✖ Music NFTs: why buy them?
And: get a salary based on your predicted streaming revenues; When to plan your tour?; Anghami on NASDAQ; Musician or taxi driver?; Your music on which social platform - the quiz;
✍️ Today’s newsletter is written by Maarten Walraven
The more I read and hear about NFTs the more sense it makes to me for artists to get in on the act and find a new way to broaden their revenues (here's how artists can go about creating and selling an NFT). But what about the buyer's perspective? Why should they get in on it too?
👉 Learn about why fans should buy music NFTs.
Is it about having a collectible, a one-of-a-kind?
Is it just about supporting a specific artist? Showing your fandom?
Or, is it an investment? Like a stock option?
Moreover, and this is the focus of this today’s article, what's the potential for artist-fan relations in light of the functionalities and possibilities of the blockchain?
TECH
💰 There’s so much money going round that is simply not claimed by the rightsholders because of the hassle of tracking all your royalty revenues. HIFI has come in to centralize that through their royalty dashboard. Now, they’re expanding access to ‘Cash Flow’, a service that pays out artists every two weeks based on the predicted revenues of their songs on streaming services. Read more about how it works on Billboard.
🌱 Emerging markets are a continuous topic, especially when it comes to access. Western companies fail if they enter markets with the assumption that someone in Lagos or Hyderabad will be using the same payment systems as someone in Paris or Toronto. Instead, consider flipping the whole proposition and look at what payment system works in a given territory and then piggyback on that. One example is Bizao, which already provides more than 300 million people across Africa with payment solutions. There’s hardly a better way to gain access to people’s phones and immediately be able to charge them.
📈 We mentioned recently that Dubai-based Shuaa Capital invested in Anghami, the most popular streaming service in the MENA region. Now, the next step looks to be a debut on NASDAQ through their merger with Vistas Media. It’ll be interesting to see whether this will help Anghami grow further into their own emerging markets (i.e. North America and Europe).
🔘 Awesome marketeer Amber Horsburgh has developed a quiz to help you decide which social platform to focus your attention on. It’s all about your music.
🎥 I came across this interview with Jeff Daniels, the actor and singer- songwriter. He hits the nail on the head with his analysis of the difference between performing for a live audience and performing for a livestream:
“But it’s got to hit them different, these live streams. I’ve seen some artists go on the Ryman stage or wherever and they try the light show and the whole thing, and it’s everything except the audience. Instead of trying to give them something that it isn’t, is there something that that doesn’t do? That’s what I’ve tried to figure out with the live stream. It’s like shooting a medium close-up when you’re film acting. And if you’ve got a floating camera like we do — our third camera kind of moves in and out — that’s bringing the audience in. You’re showing them where to focus. It’s like the difference between movies and theater. Theater you sit in the audience and you’ve gotta be the editor. You have to look over there, or cut to him. You’re the one turning your head. In movies, we do that for you. We cut to her, or to the car. We’re doing a little bit of that with the live stream, but nothing too fancy. At the end of the day, either the song holds up or it doesn’t.”
CORONA
🚖 We’ve seen so many figures showing how many music people struggled without work and had to shift to jobs like driving a taxi or stacking shelves in a supermarket. It’s important to read about the actual experiences of having to do this.
🏙️ The ever insightful Shain Shapiro wrapped up his series of articles on how cities should refocus their post-pandemic ecosystems. He basically argues once more that just acknowledging that music is an ecosystem, just like finance or tourism is, will find city policy makers on a more even path to an equitable and effective (and fun) city.
🎬 Livestreaming benefited more than anything from the pandemic. So many platforms have popped up over the past year and we’re now seeing consolidation. But not everyone is ready to merge just yet. Maestro and Looped, for example, have just raised significant amounts of funding. Sony and NetEase are among the investors in the former.
➕ It’s no surprise that spending in the UK on gaming, video, and music related to ‘home’ was up by 17.7%, 25.6% and 6.8% compared with 2019. What did surprise me was the difference between the growth of ‘in home leisure spending’ (2.3%) versus the decline in ‘away from home leisure spending’ (38.6%). There is potentially a lot of money around for leisure activities once we can.
🪁 While artists like Arlo Parks and Maluma are scheduling US tours for later this year, over in New York they’re just about ready to maybe let some people attend performances from April onwards.
Music
Jon Batiste (and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of course) won a Golden Globe for his work on the soundtrack for Soul. The man is just awesome and the film is amazing too.