NFTs, Crypto, “Web3" and the Music Industry
Going beyond the cliché right-click-save and climate change arguments
“Hey I just took a screenshot of your monkey jpeg and now I own it lol.”
“NFTs are melting the ice caps.”
Those are the two most common arguments about crypto and NFTs — overheard these days everywhere from Twitter Spaces, to college classrooms, to the checkout line at Target. I’d argue it’s one of today’s zeitgeists and tbh it’s turning me into a literal bored ape. It seems there’s no possible fate for complex, nuanced discussions and ideas other than to funnel them into a balsamic reduction of binary oil and vinegar dressing. And as we know, unless it’s the good shit from Modena, a salad dressing (like a discussion) needs more ingredients. So… I’ll attempt to come at this already tired topic from angles that might bring it home for music people and other interested parties. Wish me magic internet tokens of luck…
Let’s get these bits out of the way
If you want to actually learn about crypto, don’t read a rock band’s blog, DYOR, fren. Having said that:
- Buying a jpeg for $200k that really is just a piece of code that you don’t actually understand that points to an image link on some centralized web-server is 99/100 probably a dumb bet and not “owning a piece of internet history”.
- Yes, Proof Of Work mining consumes a lot of energy and IMO might not be the long-term solution to digital storage of value, but there are many sides to this including incentivising renewable energy sources. Plus Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake could be a revelation.
- Bitcoin Bros, ETH snobs, Doge dummies (and let’s not forget the insufferable XRP Army) are all real and you should avoid getting cornered by any of these at a party.
Having said that (I already said that):
In 1999, David Bowie predicted the future of the internet better than most scientists and journalists, and I believe that blockchain, crypto and even NFTs are the arrival of a similar inflection point in technological history as it relates to human organization. If this is true, then this will affect virtually every category of human, including college-dropout musicians like ourselves. We need to pay attention to it.
T-Pain Viral Tweet has hit on something we’re all thinking
One of the lessons that the Napster era taught us is that by the time the dinosaurs figure out what’s going on, it’s probably too late. Billboard will have you believe that streaming ultimately “saved the music industry” but you could easily argue that in reality it consolidated and centralized the wealth and power even further for the major labels, publishers, and now tech companies… who are all owned by giant finance conglomerates anyway. They are the whales and we are the plankton.
How do we do it differently this time?
One of the best takes on power shifts that I’ve recently come across is Balaji Srinivasan’s idea that the pendulum swings back and forth between centralization and decentralization, each time evolving and changing a little:
“So basically, centralization, de-centralization, re-centralization — is like entity >> unbundling >> rebundling. It’s like CDs >> individual MP3s >> playlists. It is newspapers >> individual articles >>Twitter feeds. It is countries >> anarchy >>new countries, new cities.” — Balajis Srinivasan on the Tim Ferris Podcast
This 4.5 hour discussion requires stamina just to listen to, but it is truly fascinating and packed with high quality, rapidfire ideas and information that seemingly arrive from the future.
If we run with the idea that the music business is currently at peak centralziation — think Sony, UMG, Warner, Live Nation, AEG, Spotify, Apple, iFart Radio — then perhaps we are primed for a swing the other way? Like any technology, cryptocurrency, smart contracts, NFTs, DAOs etc can do equal good or harm… they are the tools that can either get us to a more creative, distributed, open and rewarding business model, OR they can help us further shoot ourselves in the foot. I personally feel that the potential for transparency in accounting, DEFI album advances and financing, creative automated legal structures through NFT contracts and DAOs, micropayments, user-generated derivative agreements, composable global metadata standards and royalty frameworks, remote and secure collaboration toolsets, more inventive forms of crowd-funding… these are all things that musicians, fans and music-adjacent people and artists should be discussing and paying attention to.
We need to educate ourselves or the next Spotify will be paying us less than $.003 per stream. Yes, finding crypto-rich art-collector Patrick Bateman types to pay us 0.2 ETH for a new song with a mediocre 3D visual loop is a (sort-of?) cool take on bringing back patrons of the arts, but is that model really going to cut it for us and stimulate a global music industry? Do I need to answer that for you?
Where do I start?
To dive a little deeper, I highly recommend listening to Naval Ravikant and Chris Dixon on Tim Ferris to get a great overview on the whole Web3 buzz and where it all is heading. Yes, there’s a whiff of venture-capitalist-circle-jerk, but that doesn’t disqualify the principles or invalidate many of the visions that are arising out of it. After all, we’re not gonna build the next internet ourselves, we need VCs and coders for that.
We (KONGOS? Oh yeah, the Come With Me Now band) are not going to pretend that we understand it all, or that we have any answers yet, but it would be great if the discussion could move beyond the obfuscation and black and white arguments that occur on discord, twitter and other polarity-inducing rabbit-holes. To be clear, it’s good to have a healthy skepticism and disdain for the movement, but maybe even cooler if artists and others in these circles started to engage in the discussion in a real way. After all, the tech that has made many of our careers possible is about to change yet again in a big way, and it would be cool if we can all find a way to continue avoiding the necessity of getting “real jobs”.
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Water and Music: a good resource for investigating Web 3 Music
