticity to yourself and what you do.

2. Authenticity when it comes to the NFT space. We can spot a fake or cash-grabber.

3. Respect to the technology, even if you aren't initially taking advantage of it.

Make sure you're keeping this and the previous paragraph in mind before you even begin.

The next thing, and the truly exciting thing for many, is thinking about what NFTs to make. First thing, for those just joining NFT, you are allowed to release a song on streaming platforms as well as have the NFT out. The NFT is a signifier on the blockchain that whoever collects your token got it directly from you and THAT is what's valuable about the token. When someone plays your song on Spotify, they receive it from Spotify...or if they download it on Amazon or iTunes or whatever, they receive it from the platform, but NFT is directly from you, the creator, to the collector. Now I'll go ahead and save you the consulting fee ( unless you wanna pay it) and throw out a bunch of ideas for artists, especially rappers in the space. The obvious first one is something audiovisual. This can be something as simple as a loop in collaboration with someone who does motion graphics or 3D visuals or 2D animation or whatever, all the way up to a music video. If you're creating a music video, I think it would be really cool to create NFTs of things that appear in the video, sort of like Easter eggs. You know how in every music video these days, there's that random Beats Pill? Of course that's them paying in order to be in the video, but imagine instead of that, you place something strategically in the video, either to be seen or in the background, and you minted those, allowing people to sort of participate in the music video experience as someone who has collected an item in the video. A poorly executed (because he didn't follow the previous paragraphs) example of this is when A$AP Rocky released the series of cars he was taking around with him during tour for his album Testing and dropped them on Nifty Gateway. Speaking of going on tour, if we start to take advantage of the technology, we can use NFTs to grant people special access to experiences, or even to you at concerts. Allowing there to be a "Golden Ticket" style NFT to a sold out concert that grants the highest bidder backstage access and some time with you, the artist, could go for a lot. The best example of this is when Citizen Cope auctioned off 4 tickets to a sold out show in NYC in May as his return to the stage after the pandemic for 7.7777 ETH ($16,712.72 at the time of writing but was over $20K at time of sale [ETH is on a lil vacation right now]). It also came with a download link that only the token holder could see that was to an early version of a then yet to be released song. Taking the tour concept one step further, there's something known as a POAP, (we say it as poh-ap), which stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol, which is an NFT serves as sort of a ticket stub that you attended or participated in something. We often see this in relation to metaverse experiences, but these are so low cost that they can be minted at no cost to you or a very low cost, and there's an app that allows you to view them directly on your phone without need for a wallet. Granting someone with a certain amount of your POAP tokens, let's say having attended 4 of your concerts on this specific tour, then can receive a reward, whether physical or digital. This is also really awesome because people are able to buy sell and trade your POAP tokens on Opensea, the NFT marketplace, after a simple migration process. This creates a new life for tickets to shows that have already happened and could be really cool. The guys over there are super nice and you should hit them up. I have a POAP with the founder's face on it. If you do decide to mint the music directly, doing it as part of the whole NFT experience is a much more sound way to do it then just releasing the song and saying "buy it on the blockchain." I would also like to propose that while I am in full support of releasing on both streaming services and through NFT, I think there's something to be said about releasing a work to the NFT holders first and allowing them to enjoy having the file on their device before everyone else. I released a song as NFT in April and I think I'll be releasing it sometime in July. You want to make sure that you're offering the fans who went the extra mile for you an opportunity to feel special and supported reciprocally.

Great, so you did all of the things I said and now you've gone and sold your first couple of NFTs, but now the pressure is on because we're all watching you. The ominous "we." Another one of my phrases I use when talking about NFTs and people with pre-existing platforms especially is "what you do in between drops is arguably more important than the drop itself." Making sure that you're continuing to be involved in the NFT space by either sharing work or buying NFTs or participating conversations about it as you continue to learn and grow in the area will be pivotal to the success of your follow-up drops. I think this will be true until NFT hits mass adoption. It's very small here so we can sort of see everyone and what they're doing at once.

I think that's it. I think comments will be on so we can chat in those. I love chatting on Twitter so let's do that so other people can join in.

OH! Last thing, if a company hits you up and wants to help you release something on their platform but isn't involved further than building the platform and taking their percentage, walk away! AND if anyone calls themselves a master in the space that's false, too! Things are constantly changing, we're all students!

Okay THAT is it. Sorry this is so long I hope it helps someone.

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Hello, again...or for the first time. Whatever. Just wanna dump a bunch of thoughts on you guys about what I think it takes to be able to see success in the world of NFTs as a rapper in this current arc of the story of the space.

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Runs the MintList on Sundays at 2pm PST/5pm EST on AirTime where you can listen to newly released Music from the NFT space

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Tweets by newworldcurator

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Will allegedly pay up to .65 a stream. Contact https://twitter.com/freedomandflow if you have questions

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A community that instantly rewards artists and music lovers for their creative expression and dedication to music.

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Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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A new tool that blends your everyday work apps into one. It’s the all-in-one workspace for you and your team

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Press cancel when the window comes up :)

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KarmaVioletta - Without You (Official Music Video) | ZORA

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- This is our first official music video & first NFT. The song is about the thought of a love lost & the pain that is...

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Dot Genesis: Exploring Music NFTs as a New Medium

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Dot Genesis: Exploring Music NFTs as a New Medium

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Context is key. A frame can change the way we perceive a physical work of art, different spaces can impact our listening experience of the same piece of music, and a single word can have countless meanings depending on who speaks it and with what intention.

As a musician, I spend a great deal of time (over)thinking the context of my work -- how it is being created, where it is being heard, by whom, and for what purpose. From the advent of audio recordings over a century ago to our current streaming economy, we've seen amazing innovation and explosions of new genres, as the context for which we write influences what we create.

"How music works, or doesn't work, is determined not just by what it is in isolation (if such a condition can ever be said to exist) but in large part by what surrounds it, where you hear it, and when you hear it. How it's performed, how it's sold and distributed, how it's recorded, who performs it, whom you hear it with, and, of course, finally, what it sounds like: these are the things that determine not only if a piece of music works-if it successfully achieves what it sets out to accomplish-but what it is." ― David Byrne, How Music Works

As new (and old) sounds, styles and subgenres are able to travel virtually anywhere in the world, we have this unbelievable access to a diverse spectrum of music. And yet, social media, streaming platforms, and other aspects of the current music industry are quick to reward "sameness" or familiarity -- sounds that have already been tested and proven to provide a return on investment -- and are slow to reward innovation. While there are always exceptions, so much of mainstream music is centered around a company's bottom line versus taking creative risks or pushing boundaries.

Working within that framework can have advantages depending on what your goals are in the industry, but it can become an uphill battle to create and share music sustainably outside of those companies if you're an artist who doesn't have the intention of finding mainstream success. Even if your work resonates with a strong niche audience, it can be hard to strike a balance between recording, touring, marketing, social media, and working an extra job or two to keep the bills paid. Perhaps your audience grows over time, but now you're faced with the pressure of creating in a certain style or genre for the rest of your short career cycle, before it's on to the next wave of trends.

If you work in the music industry or follow independent musicians, you've probably heard these struggles a million times over and are disappointed (to say the least) about the current state of affairs and glaring lack of diversity. In my case, I went to the great lengths of establishing my own record label and production company to try to directly improve some of these issues rather than just complain about them on twitter (I was going to scream if I read one more tweet asking "where are all the female producers" but didn't see those tweets backed up by any action or tangible support), but I found myself battling burnout and unrealistic workloads year after year. While there have been many moments of success that I'm extremely proud of, there have been plenty more moments of feeling defeated after every attempt to scale the company to something that could be more sustainable, without compromising on the quality of my output, my values as an artist, or my personal integrity.

Since blockchain technology officially entered the chat in 2008, and since NFTs have become more mainstream within the last three years, new possibilities of how music can be valued have already started to shape a future creator economy where artists have greater autonomy and innovation is rewarded. For the first time in years, I feel that it's possible to be valued as an artist again rather than just a content creator, and am excited to explore NFTs as a new medium that allow me to pour the absolute best of focus and energy into fewer releases of higher quality. Because scarcity and authenticity can be valued rather than large volumes of diluted content, I'm inspired to create in a context that is more aligned with my core values and ethics.

But let's hold that thought -- I should take a moment to properly introduce myself. Hi, my name is Kate Ellwanger (pka Dot) and I'm an artist who is new to Web3. I'm quite far from being an expert on blockchain tech, but am creating this Mirror account to share writings on my thoughts, research, and current/upcoming projects that I'm working on in the space. Rather than have this turn into some sort of "Dear Diary" style blog, I'll do my best to keep future publishings centered around my work rather than myself, but I felt it was important to begin this conversation with my intentions and reasons for wanting to build in Web3 in the first place, as well as some of the dreams I have for the future.

So all of this to say, I'm entering Web3 for the new context, community, and exploration of NFTs as a medium. I'm incredibly excited to create and share music in a space that directly values the work, where I feel less pressure or incentive to write something that is easy to pitch/sync/license/place and can feel more free to be myself or experiment with new sounds. If the work resonates with a lot of people, that's wonderful, but with fixed quantity, tokenized audio files, I see a future where innovators and forward-thinkers can thrive, even if their work isn't created for mass consumption. For the first time in over a decade, I have sincere optimism for the future of music and the communities that support it, either as fans/appreciators or as people who work directly in the industry.

Two key factors that make this kind of value and community-building possible are trust and transparency. From my understanding, they are woven into the fabric of the technology, with smart contracts now enabling artists to collaborate and split or allocate funds with ease, build DAO s or other organizations to support and share the work. All while retaining full ownership to the rights of their music, at least as the format currently stands (I imagine this will change in the near future, with NFTs holding songwriting and publishing rights as well).

Unspeakable Records Production Workshop its our first studio location, 2016

If you happened to follow my work prior to reading this, then you know how important community and collaboration has been to me since I started producing and releasing my own music. My first introduction to the LA beat scene was as an intern for Alpha Pup Records back in 2011 -- I would work at the label a couple days per week for school credit, and go to Low End Theory nearly every single week to hear new music and support the artists who played there. It was rare for me to ever miss a Wednesday night at The Airliner. Eventually I went on to release some of my first projects on Alpha Pup, and in 2012 became one of the founding members (and only woman) of Team Supreme, which was a collective of 19 producers, challenging one another with weekly beat cyphers and sample flips. These experiences shaped so much of who I am as a producer today, and I forever love my brothers in those communities, but I also felt a painful lack of diverse gender representation in those spaces and longed for some sort of sisterhood in my creative life. This eventually led me to create Unspeakable Records in 2014, which I never could have guessed would change my life in so many profound ways over the last 8 years.

Team Supreme Show at The Echo Los Angeles, 2017

While I fully intend to carry these lessons and experiences into my next chapter in Web3, I don't have any short-term plans to assert myself as an organizer or leader in the space at this time. I recognize and respect those who have worked hard to create amazing collectives and DAOs to promote diversity and representation in art and music, and would love to support and uplift those leaders any way that I can. Rather than trying to immediately bring Unspeakable Records or old Web2 models into the space, I prefer take my time and see what community structures may come about organically as it pertains to my own work.

I also don't view this technology as a means to replace those who are working in the music industry to support artists -- there are so many talented individuals and teams who genuinely care about music, and blockchain technology can serve as a tool to strengthen these teams as a whole. There is a beautiful opportunity in front of us to establish new "industry standards" and creative ecosystems where artists aren't preyed upon, and transparency is the norm.

All in all, I'm very excited to be building in Web3 this year, and hope that anything I offer here will have a positive impact on all those who experience the work -- either through music, events, collaborations, artist retreats, or whatever new formats may emerge. While I spent the last decade with my focus and energy being spread across many roles and responsibilities in music and business, often prioritizing myself as an artist last, I'd like to spend the next decade putting my musicianship first and giving even greater energy and time to honing my craft and exploring new sounds. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with all the reasons I began making music in the first place, and create/innovate as much as possible in this medium with as much time as I may be blessed with in this life.

The mainstream population may not be ready for Web3 (and Web3 definitely isn't ready for that volume of use yet), but I see a future where blockchain technology becomes so integrated with our modern lives that most people will not need to have a thorough understanding of it, or even be aware that they're interacting with it in order to use it. The average American probably can't explain to you how a cellphone works, and yet about 97% of the country's population carries them around in their pockets. The sooner we can get artists and visionaries thinking about the vast potential of NFTs and creative ways they can be used, the better established we'll be in supporting/evolving the cultures and creators we care about. Artists can have greater control over the context in which our work is created and shared, and not just function as machines for high volumes of content.

If you'd like to keep the conversation going, please come find me on Twitter or Instagram!

My first music NFT series can be found on Catalog, with much more work to be released in 2022 and beyond 🚀

Sources:

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Dot Genesis: Exploring Music NFTs as a New Medium

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Context is key. A frame can change the way we perceive a physical work of art, different spaces can impact our listening experience of the same piece of music, and a single word can have countless meanings depending on who speaks it and with what intention.

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Music NFTs 101: an Artist-to-Artist guide

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Music NFTs 101: an Artist-to-Artist guide

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Disclaimer: this article may present personal points of view on the matter at the time of writing. Those opinions may change in the future.
Music NFTs: what are we talking about?

You may have been wondering what an NFT is, and more specifically, what a music NFT is. If you asked us one year ago, it's likely none of us would've had any clue. Now looking back at 2021, we've seen music NFTs change the lives of artists in a myriad of ways.

Artists have begun to see financial independence from selling even just one music NFT, and in the current state of the music industry this is definitely something; yet there's more. Web3 enthusiasts have watched as a new wave of musicians and artists are finally able to connect directly with their world, and subsequently receive support on the most direct level possible.

So, if this is the case, why isn't everyone involved? Why are so many musicians still not convinced about web3?

The basics: what's the blockchain? And what's an NFT?

The blockchain is exactly what it sounds like: a chain of blocks. Each block holds several transactions and has security protocol making it nearly impossible, if not totally impossible, to cheat, break or hack the system. Transactions are validated constantly through computers that operate to reach a consensus in order to go from one block to another, and this is how the blockchain does its own work.

A cryptocurrency is a digital currency in which transactions are verified and records are maintained by a decentralized system using cryptography. Most simply put, cryptocurrency transactions pass through the blockchain, being validated in blocks.

NFTs are units of data stored on the blockchain. NFT stands for "non-fungible token": a non-fungible token is not interchangeable like other cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, etc). Where a cryptocurrency derives its value based on other coins and the US dollar, an NFT derives its value directly from, and only from, buyers.

The minting of an NFT, which is the process of permanently printing the data onto the blockchain, provides a certificate of authenticity and proof of ownership: all of this works thanks to the same blockchain technology. We can interact with the blockchain by transacting through a crypto wallet, and different types of wallets interact with different blockchains. (i.e. MetaMask interacts with the Ethereum Network, Phantom interacts with the Solana Network, etc.)

The last term we need to define is web3. While web2 refers to traditional internet usage, web3 refers to the intersection of the internet and the blockchain.

But what is a music NFT?

A music NFT is an NFT where the data is simply just a song file; there are a lot of marketplaces right now that allow you to buy and sell music NFTs.

Got it? Perfect. We've got a long road ahead, so fasten your seatbelts.

Music NFTs: an artist's approach

The problem

Existing in the music industry has never been more challenging than it is right now: as artists have been turned into content creators, we're forced to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of art and media at the expense of our mental wellbeing. But do musicians really need to constantly be "creating content" in order to keep up? With the seemingly uncontrollable rise of TikTok, it can often feel like we do.

The reality though is that not everyone is made to be a content creator. Some of us enjoy making music for the sake of it and don't really feel comfortable opening TikTok every day trying to find a new marketing idea.

So many artists love making music and couldn't care less about keeping up with the fast-paced world of TikTok and social media. Streaming services made music accessible to nearly everyone: for just a monthly subscription you can get access to virtually every song ever released. This revolution marked the past decade but, to us, it might lead to a devaluation of music as art. And this current music market is now weighing heavily on musicians: the constant need to release music in order to stay relevant, spending money for marketing, and so on.

Sure, some of us can take this as a challenge and commit to making new content every day, while others might say "whatever!" and continue their music journey at their own pace - but not every musician is a " Jai Paul", able to sustain a career with only a few releases. Now, during the pandemic we've seen a lot of red flags being raised and calls for help from musicians ranging from newcomers to household names.

So, the question is: are we really ready to put our mental health on the line for what is our greatest passion?

That's when music NFTs come into play.

A possible solution

Music NFTs, specifically those on the Ethereum blockchain, saw their rise during 2021 with musicians finding a new path toward financial independence, allowing their careers to flourish without relying solely on traditional web2 frameworks. For musicians, this often meant relinquishing copyright to a label.

Both traditional fans and crypto enthusiasts bought their favorite artists' NFTs. This marks the beginning of something new in music, where:

* music can be treated and valued as an art piece, with 1/1 editions;

* music can be part of a collectible series, which can include perks and incentives for collectors;

* music can be the centerpiece of any type of NFT project, since the technology already allows for sharing percentages of a song's royalties, minting audiovisual NFTs, building community around the collectors, etc.

But what does this mean for an artist?

This has made room for a new way to interact with artists and invest in their evolution. Here, ownership has a new meaning, because all of this can happen without giving away copyright. And music itself can have a new, intrinsic value.

In this new landscape, NFTs can be the ultimate certificate for a song's existence, like the original copy of a painting or a very limited edition vinyl, rather than a digital good that's meant to be forever consumed or replicated for almost no revenue, or no revenue at all. Although songs minted onto the blockchain can still be streamed and downloaded, the only authentic copy - or copies - exists on the blockchain. Owning a music NFT, in this sense, will mean owning a digital, original edition of a record.

Now what if some of your fans can't afford a music NFT, or just aren't interested?

While we think that it's important to still make music available on traditional services - and not gatekeep it to fans in any way, here's how fans can interact with your music on web3:

listen to the song on any of the marketplaces it's listed on;

download the song file (the .wav or .mp3 will usually be available to download);

cherish their favorite artists having the opportunity to have their art valued in a completely new way!

The artist's role

We know there's a lot of confusion surrounding this new "wild west" of the art industry, so it's important that artists be leading this discussion in order to educate other artists and help them create a more sustainable life with their art.

Until now, too many of us let those in the music industry abuse their powers and convince us to sign inadequate and exploitative contracts. This is our opportunity to finally fund ourselves, work the way we want to with the new possibilities that web3 offers, and have our art valued for what it is: art.

Answering the questions

"I want to mint an NFT but I think I'm hurting the planet"

How many times have we seen Twitter threads in which an artist, psyched about their new venture in the crypto world, is bashed by their own fans about their decision to engage with web3? The main reason seems to be that " NFTs destroy the planet ". Is this really true?

This thread by RAC counters the argument in the simplest way possible: as every computer does, the ones that keep the blockchain alive consume energy by doing complex operations. The first point to note is that NFTs don't require more energy than regular crypto transactions. The blocks in the blockchain will be mined regardless of the number, or type, of the transactions.

For some more insight on this we recommend this in-depth article by Sterling Crispin regarding environmental issues with crypto and crypto art, and how it compares to other real-world scenarios to get a better view of the actual ecological impact of NFTs.

The total CO2 and distribution by sector from 2017 (totaling 49GtCO2). ETH & BTC combined now add up to about 0,8%.

It's quite often that artists trying to pave the way for a new and more sustainable music industry are the ones that receive the most backlash. We're writing this in hopes that people will do their research about crypto and what its future holds (Ethereum already plans to move towards an eco-friendly future with ETH2).

It feels better to be angry at an immaterial currency that seems irrational, than to deprive yourself of something pleasurable you're used to doing.
― Sterling Crispin, NFTs and Crypto Art: The Sky is not Falling

Companies like Offsetra have built tools to offset CO2 emissions directly for those who want to. You can also calculate the emissions directly related to your ETH wallet transactions. Plus, they provide an extensive explanation about CO2 emissions related to crypto.

All in all, we still obviously hope that the blockhain will lean towards an eco-friendly future. But while many are still worried that crypto is the main reason behind the destruction of the environment, they're unlikely to see what goes on behind the scenes to amend these issues.

"But copyright... and publishing..."

When minting any data into an NFT, it's important that you own the copyright to the master recording. As mentioned before, you're not giving away copyright when selling an NFT, so you don't have to worry about that at all in this landscape.

PROs haven't chimed in yet, and their definition of how they claim their revenue still seems a bit disconnected from the NFT world: they collect royalties when a song is publicly broadcasted or performed. For independent artists registered with PROs like ASCAP or BMI, you won't have any issues. You own your music and that doesn't change when considering independent publishing.

It's still important though that whoever mints a music NFT rewards every collaborator with a fair share, even if it has to be done manually. Either way, we encourage artists to keep an eye out for more official updates on this matter.

"Alright, I want to mint a music NFT. Where do I start?"

There are lots of ways to mint your music NFTs. Here are some of our favorite marketplaces.

Zora is a universal media registry protocol, by its own definition, and is open to the public to mint photo, video, or audio NFTs.

Catalog is the main marketplace for 1/1 music NFTs, but they're currently not open to the public. In the meantime, you can apply to become an artist on the platform through their artist form.

Sound is an innovative marketplace that allows musicians to mint a limited amount of NFTs and adds tools to empower the artist-fan relationship. It's currently invite-only.

Mint Songs is an open marketplace for limited edition music NFTs which lets you mint for a $0 fee, based on the Polygon Network.

OpenSea is the biggest NFT marketplace, and the basis of many generative NFT projects. It also allows you to mint music NFTs.

Rarible also allows you to mint audio files as NFTs.

There's a lot of other marketplaces you can access, but we'll leave the research up to you. While the main music marketplaces (Catalog, Sound) are not open to the public yet, we invite you to join their Discord servers to get in touch with their community.

Additionally, there are a ton of projects related to music and blockchain/crypto that don't directly involve minting a music NFT, like Audius for example. These can be starting points for musicians that want to experiment with this new landscape. Not to mention all the music-related DAOs ( Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) making a lot of new projects possible.

"I sold my first NFT: what do I do now?"

Let's consider this: you sold your first NFT. Great! What now?

The first idea could be to sell the cryptocurrency you earned for FIAT currency (USD, EUR...) through an exchange (like Coinbase or Binance) and " see y'all next time ". Maybe you needed some financial support, and your NFT helped you get it.

Or maybe you have plans to reinvest some funds in your music project, since web2 platforms and streaming services currently remain the main tools for music listening and discovery, and the majority of music fans is still there.

Solid choice, but there's a lot more that you can do.

In fact, it's important to consider getting more involved in the space. Selling your first NFT is already a great first step into the web3 world: now you can start to learn and understand new ways in which your art can intersect with NFTs. Eventually, building a community of web3 enthusiasts might become one of your most important tools in the future. It's always important to have a group of fans that ride for you every day and show up their time, and this idea merged with the possibilities offered by music NFTs can really go a long way.

Remember, it's not all black and white: you can easily mix the options above, and find your own unique way of building your project within the NFT reality.

However, selling just one music NFT probably won't be the factor that turns your career around. Keeping your project moving requires you to spend time nurturing all aspects of it, and it's still important to create a proper ecosystem and community around your art - outside of web3, too: nothing is better than having fans and followers that really connect with your music. That being said, selling music NFTs can give you more of a chance to make your project what you want it to be.

All that glitters...

" How did you make all that money? Lol, seems easy!"

No. It's not easy.

Finding a way to sell your music NFT is not that simple, and in most cases just a small cut of an artist's fanbase is actually interested in music NFTs or can afford even just one. You can always mint a piece on a marketplace of your choice and cross your fingers that an angel will buy it, but it's unlikely to work out that easily. Many prospective collectors are likely to have their attention caught by offering something special alongside the NFT (e.g., a giveaway that comes with the sale, ownership utility such as free tickets to your shows, etc.) but there's no simple formula to make sure you'll find a home for your work.

Operations done on the blockchain also have a cost, and the costs of minting an NFT on Ethereum (currently the most important blockchain for music NFTs) are extremely high. Additionally, it's entirely possible that your NFT won't sell right away, or ever. It's natural for many to find excitement in joining a movement based on the hype and the fear of missing out, but it's important to consider that minting an NFT is an investment with no clear path to profit.

Last thing, but not for importance: the value of cryptocurrency (except stablecoins) is still far from stable. It's important to keep this in mind when considering entering the this new world.

So, if you want to mint an NFT, be mindful of all these considerations.

Conclusions

We seem to be at the very beginning of a shift in how we utilize the internet. This article was written by artists for artists and is based on observation and participation over several months in both the crypto space and web3 art community. We still have no idea how this will change the music industry as a whole, but we're confident that web3 has the potential to impact artists' lives in ways we haven't seen before.
This article was written by camoufly with the help of sober rob.
Editing and major contributions byHarris Cole.
Additional contributions fromDNMO.
Additional supervision fromAlessio. We have done our best to provide you with valuable information together with personal opinions. This article is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, financial advice. We are not attorneys, accountant or financial advisor, and the information contained in this article is not a substitute for financial advice from a professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. Regardless of anything to the contrary, nothing available in this article should be understood as a recommendation that you should not consult with a financial professional to address your particular situation.

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Music NFTs 101: an Artist-to-Artist guide

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Disclaimer: this article may present personal points of view on the matter at the time of writing. Those opinions may change in the future. You may have been wondering what an NFT is, and more specifically, what a music NFT is. If you asked us one year ago, it's likely none of us would've had any clue.

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It’s really amazing to do what you love for a living because it doesn’t necessarily feel like work. For me, the merging of music and web3 has increased this sentiment tenfold. As an independent artist for the last 7 years, I have been able to build a sustainable career that has allowed me freedom…

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The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions. The top content creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships, makes more than $100,000 a month. And teachers across the US are bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes on Outschool and Juni Learning.

These stories are indicative of a larger trend: call it the "creator stack" or the "enterprization of consumer." Whereas previously, the biggest online labor marketplaces flattened the individuality of workers, new platforms allow anyone to monetize unique skills. Gig work isn't going anywhere-but there are now more ways to capitalize on creativity. Users can now build audiences at scale and turn their passions into livelihoods, whether that's playing video games or producing video content. This has huge implications for entrepreneurship and what we'll think of as a "job" in the future .

The Evolution of The Passion Economy

In the past decade, on-demand marketplaces in the "Uber for X" era established turnkey ways for people to make money. Workers could easily monetize their time in specific, narrow services like food delivery, parking, or transportation. These marketplaces automated the matching of supply and demand, as well as pricing, to enhance liquidity. The platforms were convenient for both the user and the provider: since they took care of traditional business hurdles like customer acquisition and pricing, they allowed the worker to focus solely on the service rendered.

But though these platforms provided a path to self-employment for millions of people, they also homogenized the variety between service workers, prioritizing consistency and efficiency. While the promise was "Be your own boss," the work was often one-dimensional.

Monetizing Individuality

New digital platforms enable people to earn a livelihood in a way that highlights their individuality. These platforms give providers greater ability to build customer relationships, increased support in growing their businesses, and better tools for differentiating themselves from the competition. In the process, they're fueling a new model of internet-powered entrepreneurship.

It's akin to the dynamic between Amazon-the standardized, mass-produced monolith-and the indie-focused Shopify, which allows users to form direct relationships with customers. That shift is already evident in marketplaces for physical products; it's now extending into services.

These new platforms share a few commonalities:

1. They're accessible to everyone, not only existing businesses and professionals

2. They view individuality as a feature, not a bug

3. They focus on digital products and virtual services

4. They provide holistic tools to grow and operate a business

5. They open doors to new forms of work

1. They're accessible to everyone, not only existing businesses and professionals
New consumer products are making it easy for anyone to become an entrepreneur. In the mid-2010s, the rise of the influencer industry allowed top-tier creators to monetize through advertising. These platforms expanded to support a broader range of money-making activities, from manufacturing physical products (e.g. Vybes, Hipdot, Genflow) to creating personalized videos (Cameo, VIPVR, Celeb VM).

Now the ability to make a living off creative skills has trickled down to individuals at scale, helping everyday people to launch and grow businesses. Previously, only established businesses could access software engineering talent to build websites or apps; now, no-code website and app builders like Webflow and Glide have democratized that ability. Startups are also building mobile-first, lightweight versions of incumbent desktop software: Kapwing, for instance, is a web and mobile editor for videos, GIFs, and images that aims to displace legacy creative software.

Companies have the opportunity to engage entrepreneurs in the early stages, then capture economic value as they grow. They might start with a very basic offering and add product capabilities as their customers earn revenue and develop new needs.
2. They view individuality as a feature, not a bug
Whereas previous services marketplaces were rigidly built for standardized jobs, new platforms highlight variation among workers in categories that can benefit from more diversity in user choice .

Take Outschool, an online marketplace for live video classes in which teachers are predominantly former school teachers and stay-at-home parents. On the platform, instructors can develop their own curricula or browse lists of courses requested by users. Beyond the subject matter, the marketplace's UI emphasizes each teacher's background, experience, and self-description. Parents and students can message instructors directly.

For new platforms, this model can pose a sizeable risk: once consumers are able to work directly with a preferred provider on an ongoing basis, they may take that relationship offline. Marketplaces can combat disintermediation by offering workflow tools, like scheduling and invoicing, and by building in additional incentives that make it worthwhile for providers and users to remain on-platform. Marketplaces that cultivate these direct relationships can also succeed by focusing on areas-like education and tutoring-in which consumers might have repeated matching needs with a variety of different providers over time.
3. They focus on digital products and virtual services
Whereas past generations of entrepreneurship-enabling platforms typically focused on selling physical products (e.g. Amazon, Etsy, Ebay, Shopify) or in-person services (e.g. Taskrabbit, Care.com, Uber), new creator platforms are focused on digital products. A platform built specifically for packaging and selling digital products looks different than a platform that is built for tangible goods.

Podia, Teachable, and Thinkific (at left) are all SaaS platforms that allow creators to make and sell video courses and digital memberships. Previously, these types of "knowledge influencers" had to either conduct classes in-person (restricting them to local customers); jerry-rig platforms meant for physical products, like Shopify; or customize sites like Wix and Squarespace. New platforms capitalize on the idea that expertise has economic value beyond a local, in-person audience.

On the interior design marketplace Havenly, designers work remotely and interact with clients entirely online. For designers, the benefit is a steady stream of clients without the heavy lifting-since Havenly takes care of marketing-and the flexibility to work whenever, wherever. For clients, the benefit is access to a service that would otherwise be expensive or inaccessible.
4. They provide holistic tools to grow and operate a business
Unlike discovery-focused marketplaces, which monetize through advertising, membership fees, or cost-per-lead, new platforms in the creator stack are often monetized through SaaS fees that increase as customers grow. Others take a percentage of the creator's earnings. This means that platforms are incentivized to help creators succeed and grow, rather than driving discrete, one-time transactions.

Some platforms offer marketing tools like custom landing pages, coupons, and affiliate programs. Others provide behind-the-scenes support: Walden, for instance, connects new entrepreneurs with coaches for strategy and accountability.

Sometimes, support may be bundled into platforms that help providers start a business. For instance, Prenda-a managed marketplace of K-8 microschools-provides teachers (called Guides) with curricula, computers, software, supplies, and assistance in navigating the necessary regulatory requirements and insurance.
5. They open doors to new forms of work entirely
New digital platforms enable forms of work we've never seen before:

For a more extensive model of how human capital can give rise to new industries, look to China. On the microblogging site , for instance, users sell content such as Q&As, exclusive chat groups, and invite-only live streams through memberships or a la carte purchases. This has spawned a wave of non-traditional influencers-financial advisors, bloggers, and professors-beyond typical beauty and fashion tastemakers.

Factors to consider: Marketplaces vs. SaaS

When building a company in this space, it's important to consider the needs of the creators you're targeting, as well as their desired audience. There are tradeoffs between marketplaces and SaaS platforms. What's the difference?

Marketplaces are entirely plug and play, meaning providers can sign up and start earning revenue with minimal set-up. The strength of a marketplace's two-sided network effect is directly correlated to the value it provides as an intermediary between supply and demand. One example of this model is Medium, which charges readers a subscription fee to access stories across the entire platform. The amount of money a writer makes is proportionate to the amount of time readers spend engaging with their stories.

By contrast, SaaS platforms require creators to work independently to acquire customers. Such platforms might help with distribution-providing tools for marketing, managing customer relationships, and attribution-but users are largely responsible for growing their own businesses. On Substack, for example, features include a writer homepage, mailing list, payments, analytics, and a variety of different subscription offerings. Substack collects a portion of the creator's subscription revenue.

In the marketplace model, writers count on Medium to drive reader traffic and subscriptions. On the SaaS platform (Substack), writers drive their own direct traffic and subscriptions; they can export their subscriber list at any time.

Marketplaces bring value for creators looking to be discovered and attract customers over time. SaaS tools often make sense for more established creators who already have a customer base. In response to this dynamic, many startups are building SaaS platforms that aim to poach large creators from existing marketplaces.

Looking Ahead

New integrated platforms empower entrepreneurs to monetize individuality and creativity. In the coming years, the passion economy will to continue to grow. We envision a future in which the value of unique skills and knowledge can be unlocked, augmented, and surfaced to consumers.
Listen to the related a16z Podcast on this topic: How the Passion Economy Is Redefining Work

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The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

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The top-earning writer on the paid newsletter platform Substack earns more than $500,000 a year from reader subscriptions. The top content creator on Podia, a platform for video courses and digital memberships, makes more than $100,000 a month. And teachers across the US are bringing in thousands of dollars a month teaching live, virtual classes on Outschool and Juni Learning.

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Link to our co-curated Google Calendar of web3 music Twitter Spaces/Events

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Link to our co-curated Google Calendar of web3 music Twitter Spaces/Events

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With Google's free online calendar, it's easy to keep track of life's important events all in one place.

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Music has a new canvas.

NFTs directly value creative work, without input from an intermediary.
We're witnessing the early stages of an audio movement - driven by scarcity, fandom and access.
This article highlights the Music NFT landscape - providing insights for musicians, managers, labels, agents, fans and collectors alike.

Let's dive in.

What are Music NFTs?

Music NFT are fixed quantity, tokenized audio files.

The main characteristic is the audio itself, typically represented as an .mp3 or a .wav.

We saw early examples of musicians exploring NFTs on Nifty Gateway in 2021. Since then, Music NFTs have shifted focus away from an audio/visual collaboration, to the audio itself.

Music NFTs do not come with inherent ownership rights.

In fact - the vast majority of Music NFTs today can be thought of as extremely rare digital collectibles.

They contain no claim on masters, no royalty rights, no publishing and no licensing abilities. They simply represent a scarce version of a song or album - represented on-chain using web3.

Think of it like buying a track on iTunes, except now you have a limited copy you can resell to someone else.

Over time - Music NFTs will contain ownership rights. However, it's currently the exception, and today most Music NFTs have no claim on underlying rights.

Why Collect Music NFTs?

Music NFTs build superfan communities.

As a collector, Music NFTs are the single best way to build a relationship with your favorite artist.

Tokenized music represents an indirect way to bet on an artist's career - even if there are no rights associated.

In the same way fans collect setlists, drumsticks, t-shirts, posters and tickets from historic shows - Music NFTs are the most direct iteration of fandom.

Remember how it felt to collect music?

We've all bought vinyl, burned a CD, or made a playlist. Chances are you've shared a Spotify song on your Instagram story.

But - the art of collecting music has gotten lost. Every song in the world can be accessed for $9.99 a month.

I don't think that's right. I'm proud of the music I curate and I'm sure you are too.

Music NFTs are the new way to have an intimate connection with a song.

They're a bet on an artist's career, and your social graph to signal the genre(s) you love.

Valuing Music NFTs

Think of Music NFTs in the same way we value Crypto Art and Collectibles.

I wrote about my thesis for NFT Value Capture - the same principles of which apply here.
TLDR: The stronger the community of superfans, the more valuable the Music NFT becomes.
As a rule of thumb, the more streams a record has on a web2 platform like Spotify, the higher likelihood it performs well in web3.

However - the more exciting avenue is curation.

In the same way electronic artists made their career on the back of SoundCloud in 2013, we are now seeing the same ethos apply to web3.
Music NFTs from artists who make their career in web3 will outperform those who tokenize past work that succeeded in web2.
This is why we're seeing artists with smaller, niche audiences in web3 consistently outselling those with hundreds of thousands - or millions - of monthly listeners on Spotify.
Music NFT collectors will allocate capital to the strongest web3 communities.
If you're an artist with a large following, think about how to convert your most loyal fans to web3 and the bids will follow.

Music NFT Landscape

Here are the projects leading the Music NFT movement.

This list is non-comprehensive, and ever-evolving. I definitely missed some.

2022 Music NFT Landscape

Where to Start

It's a big world out there.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, here's a guide on where to start.

We're living in the wild west - there's no one right answer for Music NFTs.

In fact, the best thing you can do is experiment.

Get out there and test the waters. Don't get caught up in perfection, mint something and learn over time.

Here are some principles to follow:

Fans First - Don't worry about money. Prioritize relationships with fans and the money will come.

Don't Oversell - Scarcity is on your side. Be tactical about how you release new projects into the world.

Give Back - Invest your time and money back into the community. This is your bedrock for future success.

Be Nimble - Build relationships with many platforms. You are in control of your audience - take advantage.

There is a steep learning curve with Music NFTs. However, once you get comfortable, the plateau is wonderful.

Don't expect overnight success - plan on spending a month educating yourself and becoming one with the community before expecting anything in return.

Key Resources

Looking to learn more?

Here's a list of articles and to get you caught up.

And for those who prefer to listen over read:

Why Should I Care?

We've entered a new chapter.
Music NFTs are bigger than one platform. It's a new medium. A movement.
We've gone from vinyl to tapes, CDs and now mp3s.

While we may live in the streaming age today - NFTs are the natural successor.

Credit: Josh Stark & Evan Van Ness - Year in Ethereum 2021.

Beyond NFTs, creators are turning into organizations. Opportunities that were once limited to a select few are becoming accessible to all.
Betting on your favorite artist is finally here.
Get Involved

Think you've got an ear for discovering new talent?

Well - here's your shot to make it worth something.

For artists, the tools are on the table to take your career into your own hands.

For fans, there has never been a better opportunity to work for the artists you love.

You've got a narrow window before major labels adapt - so don't sleep.

This is a 10-year game. The infrastructure is still being sorted. Onboarding is brutal. The barriers to entry are high.

This is your opportunity to connect the dots and create change.

Imagine if you could be one of the first artists on Napster, MySpace, iTunes, Soundcloud or Spotify.

Imagine if you could build diehard relationships with the leading voices shaping music today.

It's all happening, and it's all out in the open.

Dive in.

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Music has a new canvas. NFTs directly value creative work, without input from an intermediary. We're witnessing the early stages of an audio movement - driven by scarcity, fandom and access. This article highlights the Music NFT landscape - providing insights for musicians, managers, labels, agents, fans and collectors alike.

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Sign up to get a wallet. DO NOT give ANYONE your seed phrase. NO ONE. WRITE IT DOWN. Do NOT screenshot it or email it to yourself. Put it somewhere safe! My friends and I will send you some NFTs when you are all signed up :P

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Your key to blockchain applications

MetaMask is the leading self-custodial wallet. The safe and simple way to access blockchain applications and web3. Trusted by millions of users worldwide.

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The crypto wallet for Defi, Web3 Dapps and NFTs | MetaMask

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A safe crypto wallet for digital tokens & NFTs. Join the blockchain and DeFi world.

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INFORMATION

General

The auction will last for 25 days, or until the 20 ETH hard cap has been reached.

$DANGER backers receive

$DANGER governance token.

Credits on the album.

Signed Danger Zone poster.

Free entry into the Headline show.

Access to all Danger Zone singles through the token-gated Discord channel.

Top Bidders

The top bidders will each receive their own 1/1 "Born Again" Skeleton, access to all token-gated Discord channels, priority viewing of all Music Videos, and 24 hours notice of future releases from the Danger Zone NFT Collection.

OS Coin #3 - Collectors

You will be invited as a collaborator by DistroKid via e-mail. The earnings from all songs are routed automatically to your DistroKid bank for payouts. You will be able to see the statistics and percentage breakdowns of all songs in your DistroKid account.
Note*: If a coin is resold, the 8% royalty cannot be transferred.
Budget List

Detailed below is the estimated budget list.

These amounts and exact figures are subject to change.

3 Music Videos // $13,000 (4k Budget Each)

Marketing (FB/IG/Spotify Ads) // $2500

Listening Party Venue // $1500

Live Show Visuals // $2500

Album Production // $4000

Album Mastering // $500

The funds from the OS Coins will be used to cover my day-to-day expenses.

Projected Timeline

Crowdfund starts // Oct 1st, 2021

Crowdfund Ends // Oct 26, 2021

Project completion date // Dec 17th, 2021

1st Video Single // Feb 18th, 2022

2nd Video Single // March 4th, 2022

Chicago Listening Party // May 26th, 2022

Album Release // May 27th, 2022

Chicago Headline Show // Sept 24th, 2022

SPECIAL THANKS!

INWHY, Freddy Jacques, Danny Ranno, Leighton McDonald, Arran Sym, Brandon Mahone, Luke Kozlowski, all $DANGER backers and the whole Mirror team for making this crowdfund possible.

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The auction will last for 25 days, or until the 20 ETH hard cap has been reached. $DANGER governance token. Credits on the album. Signed Danger Zone poster. Free entry into the Headline show. Access to all Danger Zone singles through the token-gated Discord channel.

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The Blockchain Gospel is based on the founding principles of Cryptocurrency as laid down by its white papers

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for women and NB folks

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If you want a NEAR wallet, connect with Symbolik and he will hook you up :)

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Official OnboardingDAO TG Group. @OnboardingDAO 🐦🐦

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Check out the TOKENSMART community on Discord - hang out with 23,526 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

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We host weekly Blender classes and other community events so you can learn about the Blockchain

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The Dream Conduit is the first carbon neutral, woman-lead, nonprofit DAO enabling creatives to access the NFT space. | 483 members

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Connect

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Siimbiie Lakew

HOOKED #12

HOOKED is a record by the Ethiopian-American artist Siimbiie Lakew dealing with complexities of addiction and abuse rooted in unresolved trauma. The song is a reflective and introspective look into the artist's mind during his time struggling with survival and ways to cope in harsh / unstable environments. Unapologetic and transparent as usual, the song is meant to be a testament to the ability to overcome such things as well as a reminder that those going through similar challenges are not alone.

History

January 27, 10:06 PM

NFT Details

Token ID 12

Refresh Metadata24 days ago

The NFT Marketplace Protocol © 2022 Zora Labs. All rights reserved.

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Connect Share Siimbiie Lakew HOOKED is a record by the Ethiopian-American artist Siimbiie Lakew dealing with complexities of addiction and abuse rooted in unresolved trauma. The song is a reflective and introspective look into the artist's mind during his time struggling with survival and ways to cope in harsh / unstable environments.

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After Now is the introduction to the possibilities and hope of the future. This is the first song off my EP Salam. It is a song to empower and elevate visions of change and growth. This song is the beginning of an evolutionary era.

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After Now on Mint Songs - Marketplace: Buy, sell, and trade music NFTs (non-fungible tokens)

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After Now is the introduction to the possibilities and hope of the future. This is the first song off my EP Salam. It is a song to empower and elevate visions of change and growth. This song is the beginning of an evolutionary era.

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Allen Hena is a crypto consultant who is well known in clubhouse for bringing knowledge and perspective to the stage. Today he helps us understand exactly how blockchain works and what environmentalists don't understand about the technology. Visit Allen's website here - https://www.allenhena.com/

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Allen Hena breaks down crypto & debunks environmental concerns around NFTs - Black NFT Art

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Allen Hena is a crypto consultant who is well known in clubhouse for bringing knowledge and perspective to the stage. Today he helps us understand exactly how blockchain works and what environmentalists don't understand about the technology. Visit Allen's website here - https://www.allenhena.com/

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LATASHÁ

So after working with a publishing label that was treating me like I was a slave, I got stuck in form and this idea that songwriting has to be one way, I took some time to heal because I really couldn't write for months. To help, I decided to ride my bike to clear my head, and one day I envisioned myself rapping a verse on the L.A. River. And that's how "Joyride" came to life.

"Joyride" is an evolving practice of free verses that are straight to it. No form, just me and me philosophies in bars. It's a meditation, it's short bits of me, it's whatever you want to make it. An opportunity to just allow myself to ride the beat. To create these verses, I would start with a beat I love, rap on it and then send the accapella to Kaui to create something new out of it.

"Culture", this first offering/verse off of "Joyride" came to me after rapping on Kaytranada's production. I wrote the verse in a nite and immediately knew I didn't want to add much else to it. I am very lyrical and I am realizing, sometimes one verse is enough. Sometimes keeping it simple is all you need. Sometimes just riding your own path is what I have to do.

So this year as I'm riding my path, I guess I'm using this "Joyride" as an exercise in getting back to me, getting out of my way, sticking to my journey, continuing to create with bro Kaui who has been working with me for years, I'm really excited for how this ride will take me to more paths. Next up "Showtime"

February 04, 10:04 PM

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LATASHÁ So after working with a publishing label that was treating me like I was a slave, I got stuck in form and this idea that songwriting has to be one way, I took some time to heal because I really couldn't write for months.

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Kane Mayfield Talks NFT's , Hip Hop , Crypto , Emanate , & Neighborhood Jewelry ( Full interview )

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We're at a unique moment for innovation in music. This moment stands shoulder to shoulder with the Napster moment and the early web2 moment that gave rise to Music Hack Days, Spotify, SoundCloud and pushed into prominence music distributors as startups.

Themes of this moment include all things 'metaverse' (whatever that means nowadays), livestreaming and other virtual interaction models, and the realities of web3 creating community empowerment and opening new sources of revenue for artists which can knock a 0 off of the old 1,000 True Fans adage.

Today I will focus on the latter: web3, which should come as no surprise to regular readers. The web3 can be noisy, especially if you haven't found your niche yet. Some of the smartest teams I've ever interacted with are operating in this space, whether that's through NFT marketplaces like Catalog, Mint Songs or Sound.xyz, to communities like Water & Music, Songcamp and Friends With Benefits, to organisations that create infrastructure for a much wider space, like Zora and Mirror.

If you wanted to stay up to date with the latest ideas 10ish years ago, you'd follow blogs like Hypebot, MusicThinkTank and TechCrunch and learn about the latest music startups. You'd scroll through the wikis of Music Hack Day to see what developers had been creating by mashing together APIs - maybe even giving them a follow on Twitter.

Another great way is following what startup accelerators are picking for their batches. Specialized accelerators like Techstars Music make this especially easy. If you're interested in web3, you have many accelerators to pick from, though there are few as approachable and easy-to-understand as Seed Club. Seed Club specializes in tokenised communities. Instead of investing in communities with money, it swaps its token for a % of an accelerated community - in exchange, communities learn about tooling, tokenomics, community building, incentivization structures, DeFi, and get network and visibility in the web3 space, plus are introduced to the club of alumni. It's an interesting model and I'm fairly convinced we'll see versions of this swap-model in many accelerators, since it aligns long-term incentives so well. Whatever emerges to be the YCombinator of this generation (maybe that's Seed Club), will have some form of this model.
Before I continue a disclosure: through past participation in Seed Club's community, I hold some of their tokens. I also hold a Zora Zorb, am in Mirror's DAO, hold Friends With Benefits tokens, hold Water & Music's tokens, hold Songcamp's Elektra tokens, and have purchased a music NFT through Sound.xyz. I also wish to participate in some of the projects mentioned below. I hope this also illustrates how interconnected, supportive and community-driven the space is.
What should the music biz know about Seed Club's cohort 04?

Seed Club just announced their latest cohort. It provides an excellent snapshot of this moment in time, so I would like to highlight the ones that I think are especially relevant to the music business, though I highly recommend browsing through them all. A project I'm spending the majority of my time on is also in there, which I'll save until last.

You can find the full announcement here and tweet thread here.

💾 FLOPPY

Floppy is a web3 based decentralized audio workstation (DAW) and first person sampler (FPS). I don't know how and when, but they arose out of the Songcamp community when I missed two or three calls when I was on holiday last year. You can read more about the project here.

🧬 GROW YOUR OWN CLOUD

GYOC wants to let artists launch their works in the data format of the future, DNA. Their mission is to transform data centres from carbon creators to carbon absorbers using DNA data storage technology.

💬 IMPSSBL

IMPSSBL's Proof of Story project develops characters with AI-written stories. Over the past years, world-building and narrative creation have become ever more important assets and skillsets for artist teams. Things like this can help, or perhaps even spawn AI-based virtual pop stars (also read: your own personal AI-music star).

"Metalabels are a new kind of label. Metalabels are groups of people working under a common identity for a common purpose with a focus on releases - distinct public works that reflect and manifest their views."

Metalabel aims to provide the tools, resources, funding, community and support for culture labels that extend beyond music. Their founding team includes the founders of Kickstarter, Ampled and Etsy.

🎻 MuseDAO

I'm excited about this community bringing classical, historical and roots music into the web3. There's definitely a very loosely connected network of people from these domains of music active in the space, however this area of music, with centuries-old institutions, could definitely do with more concentrated collaboration and it looks like MuseDAO intends to carry that torch.

🎛 MUSIC OS

MusicOS aims to make use of the open nature of data, protocols tooling in web3 and build a dashboard for fans and musicians to use. At least, that's how this reads. Phenomenal team, by the way. Stay tuned.

📆 SONGADAO

SongADAO, for now, is the story of Jonathan Mann, who's been recording and posting one song per day since 2009. There's a fascinating backstory to the DAO, which was crowdfunded by selling all the 'Song A Days' as NFTs, so I highly recommend you check out Jonathan on the Bankless podcast.

And yes, as said, I'm also building a community that's going through Seed Club - read about it here and follow us on Twitter.

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | DAOs, Web3

The Web3 is about the "fundamental reorganisation of the internet towards ownership, data portability & being able to ascribe value to our digital assets." This quote, by Zoe Scaman who's also behind the New Creator Manifesto, perfectly describes what has so many people so excited to work with DAOs, NFTs and tokens.

At this point in time, it takes quite a lot of onboarding to make the web3 click for most people. Until it clicks, a lot of what's happening understandably looks like a grift. Or, to be more accurate, it's hard to distinguish the grifts from the genuine attempts to reorganise the internet towards something less extractive. For some people, the moment it clicks is when they start using crypto wallets to login to services and take their decentralized username along for the ride, which is why I've recorded a primer to get folks set up to do exactly that.

What may also help make things click is hearing about relevant examples of this reorganisation of the internet. Currently, there are probably a dozen or two experiments every month that may contribute to the reorganising of music's digital value chain in a way that benefits creators, fans and their surrounding communities more directly. Here are some of the ones I've come across recently.

MusicFund

The MusicFund is a community for discovering, funding and curating music. People can join by minting one of a total of 10,000 generative NFTs. The funds raised are used to create grants for artists and to support the community. Currently, these grants are distributed by allocating 1 ETH to a batch of three curated artists, which is then split based on how the community votes, with the top contender taking 0.6, and the runner-ups 0.25 and 0.15 ETH (at time of writing, 1 ETH is about $4300 USD). In order to vote, one must log in with their wallet which must hold a MusicFund NFT. Its latest line-up is curated by Before The Data, successor to music blog Hillydilly, which is also running a DAO of its own.

Disclosure: I was airdropped a MusicFund NFT.

Dreams Never Die Records DAO

Dreams Never Die is a label by the same crew as Before The Data & Hillydilly. It aims to help artists at their earlier stages. Now, by organising itself as a DAO, it intends to "become an incubator for brand-new artists and aspiring music business talent alike, built around an incentivized and aligned community that participates in discovering, developing, distributing, and promoting the roster."

It's in its earliest stage, having only just done its first town hall discussion on Discord and hasn't raised funding yet. If you're new, this is a great stage to get involved or just go along for the ride and see how the organisation evolves by idling in their Discord.

Water & Music

If you're not familiar with the phenomenal publication and community Cherie Hu has set up, and I occasionally contribute to, you should check out Water & Music and consider subscribing. They're now being accelerated by Seed Club, which specializes in tokenized communities, in order to develop a 'new collaborative research model' which I assume will see token distribution based on community contributions. Its first collaborative research report covers spatial audio and just before Halloween the community kicked off a large collaboration to document music & web3.

Again, early stage, so it's a good time to get involved.

FWB & Web3 Ticketing

Blockchain-based ticketing isn't new (GUTS Tickets comes to mind), but this initiative is notable because it originates from a DAO. The Friends With Benefits DAO is a social community of creatives and builders. When, post-pandemic, it was possible to start meeting IRL again, the DAO started throwing token-gated events.

Token-gating is a common practice in DAOs, it's used in the above example from MusicFund to restrict voting to members only and is also commonly used to close off certain Discord channels to the community. FWB wanted to be able to token gate live events and developed its own tool for it called Gatekeeper.

They're making the app available to organisers and other DAOs to experiment with it.

I think examples like this are exciting, because anyone can build something on top of anyone's token. If I want to organise a music conference in Berlin and I want to give free attendance to people who have earned a lot of tokens by contributing to FWB or Water & Music, I can set that up (of course, I recommend being diplomatic about it). No central body owns the community or the relations between community members: the token is held by the participants of the network. It's an empowering type of decentralization.

Disclosure: I hold FWB tokens.

Polly

One of the most creative technologists & musicians I see experimenting in the web3 right now is Troels Abrahamsen, who I know from Songcamp. He runs a number of projects, which you can read about in this thread, but I want to highlight a specific one called Polly, a tool (or smart contract) that is just entering development. It's "a proof of concept label backend for releasing simple semi-on-chain singles as collectibles.

...the actual media. It's way to expensive to keep that on-chain so we'll have to come up with a different approach for this. The idea is to have multiple updateable sources for each release, so that there could be both centrally and decentrally hosted media files.
- Troels Abrahamsen (@troels_a) October 25, 2021

XYZ

Another musician I know from Songcamp is Colt, who has just announced a new DAO called XYZ which aims to "continuously and sustainably release original, high-quality music onto web3 and web2 channels, building expertise in music distribution in the crypto era."

The project just raised 4.5 ETH ($20k at time of writing) in funds by selling NFTs & dropping its own $WAV token to the community, which will be used for governance.

"In the future, participants will earn $WAV for participating in the production and sale of music NFT releases. Each release is an event that brings more token holders into the DAO."

Club BPM's BPM Bot

To round things up, I wanted to highlight BPM Bot. When YouTube started shutting down music bots, the Songcamp community wanted a way to keep playing music on Discord, so they raised funds for the development of a bot that plays music from Catalog NFTs. To me that's exciting, because it brings more visibility to these songs, thus increasing the value of being the owner of their NFT. It's web3 communities linking and utilizing open data and interoperability to build tools to create value and utility together. It's currently used on 47 Discord servers.

Disclosure: I participated in the BPM crowdfund and hold some tokens.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. I think it's currently possible to set up a daily newsletter to document everything that's happening in music x web3 (I'll consider serious sponsorship / bankroll offers, DM me). A great daily read about DAOs in general is ForeFront's #ff-daily channel on Discord.

I hope this communicates the energy, excitement and creativity in the space. I also hope it shows that people who are working on projects that, traditionally, would be competing are now figuring out ways to make their projects interoperable, because everyone stands to win from that.

Regardless of tokens, NFTs and cryptocurrency, these are amazing, vibrant and supportive communities of people who want to create new things together in order to support musicians. You can bring your skills to the table without knowing how any of this web3 stuff works. That's how you start learning and that's how you eventually start seeing the value of communities owning the value they generate.

The token is the software that powers the community.

Not Discord.
- Bas Grasmayer (basgras.eth) ✖️ (@basgras) October 29, 2021

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | DAOs, MusicFund, NFTs, Troels Abarahmsen, Water & Music, Web3, XYZ

The internet is entering a new era of community. The web3 has unlocked the possibility for communities to easily come together across platforms, which gives communities a sense of 'realness' that doesn't feel the same as being on a web2 platform. Web3 gives people collective ownership of their community by holding tokens in their web3 wallets like MetaMask or Rainbow. This means it's not the tech giants owning your data and the actual community; it's the community that owns itself.

Digital products are trying to service these communities by letting them sign in with their own wallets, utilizing and keeping their own data. That's a big departure from the walled garden approach of app stores and contemporary social media giants. This gives many of these communities, also called DAOs or decentralized autonomous organisations, a feeling of actual agency. Besides the fact that the space is 'early' and loads of rails still have to be built out, I think it's this unspoken sentiment of agency which is energizing the people moving into community-based social media rather than social feed-based social media.

So how do you participate?

Level 1 - observe & support

Almost everyone starts here. When joining communities, just take some time to get a feel of what's going on, what's being shared, what are the values, who are the key people involved, etc. You might learn about adjacent communities and may have a look at them too. If a community is not your cup of tea; move on.

If you find a community that you do resonate with, the easiest thing you can do is support. Show love, be part of celebrating, amplify what members are doing (e.g. by spreading the word). Anyone can do this and it hardly requires any onboarding or understanding of the intricacies of the DAO.

Level 2 - advisory, component-building & storytelling

Once you're actually part of a community, it will be easier to start chiming in when it comes to topics you have specific expertise about. For many reading, that's music or the music business. In a creative community, 'chiming in' doesn't just mean speaking up occasionally; it also includes making things.

What shape that takes really depends on the way the community is set up. One example is a recent contest Songcamp ran in which musicians could submit intros for Seed Club 's new podcast.

Things can also be more organic. Once you're part of the community and see something that can be improved, do it or organise to do it. It's a similar mentality as what you see in the free party scene where visitors are expected to contribute to the party, which sometimes means dozens of soundsystems from all over the continent gathering to throw an event open to participants for free.

This is the stage where ideas and proposals start to take shape:

We should have a landing page, so people can get an idea of what we're about;

We should have local chapters;

We should create better ways to onboard new people to the community;

What if we had generative PFPs for all members?

Etc.

Even with a few hours per week or per month of writing, organising, developing, or making, you can achieve a lot together with a community.

Level 3 - governance

If you're interested in a larger commitment, you can get involved in governance, which is something you'll find natural paths towards through active contribution in most DAOs. This usually requires a pretty decent understanding of most web3 dynamics, such as tokenomics and tooling, or at least the willingness to learn. (DAOs tend to figure things out along the way and good new tools enter the sphere on a weekly basis)

However, governance is not about technology. The technology enables us to deal with existing problems in better ways than we have before. Just to name two examples of non-technical topics for DAOS:

1. Moderation and community guidelines.

2. Onboarding members.

In my opinion, more DAOs should think about how they onboard new people, so that these communities can be more inclusive of people currently underrepresented in the space.

How to find DAOs

The easiest way is to install Discord and join every server of communities, tools and marketplaces that seem interesting to you. Check in on a few channels regularly and ignore or mute the rest. If you're enjoying a community, start unmuting channels. If you hear about a community, consider checking it out.

Here are some great Discords to start with:

See you in the metaverse.

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | DAOs, Metamask, Songcamp, Web3

This piece addresses two common questions and critiques about NFTs:

"It's just a jpeg everyone can see, so anyone paying for it is [delusional / getting scammed / etc]."

"The internet's supposed to be about abundance - why are we creating unnecessary artificial scarcity and financializing everything?"

Given music's history with ubiquity, including the economic effects of the sudden shift from paid to free post-piracy, I think these are two excellent critiques to explore the value of NFTs in general and for music specifically.

Participation

One of my own, biggest critiques of what happened to music in the 20th century is that music's default shifted from communal to individual, from participative to consumerist, from folk to personalized. This happened through the proliferation of the recording and record players to every house, then every room of the house and eventually everyone's pocket until even the music played from streaming services would be atomized to personalized playlists that fit an individual's taste exactly.

This had great economic consequences for the recording industry, which eventually dwarfed other parts of the music industry like publishers. It also created a framework through which corporations own and govern the majority of contemporary culture. If you think about folk songs as songs that an entire population knows, or just subsets thereof, then pop music has essentially replaced folk. Folk music was communally owned and iterative. Pop music is, typically, corporate-owned and there will be 1 official version: everything else is 'derivative', less authentic, less 'real', than the 'original'. In that sense, Seven Nation Army could be considered a folk song, especially in countries where it's a common chant in football ('soccer' 🇺🇸) stadiums.

Don't get me wrong: I think many of these aspects brought great attributes to music too, but it's important to consider which other attributes, like the ones mentioned above, got deemphasised and moved into the background of our default music experience.

Back to artificial scarcity and abundance.

The time we live in is amazing. We have so much of humanity's knowledge and cultural expression at our fingertips. We have simple, digital tools at our disposal that allow us to express ourselves through any modern type of media: image, sound, video, augmented reality (think TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram when it's not down). After being locked out of participative culture because of decades of a creator / consumer divide, we may soon see a billion music creators. So why be so excited about something that introduces scarcity?

Open scarcity

The exciting thing about NFTs is that you can let everyone access the media, yet assign the ownership of the NFT that represents the media to one person. This is not that dissimilar from video games: your friend may have unlocked a certain skin that is purely cosmetic and does not affect gameplay. You can enjoy this skin while you play with your friend: even if they're the ones who paid for it.

NFTs can be used in similar dynamics. Sometimes they're used as vehicles for crowdfunding. They can bring media (or culture) into existence that wouldn't exist otherwise. One patron, one NFT. And a jpeg or mp3 for millions to enjoy.

MP3s, for a long time, held a real price of $0. Most people would download them and wouldn't pay for it. Streaming, unfortunately for many artists, hasn't helped them to attain a significant income. This may be due to a number of factors, but the fact is that for a long time music has been a game with just one mode to play it. If you don't fit that mode well, it's going to be hard and the factors are often outside of musicians' control. The major exception I can think of is the period before recorded music revenues bounced back to pre-piracy days, which kind of forced people to get creative. Besides contemporary streaming giants, two of the more popular crowdfunding platforms were born in this period: Kickstarter (2009) and Patreon (2013).

Graph: IFPI Global Music Report 2021

If we use the phrase 'NFT' to mean works of art (music, visual, both) then NFTs create an amazing situation where content no longer needs to be locked behind a paywall on a platform like Patreon. Instead, the proliferation of the media associated with the NFT, for example a song, will increase the value of the NFT. This also impacts the perceived value of future NFT drops.

Ownership is exclusive, but the media is abundant. It's open scarcity.

But why pay if it's free anyway?

There are many motivations why people pay for NFTs. Some people are purely speculating, but I don't think that's the important part of the story. Some are collectors. A web2 example I can think of is Bandcamp: for some releases you can get the free download, but if you pay $0.50 it also shows up in your collection. I love building my collection on Bandcamp, so I'll pay for the free jpeg and mp3 to be there.

Most importantly, NFTs are decentralized social media. They are objects that exist in a social context. This social context is powered by the blockchain on which the NFTs sit, plus any social media an NFT holder might use. In this context, possessing an NFT holds meaning to the owner, because it can signify social value, taste, distinction, membership, or identity, just like people's clothing or virtual skins in video games. All of that is portable to any social context they move to.

It's that social aspect that gives these objects value and in many cases the social value would be greatly diminished it the object was not freely accessible for all to see.

Financializing all the things...

Finally, a conclusion I've drawn for myself. I sympathise a lot with the critique that the web3 is financializing everything. Should all these things have a price tag or should the price tag be secondary? Certainly, in this wave of the web3, the price tag has often been the story, but I don't think it's the whole story (although to some writers it is).

The real story is that value can be tracked and it can be made transparent. People who create value can participate in it. All these interactions we have with each other online, all this culture we're accessing: it's already financialized. The companies that host our conversations, our art, our expression, they have shareholders, they sell ads. The difference with the web3 is that 1) we don't know what interactions are worth, and 2) we don't participate in the value they create.

That's different now.

From here we have options. We can choose to express things in tokens or cryptocurrency. We can choose not to. We can choose to distribute equally to all participants or reward those who contribute more. We can choose governance models where it's one person, one vote, or where people can vote based on their stake (e.g. number of tokens held). We can choose the game we play - this has not happened since that 2009 to 2013 period that spawned so many of the current status quo.

These systems are in our hands now. There's no one-size fits all platform. Instead we're stringing the tools together to create brand new configurations to design communities the way we see fit. Different subcultures will emerge in the space. They already have. For example, Zora is a radically different NFT marketplace (and more) from Crypto.com. Just compare their positioning: " THEY THOUGHT THEY COULD OWN US " versus "The World's Fastest Growing Crypto App".

Auctioned digital cultural objects, as NFTs, have an important role to play in online culture in the next ten years. Music piracy paved the way for streaming. Streaming paved the way for microgenres on SoundCloud to playlist edits on Spotify to the meme-like behaviour of music on TikTok.

Now a web3 layer is going to start providing a new context. Let's add social context to those mp3s and jpegs.

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | Bandcamp, crowdfunding, NFTs, Web3, Zora

A recent project called Tunes used AI to generate 5,000 unique NFTs. They're songs, or rather, shells of songs - missing artwork, audio and an artist. That's intentional. They serve as prompts for people to iterate on, tapping into a recent trend in the NFT space popularized by another project called Loot. Let's dive in.

An example of one of the Tunes NFTs

Loot

At the end of August an NFT project called Loot dropped. People could claim Loot NFTs for free by minting - only paying for the gas cost. Like NFT avatar projects, people did not know what they would get exactly after minting. Unlike other NFT projects, Loot was stripped from everything except text.

After minting, you'd get a list of gear. Text in an image. That's all.

People loved it, because it felt like an invitation to imagine what you could build from this starting point. Quickly, an ecosystem emerged around the project.

Adventure Gold created a token to set a standard for projects building on Loot in the future. Role creates characters which can equip the Loot. Realms attempts to map out a world for Loot to exist in. And there are many other projects.

Mirror, the writing platform this article was first published on, ran a similar project called Heroes which would create randomized pen names and identities: text-only.

It's different from many other NFTs, because instead of selling you something that is finished, you get the building blocks. Since everything's on a blockchain with smart contracts, everyone can plug in and start building and expanding the project.

What if this idea was applied to music?

Tunes

Eight of the Tunes listed on OpenSea

Tunes started with a similar premise. 5,000 possible songs to mint for free, but without audio, cover art, or an artist. Building blocks.

A bot called Artunist was set up on the project's Discord to generate artwork. People can submit the ID of the NFT they minted and then get artwork generated for it. The results are impressive.

Cover art generated for Tunes by Artunist bot

The project has since expanded to include 'Songs for Tunes' which combines the generative artwork with artists and the music they made, with some being sold as NFTs for 1ETH ($3000~ at time of writing) like this beat by oshi or this song generated by the AI band ( Twitter).

New games, new economies

The reason why I'm highlighting these projects is to show that there are new games to play, completely new avenues to explore. From the outside, the crypto space mostly gets attention for financial aspects while the cultural aspects don't get picked up properly. When they do, it's almost always in a financialized context... If an artist drops a new release on Spotify, we don't say "Artist X is releases album on streaming service that raised over $2.1B in 18 rounds" yet that's exactly what's happening in the web3.

The actual exciting part is not really the money. It's that anyone who perseveres can spin up a new project that can tap into any other project connected to the same blockchain. In that sense blockchains with smart contracts like Ethereum are global computers for us all to utilize. The web3 is iterative and music culture in the space is starting to embody that principle.

3/ There are two types of Songs you can make:
- An Original (you must own the original Tune)
- A Remix of an Original Tune Title (anyone can do this) so that more people can create music and join our amazing community

There are only 5K originals but infinite possible remixes.
- Suhail (@Suhail) September 22, 2021

The first music artists who will never bother with the contemporary streaming landscape are likely already here, experimenting in the web3 and trying out other modes of collaboration, community-building, and are starting to make a living by doing so.

And to put it in Thanakron Tandavas' words: that's fucking cool.

Image by @tandavas on Twitter

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | Ethereum, NFTs, Tunes, Web3

You may have heard of CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. They're NFT series of 10,000 unique and randomly generated images of characters. They're also 2 of the most well-known examples of 'NFT avatars' - a trend which has exploded in the crypto space of 2021 and is set to permeate subcultures once they move into the web3.

Here's how, and why.

PFPs & NFT Avatars

NFT avatar projects are casually referred to as PFPs: Pro File P ictures, since that's a common use case for them. They most often have up to 10,000 template characters that are 'minted' by people wanting to own one. Minting costs money (cryptocurrency) and in the process of minting randomized traits are applied, ranging from extremely rare to common. These may be variables like skin colour, headwear, haircuts, shirts, background colours and anything else you may think of that's appropriate to the project. Many projects will have 10 traits with 10 variables per trait.

Once minted, the character is created and will remain unchanged, so before you mint, you usually only know what the style of the project is, but not what your NFT character will end up looking like. Once all NFTs from a series have been minted, the value of some of the PFPs may increase, since people may try to purchase ones that specifically appeal to them (like Jay-Z's CryptoPunk).

Being early

The creative web3 space is still relatively small. Many of the more successful projects specifically cater to the crypto community and its aesthetics. As interest has peaked, so have the number of PFP projects that now flood the space. Many struggle to get all their NFTs minted, often resulting in minted NFTs being sold for a price lower than the minting cost, which further slows down the minting process.

Yet we're early. Many types of aesthetics that are popular in subcultures, for example as album artwork, in music videos, or as tattoos, don't necessarily resonate well with those already onboarded to the web3. While some of the aesthetics emerging from the web3 space will go on to become cornerstones of emerging subcultures, a more diverse variety of aesthetics will become popular in the web3 as more people get onboarded.

A PFP project making slow progress on minting seems bad, but if it finds ways to onboard the subculture in which its aesthetics are rooted, it can succeed over time and enjoy a potentially more meaningful success than it could by shilling to speculating crypto bros (f/m/non-binary).

Onboarding subcultures

The social dynamics of what's happening right now are not unique. The clearest memory I have of subcultures shifting to a new type of internet is from around 2009 when artists started switching out the MySpace Music players on their profiles for SoundCloud embeds. SoundCloud's player was clearly superior. While MySpace limited you to a maximum number of tracks per profile, SoundCloud allowed you to upload 4 tracks of any length per month for free in those days. The benefits were obvious and thus once a few musicians in a genre embedded the SoundCloud player on their MySpace profile, you'd see it spread like wildfire through their subgenre.

The type of people who were the first to switch out their player, the innovators, are now onboarding to the web3. Many of them are already experimenting with NFTs and DAOs. PFPs allow them to signal the web3 to others in their cultural space, just like how the SoundCloud player signalled a shift from the age of downloads to the age of streaming. PFPs are not enough though, since their utility is not as obvious compared to an embeddable player that was easily twice as good as what preceded it.

For subcultures to onboard to the web3, there are two main hurdles to overcome:

Proof of stake (PoS). The energy use associated with Proof of Work blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum has made many people unwilling to touch any type of crypto. So, I expect a few factors in the next year will drive more people to the web3: 1) Ethereum switching to PoS; 2) maturing ecosystems around PoS blockchains such as Tezos and Solana; 3) more accessible layer 2 rollups for more diverse use cases.

Usability. It currently takes about 30-60 minutes to onboard someone to the web3 and buy their first NFT, like an ENS domain (see my primer below). They have to open a wallet, verify their identity on an exchange, buy crypto, wait for transactions to clear, etc. It's hard to figure things out. It's easy to make expensive mistakes. Many people who are already onboarded forget how hard it is: try onboarding a friend who's completely new to it. Sit next to them. Walk them through all the steps.

Subcultures and PFPs

A year from now, things will likely be a lot easier for newcomers. Besides work being done on the previous two bullet points, tech giants like PayPal, Square / Cash App, and likely Facebook / Instagram entering the space will help decrease the number of hurdles (at the cost of decentralization).

It will increase the viability of sounds and images that are specific only to certain subcultures and decrease the necessity to make plays that cater to the wider web3 community. So if you've been hesitating to start a PFP project or a DAO, because you don't think the people are onboard for it yet: start small and do it anyway. Consider a lower number than 10,000, and don't rush, don't shill too hard. Your audience will get here eventually and you'll be the CryptoPunk equivalent of your domain. The OG PFP NFTs of your subculture.

I don't know about you, but I'm so ready for crypto goth, crypto gabber, and actual crypto punk. See you soon.

Posted in Tagged Newsletter | Bored Apes, CryptoPunks, ENS, Ethereum, NFTs, Solana, subcultures, Tezos, Web3

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We're at a unique moment for innovation in music. This moment stands shoulder to shoulder with the Napster moment and the early web2 moment that gave rise to Music Hack Days, Spotify, SoundCloud and pushed into prominence music distributors as startups.

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LATASHÁ - WHO I AM (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)