✖️ 3 levels of DAO involvement for musicians (and those who love music)
And: Colin Benders uses tokens for communal music collabs; Music crowdfunding through PFPs; Coldplay's green tour; AI production; Livestream consolidation
Heads up! Next Thursday we’re opening the newsletter with a guest piece written by Beatriz Negreiros. We’ll keep the subject secret for now, so keep an eye out for the ✖️ in your inbox next Thursday.
I get asked the following questions a lot:
How do I learn more about web3 / blockchain / NFTs / DAOs?
How do I find a decentralized autonomous organisation (DAO) to join?
Does it cost a lot of time to be in such a community? (Answer is no)
Does it cost money to join a DAO? (Answer is often no)
How do I participate in DAOs?
Today’s piece dives into various levels of involvement and participation you can have in DAOs, including tips on how to find the right community for yourself.
WEB3
🎶 For Colin Benders, social tokens are a way to be as generous as possible (Rally)
“I’m working with some community members to get all of this material up on a special website that I call The Vault. The multi-track recordings and the stems for all this music is going to be available to everyone who holds the required amount of $VCA.”
🚫 As Steam bans games selling NFTs, should music be wary too? (Stuart Dredge)
“Should the music industry take a pause for thought about how we approach them too? Not a blanket ban by any means, just a bit more caution about what’s appropriate; where the benefits AND the potential unhappy experiences are for buyers; and about which partners in the space are good actors (and thus, which are… less so.)”
💸 MusicFund turns PFP minting into music crowdfunding (MusicFund)
You’ve probably heard of profile pic (PFP) projects in the NFT space by now. They’re usually set up to let people ‘mint’ one of 10,000 NFTs with randomized attributes. MusicFund utilizes PFPs to sell memberships. The members can then vote on artists to distribute grants from the community fund (the current round’s winner will receive the equivalent of about $2200 at time of writing).
👉 Legitimacy Lost: How creator platforms are eroding their most important resource (Li Jin & Katie Parrott)
“While crypto tokens offer the strongest form of distributing ownership to the community, smaller-scale outcomes can be achieved by inviting creators into the business as shareholders or advisors, which would also give creators the opportunity to participate actively in the decisions that impact the business, and better align incentives between creators and platforms.”
🥇 Proof of First: Web3 taste, earliness, and curation (nir.eth)
“In addition to the monetary gain that individuals receive directly from the creator’s creation or creator’s value add, there’s valuable social signaling in this context: the first supporters could benefit socially from the proof-of-first that they have on the blockchain.”
X
🦾 New booker focused on artists at the intersection of music & creative technology (Wicked Artists)
Just wanted to flag this new agency Matthias Strobel (MusicTech Germany) and Dennis Kastrup have launched. Robotics engineers, human drum machines, AI duettists… the artist roster is fascinating.
“We aren’t building a social network with a billion strangers, but rather, a home for a global network of friends that work together to reach a billion people – through token-gated cultural experiences.”
⚔️ When medieval mysticism conquers the dance floor (Günseli Yalcinkaya)
I’ve been impressed by the willpower of the crew behind Mordorkore and how they forged a new blend of aesthetics into a 3D reality. The concept predates the pandemic and it took a modern plague to disrupt it, but I love the world-building aspect of this party and think it’s a big vibe for the 2020s, building local scenes, and whatever will manifest from DAOs.
🎛 AI Futures: how artificial intelligence will shape music production (Declan McGlynn)
“As a mix engineer, if you make your living by loading up a session, getting the most generic mix in place and not really applying any of your own creativity and humanity to that and moving on to the next assignment, then I’m sorry, you are going to be replaced by technology.”
Jonathan Bailey, iZotope CTO
🏦 Livestream concerts' next step: consolidation (Tatiana Cirisano)
“The acquisitions signal that the music industry sees long-term potential in the livestreaming market, where U.S. fans spent a collective $610 million on tickets in 2020. But at the same time, the return of physical touring presents new challenges, and recent studies reflect dwindling livestream viewership.”
🌱 Coldplay's greener pastures: With 'Music Of The Spheres,' one of the most successful touring bands ever kicks off a new era of sustainable touring (Eric Renner Brown)
“Each venue the band plays will host solar installations, and a kinetic stadium floor will store power “in the first-ever mobile, rechargeable show battery.” Other aspects of Coldplay’s sustainable touring plan include planting a tree for every ticket sold, providing venues with a sustainability rider cataloging best practices, incentivizing fans to use low-carbon transportation, sustainably sourcing merchandise, offering free drinking water to eliminate plastic waste, and directing 10% of all earnings to a fund for environmental and social causes.”
MUSIC
Music NFT marketplace Catalog just launched a playlist feature, so I’ve been collecting some of the more bass-heavy beats I’ve been finding on the platform.
Music by Maelstrom, Panther Modern, Salva, Astrosuka, Pixelord, Thys and others.