✖ Iterative music culture, generative AI and the Web3
And: CryptoPunk rappers; Roblox x Poppy; Rap 1.0 communities; Dice raises $122m; Covid-sniffing dogs; Ariana Grande x Fortnite firsthand; New penny-per-stream service
Hi everyone,
Today I’m highlighting two new projects in my feature piece. One is Loot and has nothing to do with music, but it paved the way for a new trend in the web3 where projects are launched as building blocks for new projects to build upon, which leads to ecosystems.
The other project is Tunes: 5000 free, generative NFTs of songs… but without audio, artists or cover art. Now NFT holders are iterating on the original NFTs and creating new ones which combine music and generative cover art.
The results are awesome, but what is more interesting are the dynamics behind it and how it may influence music culture long-term. Read the article to find out more.
TECH
🏦 The shape of Web3 music communities: Internet forums with a shared bank account (Me @ Water & Music)
Paywall. Early, pre-Facebook Web2 communities like the Hollerboard and Dogs on Acid played an important role in shaping contemporary music culture. With the rise of Facebook, SoundCloud, Spotify, Twitter and many others, communities started to play a smaller role amid a landscape of recommendation algorithms and personalized feeds. Thanks Cherie Hu for editing the piece & giving me an outlet for it. Includes comments from musicians like Thys, Tim Exile, and A-Trak. It’s paywalled (W&M is well worth it - both Maarten and I are occasional contributors), but there’s a summary on Twitter.
🎤 Meet Spottie WiFi, the CryptoPunk rapper who made $192,000 in 60 seconds (Alexander Fruchter)
“There were 528 of the NFTs out of 2,000 were the original version of “I’m Spottie.” Some of them are quite rare. Some of the remixes of “I’m Spottie” are even one of one.”
⚡️ Electric Tooth is an indie streaming service that pays a penny per stream (Electric Tooth)
“Create an account. 1 coin = $0.01 USD = 1 stream. As long as you have coins, you can stream any unpurchased album or song. If you purchase an album or song, streaming it no longer uses a coin.”
🪙 Social tokens and creator-centric economies (Rex Woodbury)
“Social tokens better express the breadth and depth of a community. In the future, instead of measuring a creator’s clout based on her Instagram following, we’ll point to her market cap. Kim Kardashian might launch the $KIM token with 10 million $KIM in circulation, each trading at $100. That gives Kim a market cap of $1 billion.”
🖤 Roblox introduces listening parties, starting with Poppy's new album (Tatiana Cirisano)
“As a character born on the internet, Poppy is a natural fit for the Roblox metaverse. When Poppy -- the project of multimedia artist Moriah Pereira -- emerged as a YouTube phenomenon circa 2017, her eerie videos led viewers to question whether the character was a human or a computer-generated image.”
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🌐 Rap 1.0: A history of the early hip hop internet (Noz)
“Hip hop was such an arcane subject that it was difficult for anyone but insiders of both rap and online communities to commodify.”
Interesting web2-era look at web1-era hiphop. Interesting to see from web3 perspective now.
🤔 Why go to live shows? Music Tomorrow’s report on 17 factors of attendance in the live industry (Dmitry Pastukhov)
“The choice of attendance is connected to the previous concert experiences — and so if the consumer can’t link the upcoming concert to something they’ve experienced before, that poses a huge problem. When the show becomes too novel and innovative — and different people have different thresholds here — the concert-goers won’t know what to expect, which creates an atmosphere of uncertainty, ultimately lowering overall attendance.”
💵 Dice raises $122m: ‘We’re now scaling, because we’re ready for it’ (Stuart Dredge)
“In-person concerts may be returning, but Dice remains committed to livestreams alongside its traditional business, having run more than 4,600 during the pandemic so far.
“We’ve learned that each livestream needs to be almost five to ten times more impactful than a regular thing. It needs a compelling story now, otherwise no one cares,” said [Dice CEO] Phil Hutcheon.”
🐕 You've heard of drug detection dogs at music festivals—now get ready for COVID-sniffing canines (Phil Scilippa)
The University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover (TiHo) have been holding a trial examining the efficacy of COVID-19 detection dogs. “Attendees of the open-air Fury in the Slaughterhouse concert in Hanover, Germany last Sunday were met with man's best friend upon entry.”
👾 A first-hand experience of Ariana Grande’s Fortnite concert (Cr1TiKaL)
Video game streamer and YouTuber Cr1TiKaL recorded and shared his experience during Ariana Grande’s event in Fortnite. These events regularly get reported on by music outlets, but it’s actually rare to see people’s first-hand experience during the event shared.
MUSIC
I love baile funk and I love the oldschool The Prodigy catalogue… what if you combine the two? Ckrono helps us find out.