✘ Every gig ticket is an app 🎟️ The next wave of blockchain-adoption in music
- GenAI the next Napster? - Gender inequality in music - Voice-Swap 'Agency' for artists - Parting the infinite fog - Decoding emerging narratives - Get Paid guide updated
Engagement drives everything in our current economies. Whether it’s Creator, Crypto, or Music all of them become more valuable as more people engage. As such, most major players are focused on increasing their engagement. Instagram focuses on metrics that increase people’s time spent on the platform. Ethereum has a ‘team next billion’, and music - well, music always wants more ears, streams, cassettes, etc. Music has another quality, which is that it’s a great driver of engagement for other players. If we’re looking at crypto, this is not immediately evident. The current driver for the uptick in interest in crypto seems to be Bitcoin’s price. First, I’ll discuss the implications of that before I turn to how music, through ticketing, will drive us forward.
It’s always about Bitcoin
Crypto almost has a desire for broader adoption, but it’s inherent speculative nature doesn’t suit mainstream adoption. Yes, the promise of quickly 10x-ing your money makes many people invest in a bit of crypto, but that doesn’t constitute deep engagement with a blockchain. Recently, approval of Bitcoin ETFs by the SEC in the USA there’s now a new way to invest in the cryptocurrency. Basically, it allows people to invest in Bitcoin through a fund without the need to touch Bitcoin, wallets, or blockchain tech. Now, the new inflow of investment drove the price of Bitcoin up. This can be considered a net positive as the whole ecosystem thrives on Bitcoin’s price. However, it can also be seen as fuel for the speculative bubble of crypto. In other words, it’s the perfect example of the dichotomy of blockchain adoption: on the one hand, there’s the promise of a decentralized web - driven by a decentralized currency - and on the other hand, there’s the always present speculative element. Through speculation, blockchain adoption grows as money and people interacting with the blockchain flow through the system. However, it also leads to bursting bubbles and crypto winters and seemingly endless scandals. So is it really about Bitcoin?
It’s never about Bitcoin, let’s music
While Bitcoin’s price is what most people in the world look at, blockchains keep developing use cases. And now, with the seemingly sudden introduction of another unregulated world of AI there’s a pertinent role for some of the blockchain fundamentals: providence, accountability, transparency. Here, music is once again a canary in the coal mine. If, for example, microlicensing is a solution to monetization around AI then a blockchain-based technology will surely be what it’s built on. These are not Web2.5 solutions or approaches, this means taking full advantage of blockchain tech to solve real-world problems.
Beyond issues of verification and transaction, blockchain tech has allowed creatives to reimagine what pillars of the music industry can do: from albums to artist-fan connections. NFTs drove most of those experiments, but there’s another layer there: this was mostly about monetization without speculation. Sure, some artists wanted their music NFTs to become more valuable over time, and some might still do that. But the established connections are actually more valuable. The tech allowed little ecosystems to be built up around artists. This points towards every artist being their own app, a small app on a larger protocol layer.
Every ticket is an app
Exactly a year ago, Dan Fowler wrote about ‘the new baseline’ for crypto music:
“Artists who have engaged in “web3 music” so far have learned the basics of how this thing works. As have fans and collectors who have picked up NFTs and/or engaged in DAOs and communities. As things develop forwards, they will be the next generation’s “old” generation, leading them forwards.”
All of these artists had to learn the hard way, so to speak. They all had to build their own ideas with the available tech. At the same time, one of the biggest real-world use cases for blockchain adoption in the music industries has always been ticketing. A part of our industry, and others, which has strong near monopolistic players with exorbitant fees and terrible scalpers. Two things every ticket buyer hates and which blockchain tech can actually solve for.
Moving forward, the tech has developed to make it ever more easy to use blockchain-based ticket solutions. This week, Open launched to create a new protocol layer for ticketing on the blockchain. It’s a next step for the GET Protocol and GUTS tickets, which I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter.
Two years ago, every blockchain-enthusiast musichead talked about Sound.xyz which provided a way for artists to redefine the value of their music. Lots of artists built connections through there and other applications. Now, instead of creating a new asset, they can start with a ticket and build from there. Everyone understand a ticket, and each ticket will become a world of connections.
Finance, of course
One of the major problems for independent artists of all kinds is access to funds. It would be my guess that most readers of this newsletter have joined a crowdfund for an artist to be able to record an album or go on tour. All of this can meet through the ticket. The idea from Open is simple, using decentralized finance tools to reimagine event financing. First, accept that a concert ticket is more than a code to give you access to the event. It’s a first step in a journey you, the ticket buyer, will go on with the artist, the ticket seller.
As an artist, instead of finding a loan you can put up your future ticket sales as collateral to pre-finance all the costs to an event. Now, this event doesn’t have to be a concert, it can also be different things people will want access to. But let’s stick to the event example. Different financing pools will be available for artists to tap into with varying interest rates. Quite a lot needs to happen to pull this together: successful events on the one side and lenders on the other. But scale doesn’t matter, this will work for a 200 person event just like it will for a 10k person event. And each time it does, each ticket sold is the entry point in the artist’s world, the first block of many connections. Moreover, unlike digital collectibles, tickets are definitely something fans want. We won’t have to argue about that.
The artist ecosystem
The next wave of blockchain adoption will come from the tech finding its way into the everyday lives of more and more people. Instead of concocting new assets to play around with, this will be more about integration into existing systems. Bitcoin ETFs are an example, but for music I feel tickets will be the major driver. Every artist has their ecosystem. Tickets can be the application to a more independent and interconnected artist ecosystem.
LINKS
🙊 Is generative music really the next Napster? (Jessica Powell)
“An impressive technical feat is no guarantee for mass adoption, and if there’s one thing humans have proven from the start, it’s that we like to create and express ourselves. Push-button creation loses its novelty pretty quickly unless we can find a way to truly make it ours–and no one has fully cracked that yet.”
✘ While I support Jessica’s message here that creation will come to the fore more due to GenAI adoption, there’s also another element at play. What she calls ‘push-button creation’ here will get so much better and it will flood the market place. What are the licensing structures we can put in place for that? Can we even conceive those and then implement them?
🏳️🌈 Gender inequality in music mirrors the challenges of streaming… as do its opportunities for change (Hanna Kahlert)
“There have always been ‘cookie cutter’ models of success, limiting artists’ ability to be unique or creative. But there have always been fewer of those models available for women to fit into than men, and fewer still for women of colour. Online abuse is a shared struggle for all, but women experience it more than men, and gender expansive individuals experience it more than women. Financial struggles are one of the most common reasons artists of all identities consider quitting – but women are far more likely to discover being underpaid compared to same-level colleagues than men are… the list goes on.”
✘ Hanna also outlines how artists individually buck this trend by going direct to fan. Let’s see if that’s a pathway to more institutional change.
🗣️ Why Voice-Swap wants to be an ‘Agency’ for artists’ AI voices (Kristin Robinson)
“In addition to seeing AI voice technology as a useful tool to engage fans of notable artists like Heap and make translations of songs, the Voice-Swap team also believes AI voices represent a major opportunity for session vocalists with distinct timbres but lower public profiles to earn additional income. On its platform now, the company has a number of session vocalists of varying vocal styles available for use; Voice-Swap sees session vocalists’ AI voice models as potentially valuable to songwriters and producers who may want to shape-shift those voices during writing and recording sessions.”
✘ There are many, many things to talk about when it comes to AI and its impact, but there are initiatives out there that focus strongly on ethical implementations and creating fairer models of revenue distribution.
🌫️ Parting the infinite fog (Lex Bronze)
“…this is not a polemic against AI. Instead it is a criticism of a particularly pernicious commodification of AI whose purpose is to leverage others intellectual property (whether licensed or unlicensed) for additional financial gain. In automatic music creation, we have designed a system which simultaneously denies us the pleasures we receive from the process of making music, whilst creating an almost infinite fog of 'content', one which threatens to obscure from view the creations of those who persevere in cherishing the human craft.”
✘ A really good, and necessary, piece on how we need to look at, protect ourselves, and take control of some of the outrageous impact of GenAI. We have to make sure that we can steer our little ships of creativity through the seas of content.
🔓 Unlocking future potential: Decoding emerging narratives (Serdar Paktin)
“I advocate for comprehensive research and analysis into the semiotic coding of these pivotal systems. Understanding their current semiotic landscape and identifying areas for transformation is essential. This endeavour will provide invaluable insights for clients and businesses, guiding them to linguistically and visually align their brands with these evolving systems for a sustainable future.”
✘ Excellent thoughts here from Serdar on the need to get a more holistic understanding of some of the buzz words shaping our societies and cultures.
🦮 IPO, PPL and PRS for Music relaunch ‘Get Paid’ guide for musicians (Stuart Dredge)
“The UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has worked with PPL and PRS for Music on a revamped version of the ‘Get Paid Guide’ for musicians … [The] initiative that gives musicians information on making sure their metadata is accurate. Originally launched for songwriters and composers, the new version also addresses artists and their managers.”
✘ The Get Paid Guide has been updated, what more is there to say? Check it out.
MUSIC
Max Cooper’s latest is an EP called ‘Seme’, but it’s also a much larger project that will premiere at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Max has this uncanny ability to make electronic music sound organic (or perhaps not so uncanny considering he has a PhD in computational biology). The tracks on this EP bring together old and new in terms of musical composition and it’s an amazing ride to be on.
Yeah Maarten 👏👏👏