✖️ The community-owned rave: event organisers as DAOs
And: The album that changes every time you hear it; Apple WWDC; Publishing as NFTs; Olivia Rodrigo x Depop; NYC's mega concert; the cooperation economy
Today’s piece explores the intersection of underground rave culture and Web3 concepts like decentralized autonomous organisations.
Find out how events can function as DAOs through:
Persistent community that stays connected between events.
Shared outcome ownership that encourages participation.
Tokenization to reward participation.
Democratization, so participants can play a role in shaping the events.
P.S. Help me take my writing to the Web3 & support me in Mirror’s $WRITE race on Wednesdays. Vote here.
TECH
🃏 Indie band Me Rex drop a procedural album that’s different every time you play it
Megabear: 52 tracks of about 30 seconds each - the majority in 120bpm, same key, 4/4 time. The tarot themed site shuffles the tracks when you load it, so that you have a new experience every time (. Not the first to do this, but it’s uncommon to have something like this be so vocals driven as Megabear.
For those who are curious: Lee Martin, who developed the site, has described the technical details in, err… detail. There’s also merch, including a physical deck of the cards.
📣 Here’s everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2021 keynote (Greg Kumparak)
To me, what stood out is SharePlay, which will allow people to listen to music and watch videos together (incl. people who don’t own an Apple device). One of the video partners Apple has teamed up with for the feature is TikTok. If you don’t enjoy talking to people who have their headphones in, bad luck: “AirPods Pro will now allow you to boost the volume of voices (and control the volume of ambient noise) of those around you when you’re having a face-to-face conversation in a noisy environment.”
📑 Lil Dicky Publishing Royalties Mark Royalty Exchange's First NFT: 'There Will Be More' (Tatiana Cirisano)
“Royalty Exchange claims that the "Save Dat Money" NFT marks the first time publishing rights have been sold in the format. Other artists have been selling royalties as NFTs in recent months, however: Singer VÉRITÉ auctioned off 100% of the artist share of master recording ownership for her single "By Now" on the marketplace Zora in April. The same month, rapper Taylor Bennett teamed up with music rights management company Bluebox to sell 75% of the rights ownership of an upcoming single release.”
🪙 A Creator Currency For The Creator Economy: An Interview With Rally’s Bremner Morris (David Armano)
“If you’re a holder of a creator’s coin, not only do you get access to the benefits, but you also share in the value of the coin. This isn’t a new concept for anyone familiar with crypto, but it's groundbreaking when you consider this marks the first time where creators/artists and their communities are able to earn as a collective.”
🇨🇦 How the Junos' TikTok stars found a way to fame during the pandemic (Jackson Weaver)
“Three out of five of the "breakthrough artist" nominees at this year's Junos got their start on TikTok — where their music has collectively spawned over seven million videos.”
X
👚 Olivia Rodrigo is selling her clothes on Depop
One way to make your merch more sustainable is to just sell your stuff second-hand, which is what Olivia Rodrigo is doing on Depop although perhaps not necessarily with sustainability in mind.
🍃 Mint Fund announces batch 03
The Mint Fund helps artists mint their first NFTs, prioritizing underrepresented creators. Even if you’re not interested in purchasing NFTs, it’s a great way to discover talented artists.
🗽 New York City Plans a Central Park Mega-Concert to Celebrate Reopening (NYT)
“The mayor’s office said there would be vaccinated and unvaccinated sections at the concert, and that about 70 percent of tickets would go to people who are vaccinated.”
🤝 The Cooperation Economy (Packy McCormick)
“Liquid Super Teams supercharge the benefits of building something for yourself by creating networks of individuals who are able to enhance each others’ capabilities, while retaining the Power of the Person. They’re the good parts of a company and going solo, rolled into one.”
🗣 Kindness on making the industry more inclusive: ‘Share information — it’s quite a powerful thing to do’ (Nolan Feeney)
“One of the quickest shortcuts to exposing exploitative practices or inappropriate behavior is for artists to talk. We already had whisper networks, and maybe we kept them smaller, but it's OK to think about what your community is and maybe forge links with those people. By information-sharing, the most problematic of those looking to sign or manage those artists, they'll have no place to hide.”
MUSIC
Dengue Dengue Dengue’s description on some of their profiles is: “A tropical storm of electronic psychedelia directly from Lima, Perú.” Quite accurate. Often times dark, moody, and always danceable. A versatile duo, that I’ve seen play at cumbia, trap, and techno parties.