Music x Web3 Notes [10.20.21]

Original Twitter thread here.

I took seven pages of notes during a music/NFT Twitter Spaces yesterday. Here are some current & future music industry takeaways.

(ps none of these ideas are original. credit @ the end)

The concept of value:

Music has become a buffet, free, easily copied, & disposable.

Value is how much something means to you & others.

It can feel arbitrary, emotional, and contextual.

As a musician, you might ask “does what I’m spending my time on have any meaning?”

Why NFTs matter for music:

We often try to measure meaning with value. When creating music, that can get rough when it’s buffet-style.

NFTs create scarcity. 1/1 rarity. Right now, there aren’t many use cases for a 1/1. You’re basically issuing a collector’s item…

…but that collectible is digital, and on a blockchain.

It only becomes valuable if people care about that.

Why care? We’ll come back to this.

On cultural relevance:

It’s nebulous. It involves timing, luck. It’s fickle, unpredictable, and can sometimes be manipulated.

Compare this to practical utility, and valuing music becomes even harder.

Yes, we’re going there: blockchain fixes this.

Immutability leads to truth; it’s a line to verifiability.

It gives us an opportunity to acknowledge meaningful work in a new way.

We can all agree we need to figure out a better way to express and direct value back to those who contribute to culture. This is how we do it.

Building vs protesting:

I’m seeing a lot more disdain towards music royalty collection societies & statutory rates than I used to. It never worked well, but now it’s become more of a barrier than a benefactor.

So much so that there’s a growing movement to abandon it completely.

The general sentiment is: it may be easier to forfeit a bridge b/w techs rather than lobby for innovation within the current system design.

This is fucked up. And telling of how significant this is. We’re not talking about piracy here. Or low streaming “per play” payments…

…these are organizations that are supposed to solely exist to advocate and funnel value back to songwriters and performing musicians. If they inhibit the total achievable value realization for artists, do they even matter?

Perhaps they do not.

On middlemen:

So what’s happening now? There is a future where we can choose to collectively own what we build.

If we do this, we become the middleman.

Is that good? There are many hot takes here. It gets tricky due to inherent power dynamics that exist w/in this position.

On attention:

Dominating the Cheesecake Factory background music is often a poor objective. So much noise, so much in your feed. It’s harder than ever to be “popular.”

Do you fight the algorithm, or organize a small, focused community?

On artist-fan value exchange:

Fans may subscribe to your monthly label pool not bc it’s the best deal, but just to support it so stuff can continue to be made. NFTs may help realize this relationship in a way that was previously untenable.

With that, On coexistence:

The goal is to build things that can exist in parallel.

Think of it as facilitating a broader scope of optionality for musicians, rather than a complete consumption medium replacement (eg not like the CDs > downloads shift).

Someone asked, “how do you not spend every waking hour on a computer?”

Amon Tobin’s answer: analog synthesizers. : )

When creating, process often informs end result. Amon says this about music, and I think it’s sage advice for most things in life.

The people I gravitate towards listening to aren’t here for NFTs…
…they’re here to learn about what’s possible for the future of music.

The scope of what’s possible feels somewhat endless right now, which is exhilarating and uplifting.

And lastly, “I have 1000 ideas and no idea.”

I love this notion. We all have a lot of creative ideas.

The tricky part: designing how we express them with the world in a meaningful way.

Likely, the best way to do that is by listening and learning alongside one another.

Thank you:

Thank you for sharing your perspective in this conversation Amon Tobin & Thys.

Raihan & Catalog for hosting+++.

And everyone else who shared! Nomark Records, Ture. Tavo, DeadBoredSols, Max Mockett, Reuben Metcalfe, & Elliot Cole.

Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com on October 20, 2021.