✖️ Three Web3 principles that will permeate online culture in the next 10 years
And: Music NFTs' PFP moment; Web3 fashion labels; NFTs as magic beans; Audius' metaverse radio; Codable music videos; Meta usernames; Boss women in Baile Funk
The emerging web3 is a cultural moment. It builds on top of what has come before. While not everything will move towards web3 tech stacks, there will be a consumer expectation of services to behave more like the principles common in the web3.
Find out why three of the most important ones are:
Data autonomy
Interoperability
Measures of progress
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TECH
🌊 $STREAM Season 1: Introducing our inaugural collaborative report on music & Web3 (Cherie Hu)
Creating some extra room in this space today to highlight what Cherie Hu and Water & Music are up to. In short, they’re moving some of their activity into the web3 which means they’re tokenizing the community and doing NFT drops. As a long-term reader, community member and contributor to W&M, I’m really excited to see this direction and this inaugural report, to which my co-editor Maarten contributed as one of the project leads.
🖼 Will music NFTs ever get their PFP moment? (Water & Music)
“If it is indeed true that the medium is the message, then what is the distinct musical language of Web3? Put another way, what kinds of creative processes does blockchain technology uniquely encourage and enable? What can we expect from crypto’s version of the 15-second hook?”
🧥 Designer Realms 101: A Breakdown for Every Web3 Fashion Label (DIGITALAX)
“Content is currency and is vital for ensuring that you can not just keep your community up to date and strongly involved with your activity and building, but also, it is the direct way to communicate with the broader market.”
🥔 Magic Beans: What is the best mental model for NFTs? (Venkatesh Rao)
“An NFT represents an access pass to an unspecified, generative possible future associated with an object. It is a key to a possible world. A key that is distinguishable from other keys. A key to a world that may or may not open up. A key that carries some hints of the kinds of locks it might unlock.”
📡 Audius Is Building a Radio Station in the Metaverse (Eli Tan)
“The partnership is Audius’ latest push to bring its tokenized music model to the mainstream. The service is modeled more after SoundCloud than Apple Music or Spotify, allowing users to upload their own music monetized through tokens instead of royalties.”
X
🔐 Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished. (Maddison Connaughton)
For me, the moment web3 really clicked was when I owned my username and many of the services I used were able to read my username NFT from my wallet, so that I could carry that name across sites. A name I own. If you don’t own your digital assets, situations like that described in this article can occur.
👩💻 DojaCode: The First Ever Codable Music Video Experience (Doja Cat)
Doja Cat partnered with Girls Who Code to create a music video that also teaches basic programming. Doubt this is actually the ‘first’, but definitely the first one I’ve seen since starting this newsletter six years ago that’s actually worth sharing.
💰 Utopia Music’s Plan to Unlock Value for Creators (Dan Runcie)
“Utopia’s goal is to help creatives monetize beyond the end product. It views experiential music as an opportunity to develop new rights and attribute income from those rights to artists. That includes songwriting, collaborations, promotions, and other forms of content that drive value to platforms.”
🇧🇷 “Boss women”: An interview with female funk MCs Tasha and Tracie Okereke (Emily May & Rodrigo Guima)
“The music industry has always been oppressive for women, as has society in general. When women become visible in the [baile] funk scene, they are listened to: in funk, your appearance and age really don’t matter. It’s about your voice, your music, and people’s ability to access it. But it’s the question of access and distribution that’s the problem, as most funk studios are run by men.”
💼 PDF: Managing Expectations report focuses on producers & songwriters (MMF)
“For the first time in our annual survey we asked respondents to identify if they had a private pension. Only 6% of respondents indicated they had made pension provisions in this way. With by far the majority of managers either self employed as freelancers or running their own businesses it appears managers are somewhat limited in preparing for their long term futures.”
PATREON
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MUSIC
French hardcore master Von Bikräv has a new album out. Mind you, this is not hardcore punk I’m talking about, but the electronic type of hardcore also known as gabber. He’s part of the phenomenal Casual Gabberz collective, who have done a lot to pioneer new sounds and styles and bring new fans to the subculture.
This is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but basically every Dutch person in their 30s grew up with this type of sound - it was literally in the charts (btw, though I live in Berlin, I’m actually not from Germany). Not for the faint-hearted, but I hope some of you enjoy 200% Bibi.