Creator CTOs: Artistic approaches to Web3 music tech

Recorded: Aug. 23, 2022 Duration: 1:04:19

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Hey, John, how's it going?
- Good, thank you.
How are you? Fantastic. I'm doing good as well except for it's a very cold day. Cold day here in Khrutiba, but it's all good. Excited about this conversation today. Absolutely.
What's called over in Karchiba, probably like about like 30 degrees Celsius? So I did not live in stereotypical Brazil, right? When I woke up this morning was three degrees Celsius.
19 so it's not as cold as you guys have it but it's cold for us. Yeah, that's definitely go. That's definitely cool. Cool. Alrighty, people are joining. Excited for this. Just a second. Let me bring up everybody to the speakerboard.
All right, this is, the keyboard is filling up. We almost have everybody. By the way, if you are a speaker in the Spanel, please just hit the mic, request button so I can read you to the speaker board so we can start in a minute. Thank you.
In the meantime, everybody is right on the stage. Welcome. It is a pleasure to be in touch with you today and have this amazing conversation that I am very much looking forward to.
and a quick question for the opulence account. Who is many of the account today? Is it Fernando or Lee? Yeah, it's me, Fred, Fernando here. Hey, Fernando, how's it going? I don't think good, man. To the sad, but I keep on here. All right, all right. Brazil is staking over
this thing and I know I can feel it. Fantastic. Alrighty, do we have everybody in the stage? Let me check real quick. We're just waiting for Aubrey. Alright, cool. Well, since we're only missing Aubrey, I think I can
started with just the basic intro and then as soon as all rejoins and I'll just bring you to the speaker board. But while everyone, thank you very much for being here today and welcome to the Creator, CTOs, artistic approaches to Web 3 Music Tech Twitter spaces today with the movers and shakers of the music industry in Web 3.
For those of you who don't know me, I am for a distance from the hardware foundation. It is an absolute pleasure to host this conversation today. If you are one of our speakers, please just click on the request. You speak a little microphone icon on the bottom left of those two spaces so I can bring you to the speaker board. I don't want to waste any time today because
because myself and I'm sure the entire community are very excited and dying to hear what our speakers have to share. So let me begin with a very quick round of introductions of our amazing speakers today. I am joined today by John Woods, the CTO at the Algorithm Foundation. I'm joined as well by Aubrey Ederson,
the co-founder and CTO at NCC, the new computer corporation, Brandon Wolf, the CTO and Napster, Fernando Cruz, the CMO and Opulus, Emilovo, the CTO and Napster, Andy Kempel, the solutions architect, and applied blockchain, and also by who am I missing
here, Greg, which is the CGO at NCC, the new computer corporation as well. So everybody is a true pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much for taking the time to be here today. And before we dive right into our conversation, just a quick round of announcements, this chat will be recorded and it's going to be available right here
on Twitter for 30 days and the format will be very very simple. So I have lots of questions that I'm going to ask one at a time and we will rotate amongst the speakerboard for their answers and opinions. So if you're a speaker and you like to chime in on any question just please raise a hand by clicking the little heart shaped icon on the bottom of the three spaces.
about to raise your hand or just wait until the current speaker is finished and unmute yourself to speak. And before we get started, I just want to thank our amazing community for showing up and for the ever-present strong support for our growing and our booming ecosystem. So before we dive right in, any initial words that any of the speakers want to share today,
just happy to be here Fred. Let's go.
Yeah, pleasure to be here with you. Yeah, same looking forward to fantastic. All right. So let's dive right in my first question for you, just you know, just to get our motor running is what is one of your top music memories and also do you play any instruments?
John, we can start with you if you want. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. But do I, can you hear me? Okay, because last time I was on a Twitter space, it sounded like I had my, I had been to the dentist. Okay. I, yeah, you're gonna go.
Okay cool. So, okay, yes I play guitar. I've been playing guitar since I've been about like 13 or 14 I think. And so I mean when I got a job and a family and that I had to kind of scale down my ambition, but I used to play using
a Marshall half stack I had like a 1960s A cab and a TSL like triple super lead Marshall head a bunch of different pedals a fender strata caster American build I also had a Mexican strata and so it's they had these fender strata caster's
iconic guitars used to be built in the US and also in Mexico and also in China. They had different qualities depending on where they were built. So I had a Mexican and a US strap and then my brother had like a Les Paul classic and in some verse tobacco. So I can't wait to find out where we very much enjoyed rock and roll and used to play
allowed my parents would have wanted. I think maybe from a musical memory, I've got lots of different gigs. I'm trying to think what was probably my, you know, it's hard to know. I think probably one of the more, I think Guns and Roses recently, they were pretty good. They played in Dublin that was pretty good.
Probably one of my favorite memories is I wanted to see Prince live the iconic prince and he played in in my hometown of Malahide in Dublin and I went with my dad and it was great and he played purple rain and it rained and it was awesome. So yeah, I'll leave it there
Fantastic, thanks John Love and I'm super jealous of our setup by the way I have just one red fenders Trader Caster you did it's enough for me to play my green day and my nausea osm until that's been for me All right a guy anyone else want to share this story?
I used to live across the street from Neil Young in Santa Cruz and I was a little kid. I was probably five or six and at one point they were rehearsing in his living room and it was just like during the period when he was playing like really crunchy metal
type, you know, like very, very heavy music in the later 70s. And I just like stood outside the house. I like didn't go to school. I just stood there, like listening to the sound cracking out and it was like, oh no, I'm in trouble.
Awesome Fernando, do you have anything to share with us? Yeah sure, I know most people wouldn't consider an instrument or a musician but I'm DJ since I was 12 and working on the electronic music.
business since the time. And yeah, I think one of my top memories regarding music and the vast live show that I've been to is definitely 21 pilots in Lola Paloza to
2017 definitely the best experience in music. Anya, just good to be here with you guys. Also love it. I Greg, Brandon, anything to share? Emmy?
I'll go. I got so many music memories. I mean, I was fortunate that plays a military musician in the Marine Band. That was stationed in Hawaii, which was really rough. But fortunately, it was more than just John Phillips.
Suza, we actually had a full show band, rock band, and I did a little sound engineering. And I play a little bit of a guitar. I have just a basic acoustic that I just kind of strum on from time to time, and then the rest of it's all air.
Air guitar count.
Absolutely does.
Like Fernando, I'm really into EDM music, so I'm about to start learning how to play on the decks. I butcher the piano sometimes, but I think the most amazing memories I have
have is just post 2020 pandemic being at any live show where everyone is having their best time and it's so amazing to see people come together in their tens of thousands and really enjoy life for like 90 minutes, two hours, however long people are playing.
Yeah, I'll echo what Amy says, seeing Fred again and I think like just the release of Post-Pandemic and how much his music meant to people, also as a former DJ, seeing someone take things to another level has been pretty, pretty special.
Absolutely love it. Thank you very much for sharing this awesome to get to know this little part of you, but I know now I think you're ready to hit it up and we want to dive into the cool questions because this is what the community really wants right so I have a question for all of you and feel free where
want to take the lead history is what do you currently see as like one of the fundamental issues that keep people awake from making a living as a musician right and if there were any any tech and web too that has helped
or that has further no hindered or entrenched the problem that doesn't allow you know basically musicians to make a living out of music. Do you have any thoughts on that? Anything you'd love to share and basically how are you tackling this problem in your own products?
I can jump in. I feel like making a living requires income in perpetuity. That means getting out of the cycle of blockbusters and
and having a broad base of musicians to like they have to be able to exist way down in the long tail. We used to talk about like in the earlier days of the web if you could just find 10,000 people
that would be your fans and would support you, you could survive. And I think that was true for a little while, particularly in the days of physical media, if you sold 10,000 records, you could kind of get to the next one. But since
digital distribution and streaming and the yields on streams have gotten so low we just don't have that that opportunity and there isn't there isn't something like a union for musicians like actors have with SAG
where they can, if they do well or get placed in a movie, they can actually make money over time. I think that musicians really need that kind of continuous infrastructure so that they don't have to constantly be releasing and be touring to scrape by.
Yeah, I don't know anything about one thing, actually in the music industry, despite versions, I have wanting to be a rock star as a kid. But it would seem to me as someone who grew up, and I loved music all the way through my life. It was a big part of my father's life. And so he taught me a lot about music.
I grew up with a walkman that used to play cassettes when I was like seven years old and I had like Michael Jackson's albums on it and then I had like you know I grew up I started listening to maybe heavier music a lot of kind of metal and rock and stuff like that and so you know I went through phases with many discs and CDs and I don't
Massive CD collection, I had a vinyl collection and then I feel like in that era of like the 90s and early 2000s like the MTV era like musicians did make money and it was this thing that could give you like a dream lifestyle and I feel like somewhere between kind of the explosion
of music piracy online like this idea of like sharing music illegally without paying for it, okay, using MP3s and other technologies like that. Somewhere between there and the move where music is nearly universally available on subscription like True YouTube music and Spotify.
and iTunes. Somewhere in that period, like the, I think all of the money was redirected away from the artist. It seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to be taken away from the artist and kind of goes on a whole bunch of middlemen. That's my perception. Maybe I'm wrong with that, but that's how it feels.
I fully agree with you, John, and I would love to see Fernando Greg, Brandon, or Amy have anything to add to that conversation.
I'll just say that I think fundamentally she's going to be distribution and reach it's kind of same as it ever was right web to help a lot in this is that that's really the value out of of a global reaching network like the internet but until offerings like you know YouTube soundcloud tick-tock for you know user
These are generated contests where artists can just put their stuff out there, have it on the free market for consumption. That would foster and garner more listenership and more fan-based to break into those markets.
has changed a lot. It's still a grind, I mean it's less effort in some cases less expense than it probably was a long time ago, but now you know it's still a grind, but the administrative truth is kind of been reduced significantly. So you know we're starting to see a lot of, I think John's points will
taken like when this was you know kind of and it was a it was an abstract thing that was you know kind of broke the market said this stuff can be in your hands instantaneously we don't longer have to wait for a CD to be stamped we no longer have to wait for a cassette to be to be to be booked and and shut out and delivered you can get this
you know, near real time, that kind of paved the way for streaming, which became the next iteration of it. And now, so, you know, that avenue that on-ramp to getting into recognition, getting to that distribution is still kind of the same, just there's a lot more tools that are at their expense.
Yeah, I agree. I think we were living in one of the best times possible and music nowadays because in the past we had CDs and musicians were making a lot of money during this time but at the same time we didn't have much opportunities for new musicians to join the music business because it were totally dominated.
by the big players. And then we went through a period in history where piracy dominated. So nobody was making good money in music, apart from doing shows. And nowadays since the beginning of the streaming and so
subscriptions, recene musicians having a little more space to make their own money online. Although it's not the same money they're making on shows, it's a good kind of, making a revenue up and a good kind of promotion. So what I think it's a fundamental issue
for musicians to make a living. So I think it's two parts. First is the money part and then it's promotion. And we started seeing a good opportunities for new musicians in Web 3 in Web 2 spotify and subscription.
platforms on streaming, but I think we're still missing some kind of community building. And that's why I think that WET 3 fits in. So not only the musicians will have a place where people will be able to stream their music, to listen to their music, but
But I think in Web 3, this space will be a place where people will be able to interact with each other. Because if you see Spotify, for example, it's a one-way. The artist is putting the music there and the audience is just listening to it. But what if people
could not only listen to music on Spotify, for example, or our platform on the Web 3, but they could also interact with the artists there. And they could get more close to the artists, and they could help the artists with feedback. They could help the artists but in their music but in their audience. So that's where I think
We're moving from a streaming platform that is just one way to the artist, from the artist to the audience, and a new place where the audience is actually participating together with the artist in this whole ecosystem.
Fantastic for anybody who touched on a point that is actually something that I wanted to get all of your opinions on so maybe we can start with you. You know you touch on the point for Web 3 being the holy grail or the herald for saving the music in this right?
to relying on artists, to empower the artists, to take ownership of their art, but it also adds a layer of complexity to this, right? Because it also makes the artists or their teams to become their own businesses. And this, of course, affects
It's the whole process, right? From the creative process, I'll go back to administrative and finance bookkeeping. So how does this affect the way that you approach building your tools at office? For example, and of course I love to hear this from every project we're presented, but how do you make this, you know,
kind of more of like a seamless approach to the artist to go from music creation, from art creation, all the way to delivery, bonding with their community, even that they're basically running solo or reverse mode teams in the current era of Web 3.
Yeah, Fred, it is a challenge. And from the beginning of Oculus, and working with multiple artists, and having hundreds of conversations with labels, managers, and artists themselves, we saw that there is a division, which
two kinds of artists. One kind of artist just sees blockchain as a crash grab. So they see the NFT, DMFT, and all the blockchain space as something that can make a couple millions and go away and just stay with them money.
And on the other side, we have the artist that wants to be the community, that wants to be an audience and take advantage from that audience. And this is the kind of artist we want to work with because this is the kind of artist that will release an MFT with opulence, for example, but without only releasing MFT and this appear with a money later on.
These are the kind of artists that will bring experience to the community that will get feedback from the next releases that will get that audience closer to them to help them view their careers. So I think this is a big challenge for us in opulus is finding the right artists.
the artists that actually want to work with their communities and to want to offer more than just get into money and fade in a way. So I think that's and that's how Web 3 will separate the artists that are really into music and really into their community from the
artists that I dress into music because of the money. So the artists that are into the Web 3 and want to build it all and want to build it with their community will thrive while the other artists that are not actually doing this all, we're just going to fade away. That's my opinion.
I would say the artists have always been businesses. Thanks Fernando. Aubrey, do you have something to share? I think you're a meager. Oh, sir, I was just going to say artists have always been businesses. I'm the idea that any of other co-hosts you have anything to add to this
conversation of basically how are we going to empower the artist to he was actually speaking oh yeah maybe can you guys give me your own sorry to me apologies yeah we can hear you guys got me yeah yeah cool I was just gonna say that I think artists are always
has always been a business. It's just where the infrastructure of business is. In the old days, a band would sign to a label and the label would really take over the business. That's kind of how musicians got into a lot of trouble in the past, era, and physical media.
is that their businesses would throw off all this money, but because they didn't manage the business, they didn't know what they were missing, and they just created a lot of dark corners and a very adversarial relationship, oftentimes with artists and labels. In this era, I think the opportunity is for a band
to actually learn more about the business that they have in the de facto way like they have a business and they should actually step forward a little bit or accumulate a community group to help them collectively manage the business or business is it's the same model
it's just the changes where the work is being done. It's an interesting point to Aubrey and I'm now co-hosting this because Fred can hear me and clearly not you. By the way this Fred is an issue that I've seen on Twitter spaces before so don't worry about it. Yeah, back to you Fred. Thank you John and Aubrey true.
apologies, right? For some reason I cannot hear you, so I'm sorry if I coach you off, but would anybody else have anything to add to this piece of the conversation? Yeah, I want to echo Aubrey's point. I think the industry is evolving, like streaming and its current forms been around 22 years.
and I think with the explosion of social media being both a blessing and a curse for artists, they have been given the right to interact with their fan base and their fan bases are encouraging them, giving them feedback to
directly through social media and that's giving them the confidence to actually want to commercialize their businesses themselves, which is why I think we're in a real sweet spot of opportunity for an artist at any level of their career to take
control of their brand as it were and move into a more creative space with whether it's live music or whether it's the recorded music, the visuals and everything that they do because most artists are true creatives and they have a vision for everything laid out so it feels like
the whole last two decades have led to this moment where the artist can truly take control of everything that is they want to achieve and commercialize it to give them that long tail runway. Yeah, it's a great point, I mean, and I just say one other thing on that is that like the technology should get out of the way. I mean, like you don't have to know
how TCP/IP works and like, you know, all the code in your computer to, you know, use SoundCloud, right? I mean, people use it all the time. So like, we should make the user experience great on Web 3, the way it is on Web 2, the way it is when you're using a MacBook or an iPad or whatever. And so like the technology just needs to get out of the way and facilitate the things that we want#
100% jumping very much and this I think opens a good avenue for me to ask the tech folks on the call what is your advice for music lovers there are also developers or you know developer enthusiasm
and want to get their feet wet into the blockchain world, how would you recommend them to get involved, get into the business, what should they be pursuing to build on the music industry in the web3 and of course in our great.
Well, there's absolutely tons of great projects in the music space on Web 3 and I maybe let some of them are in this Twitter space, so I'll let them speak to it. But in terms of just the, I guess the first touch point, I think, you know, just standard resources like we're going to be putting out some great edges.
educational content from the Algarand Foundation that explains in very simple terms what Algarand is all about, how you can build on it, how you can get involved. But of course, some of the platforms that are emerging to support artists don't even require them to have any technical knowledge and maybe I'll pass to others who are in the space
to talk about their platforms and their projects. Thanks, John. Very much looking forward to the info we're going to be putting out to help developers. But I would love to hear from Aubrey, from Brandon, and from Andy, if you have any sites to share this, how to get enthusiasts to develop on our brand new music industry.
That's a big part of our thesis is that we need to unlock the underlying power of what is in Web 3 for not only musicians but like creative people across the board and just
it easier and make it familiar and that means tooling and simplicity on all fronts. We're starting at the developer tooling level so we have a number of tools and APIs and libraries and fairly low level stuff that if you're a little
bit technical. We can accelerate you tremendously. And then, you know, over the course of this year, we're moving up the stack to add more and more UI and continue simplifying those workflows. Yeah, for us, we are going from
Web 2 to Web 3 and what we've had the staff do, the engineers, we've actually brought in Algorand to develop our outreach programs where they've kind of walked them through. This is what it means. Going through the SDKs, going through the APIs, the CLI tools, what a node means, how atomic transfers actually work.
concepts that have to be fundamental to any type of developer springboardy into actual work. After that, it becomes really exploring the art of the possible, what can be done with regards to music. We've got a lot of people like Oculus doing music in FT's. We're watching that space very heavily to see how that kind of progress
and what the parameters are going to be for that coming out of it. We're looking at a number of different offerings ourselves that we're going to be releasing on our white paper very soon. I think that's the good starting point for a developer to get into as a start to understand the fundamentals.
Yeah, I guess the other thing to add to that. Sorry, hopefully everyone can hear me this first time talking. But yeah, I think the other thing to add, I mean, if you're a developer starting out and you already have some kind of developer experience, but you're just coming to our brand, I mean,
I think it is getting easier now to develop our grand smart contracts, the amount of concepts that you need to learn with the newer versions of TL, TL 5 and 6, it is getting easier. I think just going out and just running
writing some example contracts using PayTale, using the new ABI. It is actually getting more friendly. The main thing is really just giving the development a go because I think it is getting easier.
Yeah, just to just to build on that, it's John Woods here, the the CTO of the foundation and what the Algarine Foundation are really focused on is building the ecosystem, making it easier, making the resources out there better for folks. So I think we're going to be launching
a revamped selection suite of tools all around Pytale very shortly. And so it's going to make it so much easier as someone who comes new to the space to say, "Hey, how do I do this? What's the right way to do my first app, to do my hello world on the algorithm blockchain?" And I think
When we have this single source of truth, we're going to be launching a fresh website. It's going to explain exactly how to do things. It's going to be very easy to follow a golden path. And it'll be super simple to go from your idea, right to an application that's running on the main chain. And when we launch this,
This website, this suite of tools, it's going to be a whole bunch easier than it is even today to get your idea off the ground. And on top of that, as I've mentioned before, I'm hiring dedicated resources at the foundation to produce content on platforms the way people learn today. So people are not interested in my view in sitting around
and watching lectures for an hour and a half. They don't have that to kind of time. And people consume media in a different way these days. They consume kind of two-minute videos, five-minute videos, eleven-minute videos. This is the kind of where people are at in terms of their time allocation, their kind of
I guess desire to learn in quick bite size ways so we're going to be producing long and short front content that's going to be really engaging it's going to be fun to watch great animations and it's going to be on YouTube TikTok etc so we're going to try to engage with folks the types of folks who need to learn this stuff on the platforms that they enjoy using.
John, this sounds fantastic. Do you have any timeline for this release? Anything you can share with your boss, Rob Mat? I'm going to pick it up, my friend. So in terms of like putting out a more coherent selection of dev tools, I'm hoping to do that in the coming a couple of months, same with the educational content. And then if you watch this space
matter of a month or two hopefully to get things rolling out awesome love John thanks and Brandon actually I want to circle back to a point that you mentioned when you're giving your European all the whole thing for developers to become a builder in the music to show now great you mentioned about music and if these and music to these they have actually
been an incredible revenue solution for artists, you know, in the short time they have been live, they have been alive, but they are not the full web 3 solution for musicians, right? So my question to you, and then of course I want to hear this from everybody on the board, is what other kind of solutions are you working on and now bring it to the table to be
a more complete ecosystem to allow musicians to grow, develop their communities and get known worldwide. So maybe we can start with your friends. Sure. I mean, with what we've looked at for Media NFTs, what we're calling them, it's a congruent to the MFTs that obviously
We're looking to see, we know that there has to be a smart contract backing for that. That smart contract has to be something that is allowing for distribution of funds for royalties and how the royalties are going to be tracked. That's the part that we're really focused in on now, where it's not just about
and artists who are wanting to release their own music, but also those are already signed, those that already have agreements and how we incorporate that. So those are the areas that we're still exploring. I think we've got a pretty good strategy outlined that we're hopefully going to be releasing soon to the public so that they can understand
bit more about it, but I think in terms of how MFTs will become part of our ecosystem, because we do have quite a large catalog that is already licensed, we have to make sure that we're functioning within those parameters so that we don't exclude any part of our audience that we already have.
Fantastic. Thanks, Brandon.
I definitely agree with the smart contract approach and that dovetails with our approach really well. We represent every piece of media as a capable smart contract on Algrant and it operates with an address
address almost like a little user where it can escrow funds, it can issue tokens to fractionalize payments, it can preserve legacy payment agreements like if you have an 85% deal with your old label.
you can still send them 85% of the revenue that goes through this more contract. I think that having that business intelligence built into a contract on chain that represents a piece of media is really, really key to whether
The kind of barrel head revenues coming from NFT sales or streams or even like LPs, like the solution needs to be able to aggregate all those things and roll it up into one way to kind of clear payments through.
Thank you all, we appreciate it. Anybody else wanna add to that point?
Can anybody hear me? I can't hear anyone right now. Oh, no, I got you.
Here you go.
Yeah, I can hear you too. All right, cool. Sorry. So I guess I guess I'm just still not hearing all of you whenever you speak. But is anybody want to add any points to that? Otherwise, I want to switch the gears of conversation a little bit more towards the technical product side, but any other points to add before we move on.
for not know anything. Yeah, I would just like to say that
I would say that we're not working on a food solution for the ecosystem ourselves, but the good thing about the blockchain environment and how I see it in the future is that we can focus on beauty in one platform for our users.
user where another company can focus in building another part for that same user. And somehow in the future through the technology we're speaking about, those platforms will be able to communicate to each other.
using this my contracts and using tokens so a user could go into the Oculus platform raise money for the song and then release that song that another blockchain platform using the same token and that token will be tracking all the information across
across those different platforms. That's how I think a beauty in this music ecosystem inside our grant will be helpful for the artists and in the future having this cross chain possibility as well. So not users would not only be
to do in all of this inside operand, but those tokens would also be able to press to other chains and everything could be tracked in split and done inside of blockchain. So that's how I think that as we see Nalabase
For example, the markets are dominated by the big companies and if you should, it doesn't need to bid this way. The information could be shared across different platforms using tokens. That's what I think is one of the beauties of the blockchain.
Fantastic. Thank you for that. And I want to touch on a point that Kelly who by the way is listening to us right now has been a very strong advocate over the last few years that Algarine has paid commitment to basically being the blockchain for creatives. Right. So my question to the CTOs and the CEOs and everybody that's in the speaker board today is
What makes Algarine a better fit for building the solutions for the new face of the music industry? What intrinsic benefits do you think Algarine brings to the table that allows you to build the drink products that you wanted to build on? And maybe Emil can be started with you by sharing your view on this.
Hey, Brad, I don't know if you said Emmy, but I'm going to answer anyway. It's for me, it's the fact that it's across many creative industries and so there's
always an example of something that we want to try and execute creatively that's been done so that we can learn from and that's really valuable and really exciting for us.
Yeah, I guess. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, thanks. Yeah, I guess just just to add to a bit of that. I mean, there's also just like the like in terms of the technical benefits, it's the obvious, right? I mean, like low low transaction fees is
is very important. When you're talking about fractionalizing, if you're talking about fractionalizing some kind of asset and breaking it down into really affordable fractions, it's no good doing that if you're going to charge it if your transaction fees are in the tens of dollars or the
$100 which it can be in some cases. So I think the transaction fees are really key. The other thing is just transaction volume as well, obviously, is helpful. I'd say it's thought in terms of bringing
bringing liquidity and bringing the ability to purchase royalties and purchase rights to royalties in small chunks. I think the transaction fees is the number one.
Yeah, for us, it's, you know, there's definitely the confidence of building on a technology platform that's going to be decentralized, scables, secure solving that trit lemma. It's never been for, never been hacked, never been down, that high transaction per second, so fees, all that's important to us as technologists.
importance of having a consciousness. I think what Algrant also brings is carbon negative, carbon neutral. That's important to our fan base, that's important to our users. We hear that a lot in terms of eco-friendlyness and having that consciousness. I think that also is one of the reasons why we feel confident in that platform.
I think like Brandon and Andy have done my job for me and upstage me on this so I was trying to think what what can I add to this the only thing I would say in addition to what those two guys just said is on top of that Algarans got some of the smartest guys and girls in the engineering space
So we got like some of the best cryptographers. We've got some of the best applied engineers. And so what does that mean? It means that you get things like what we launched or just about to launch with state proofs, right? We're slowly adding post quantum security to the chain. So when you have such a
a talented group of people who have such a wealth of experience in engineering and applied crypto, you end up getting a chain that's going to be very robust and is even now future-proofing against technologies that may yet emerge and have not yet emerged, right? So this is I think another important area.
I would say definitely as a development shop, I think the team is definitely something we've been very impressed by. I mean, you mentioned StatePrus there, I mean for
From our point of view, we've been following that development from a long time and already getting to consume it and getting support from the team's, from the Algrant team on that right. That is quite critical in space.
where there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of project where there's not so much trust. It's like having a team that's there is a big benefit.
Good to hear.
I would say also that like kind of unsung hero of Algrin is the the atomic transaction and for media transactions in particular we run a lot of transactions where you know we can increment a play count if token has been sent in the previous
transaction and like we do a lot of cross transaction validation that would essentially all be resident code in the smart contract if we were not able to rely on the atomic transaction mechanism the fact that we can defer that level of complexity to
to VEL1, it's massive. It lets us go forward, sort of punch above our weight in terms of transactional confidence. And also I just wanted to point out the four second finalities really important for media workflows.
send you a media asset and I can't verify that transaction for 50 seconds, 30 seconds, 90 seconds, or I'm on an L2 where a finality doesn't come for 'til the next day. It's not a safe way to transact.
Thank you always to the appreciated and everybody else just before we move along. We just want to make a quick parentheses that we're going to try to leave a few minutes of room for the community trust questions. So if you have any questions for anyone in the panel, please start hitting the mic request button and I'll bring some of you up to
speak a more than a few minutes to ask your questions, but so far we have talked a lot about the benefits of ongoing, right? And your products, the products that you're all building here. But there is a resistance that we're currently facing in the Web 3 music movement as well, which is basically the legacy music industry. How should we
presenting the Web 3 opportunity, you know, to the music labels, to the legacy music industry in general, what is the value proposition for them? And how are they responding to the imminent threat that we could potentially be causing to the legacy industry? And maybe Fernando, we can start with you on this one.
Yeah, sure. In general, we started working with some big artists to help bring more visibility to opulence in general, to establish a bigger community, and bring the eyes to teopulence.
in general. But our main objective here at Opulus is to help the small and the mid-size artists to help them raise money for their careers and to help them invest in their own businesses.
So, right now we're not targeting that much into huge labels or lagus music industry, but our main focus is into the independent artists. And as we have a big community,
of an independent artist who did a music which is a assisted company. They didn't face that much struggle from talking to artists maybe in the beginning when we were starting the beginning last year.
a little more difficult, but in general, as we're targeting those smaller artists, they're more open to engaging with new kind of technology and experimenting new things. So I think this will be a better question to the appster.
I am, we are having the conversations with all rights orders at the moment, so we can't actually make any comment on it, I'm really sorry. I can try to rescue. I feel like
The main thing that Web 3 particularly with music needs, we need to not repeat the era of file sharing in terms of inventing a solution that does not include the labels.
like right now, you know, the three major labels have 80% of music that anyone has ever heard of. It's a massive elephant in the room and I think we are in favor of running right at it. The nice thing is that we can approach
those entrenched industries with cash because there is an empowering financial model in all things Web 3. And whether it's streaming or NFTs or however, you know, the next 50 things we're going to invent around media
If we can approach rights holders and large catalogs with checks, those conversations are going to go really well. And there are going to be, I think, refreshing from the last year where there was exactly the opposite of that happened where we basically were.
trying to carry off their audience and not pay anyone. So I actually look, I'm very, very optimistic about this era and the conversations that we get to have with those kind of large-scale rights holders because I think they're going to be pleasantly surprised this time.
Yeah, in the end, if they're making money, they'll be happy about it. Yeah, that's the thing is, we can just let the checks talk.
Awesome. Thanks. And I just want to give another quick reminder for the community. If you want to ask a question to anybody, the speaker board take the advantage of this monumental meeting we have today. So just hit the mic request button and I'll bring you to the speaker board so you can ask your questions live. But I have one final question for all of you.
that we're in the turning point of Web 3 and blockchain knowledge all over the world. Even our neighbors, my parents and everybody else is starting to learn about blockchain. But to truly cross the user adoption challenge that's going to drive the revenue and all the money flowing into the space, what do you think needs to happen?
And with that said, how can we, you know, our grind as a whole for the community that went foundation and of course the community that's listening to us right now, how can we help this in both the community level and also a technical level? Yeah, for us at NAF, I mean, our part of our core philosophy has been that just
It has to be approachable. We want everyone to use the blockchain without knowing that they're using the blockchain. So as we branch into the web, three pieces, it has to be seamless for them because a lot of our users, they just want to open up the app, they want to stream some music, they just want to play music. So we have to make that as part of the engagement process of the application that we have.
So adding the social features into it, adding the direct interaction to artists, adding something of value add and utility to the platform that is Web 3 componentized, that's going to be critical for us, but it has to be very easy to use and accessible. Yeah, I just add to that, I think the exact same thing. The tech has to get out of the way.
No one cares that you're doing a femoral elliptic herb diffie helmet and riding on a TCP/IP stack that sits on a file air when they're accessing a website to book flights. So I think we just need to get it all out of the way. And I think as well, it's like to the start question, which was
And I think it's similar to Web2, right? It's like at some point folks will just go there because that's the way you do it. That's the back end on the applications and platforms that they use. And how does that happen? And the answer is we get developers to build up the web.
build a metropolis of applications, a smorers board of different options on mainchain that all are architected well, that work well, and then the users will come, right, when you have all of these different ways to interact and use different applications. And that ultimately getting those developers
to build this metropolis starts with good quality development tools, good quality educational material. That's what I think. I would echo Brandon and John's point but also just add that we have to do an education piece as well and educate people. It took streaming services a really long time to
explain to fans and users of streaming services what the benefits were. So as long as we can bring people on that journey and clearly and simply explain what the benefits are and why people should get involved, that will fast track this not taking a really long time to become mass market.
Love it Amy. Thank you for sharing. Greg Fernando. I'll bring anything to that. I would just say that yeah, I agree to you to what the guy said. This just needs to be easy to use because nowadays, it's too not easy. You still need to create an algorithm wall and pure wallets.
Myelgo and Go and Sanctuaryan's Actions and a Lager and do it all. It's way too complicated at the moment and our first tab as one of the buters on now grand is to be able to put the product out and then the next phase is to make
it easier for everyone to use. So we're going through the first part of the first page and then I think it will just start becoming easier for everyone to use it. And of course, and in education, that's Amy suggested, it's one of the the next chapters as well.
I think every platform needs a killer app. I mean, this platform, Twitter was a Ruby on Rails app in the early days when Ruby on Rails was like a fun developer toy, like it was not, nobody never
build something at scale for millions of users. The decentralized applications are all, if you look at Zoom way out, they're all very low scale still. We have like OpenC's God.
50,000 wallets or something. No one is really scaled into the consumer space with a decentralized application. That's going to happen where the people on this call are going to make those things.
And we're going to scale out to millions and hundreds and millions of users. And that's a big component of solving the problem. Yes, everything needs to get easier, but there needs to just be a kick-ass thing to do. And I mean, it's up to us to make that stuff.
Absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate it. Greg for now. They'll end anything to add or should we move on to the to the first question from the community member?
I think community questions while we have some time. Alright cool. So Chico, you have requested to be a speaker and you're a hearmer friend. What is up? Tell us your question. Yeah, can you guys hear me? Yes.
I'm pretty new to crypto mean I invested I think I'll go everything I read through a map right now. My question is the following I'm pretty sure I might be going to Qatar 2022 and
And I know you guys partnered with them. It might able to use just the alcohol coin over there to buy anything I need or want or how this can work with over there.
I don't know. John. John, I'm going to send his one to you. Yeah, sure, sure. So I think plans without it still being rolled out and there'll be an announcement soon, I think. So I can't share anything specific on it at this point, but I think folks will be excited when they see the plans.
Thanks John, I appreciate it. A to and B, Joseph Bradio to the speaker board for free to ask your question.
A is A down there, or is it just me and I'll listen to him as well?
Now I got a... Hey, town, have you got a question?
Yeah, I think we have any RAM. Sorry, Aiton. I'm going to have to demotive from Sugarborne and bring somebody else just a second. Sorry about that.
bringing up the next community member.
CryptoHop, welcome to the speaker board. What is your question to our speakers?
Hello, I'm I'm a member of the prime. I have to know that the water plan for Elvaround updates and feature plans.
Thank you for the question. We're going to be releasing some information soon on the technical upgrades there on the pipeline and they're happening on the beta net right now. So stay tuned to our channels as we release more of the information. But John, is there anything you want to add to that? Any spoilers or any alpha? Do you want to drop? Yeah, I think what's pretty cool at the moment is like state proof.
So obviously with their file signatures post quantum, they're coming, they're going to allow, they're in bed and now I think, and they're going to allow folks to build bridges really easily. Basically, state proofs take away the need to have your own validated network. So that's the coolest bit about them. You still have to do the integration on both on on on chain A and chain B. You have to contract data rent, but you
don't have to run a validator or a layer 1 to validate between the chains. Super cool stuff. In terms of the protocol, there's like an absolute bunch of stuff and there's going to be a big update on it soon, but you know towards the end of the year, we're going to see the transactions per second rise, we're going to see the finality time fall below four seconds. I mean, it's already fast, it's already
already very high number transactions per second, but it's just going to get even better. And then one thing today that I thought was pretty cool because I am a customer of ledger ledger pushed an update on their developer branch of their, you know, GitHub repo where they're working on an update to the Algorand ledger app. So ledger is a hardware wallet that folks can use.
and it's a secure way to interact with crypto. So it keeps your keys obviously in the wallet and it's hard to wallet. And one of the things I like about Ledger on Algarand was that it couldn't sign certain transactions. For example, I see Patrick here in the audience who runs the very brilliant non-fungible domains, which is like where you can have a, you know, your name
And as an example, you couldn't use ledger to interact and to claim your NFT previously. Well, with this new update that's coming very soon, after security review, you'll be able to do that. So I think the message is, protocols looking great, it's going to get even better.
And the ancillary services that are out there, things like the ledger support is getting better too. So lots of good stuff coming over the coming weeks and months. Absolutely love the ledger update. Thank you very much, John, for sharing with us. A ton, one more shot at your question. Can you unmute yourself and try again? Hey, can you all hear me? Yeah, go ahead. All right.
I just want to do I don't really have a question. I just really wanted to hop on here and say I'm super excited for what Napsters doing on the algorithm platform I actually spoke to Anne Marina yesterday for the product manager role you guys are hiring for so when I saw this Twitter space I was like I got a hop on there and say
something. I personally, MA Builder and Web 3 have launched a lot of projects in the PFP space. I've actually helped with a few entertainment clients. We handle all of the Web 3 work for Lyrical Lemonade, which is a popular hip hop YouTube director kind of channel. They do a lot of music videos and we've
help them do. Toe-congating for carten holders to go to IRL events and other types of utilities. So yeah, I'm kind of like on the music NFT space. I think the consumption of music as an NFT model doesn't make sense. The royalty model doesn't make sense. I think it really needs to be
like what you guys have talked about about fan interaction with the artists, you know, measuring and artists support at a moment in time to reward them at a future date. And it also needs to be about another thing that's been discussed about is like making the user experience seamless, you know, like baking it into platforms where people already consume.
music, which I think is a huge opportunity for Napster since they already have a really dope streaming platform. I think they can find ways to bake in the Web 3 component into the larger Web 2 user experience where me as a consumer, I don't really even need to get involved with the crypto elements if I don't want to. I don't need to figure out
how to go buy Algorand or put it in my wallet or purchase the NFT. Maybe it's just a glorified fan club that sends me an NFT for consuming or maybe it is an NFT that lets me purchase a limited edition merch item or get access to an IRL event early. I think because
The current market is so new. There's like a first mover advantage just like with any content creating platform like you know the people who got on YouTube early have the most subs the people who are putting out content on any platform early get the most subs I think because the first artists that are putting music out as an ft
These are the first ones. They're able to sell out micro collections, but it's not sustainable. And I don't think selling music as an NFT really makes sense. So I'm excited to see how Napster can leverage their platform, can leverage the amazing tech behind Algorand to do millions of micro transactions
on a blockchain with little to zero gas and kind of bake it all those costs into the experience without putting that burden on the user, but still have a web three way to measure kind of how a person is interacting with an artist so that they can have a, you know, back and forth, uh, relationship.
Absolutely. Thank you very much. I don't for coming up and sharing. Fortunately, we're the top of the hour, but I don't know if maybe Brandon or Amy want to respond to that before we rip up. Yeah, I like the name dropping on that too for the that's your heart for the position. That's great. You're hired, buddy. Now, we'll just just want to agree with a lot with what you're saying and part of#
What we're doing is, you know, how do we make this as approachable for people's possible? We have to take into account the music fan, not the crypto fan alone. So do we even use terms like NFT? Do we even use terms like tokens, things like that? Do we make it as seamless to where they don't even know that they're using it? That's kind of our strategy and how we're designing the product going forward. But thanks#
Thank you very much, Madam, to the British and everybody. Unfortunately, we're at the top of the hour and we're not going to have time to take any more questions from the community, even though the queue is huge. I think I have over 10 requests here. But this has been a fantastic conversation and I cannot thank you.
all enough John Aubrey, Brandon, Fernando, Paige, and everybody for taking the time to share reviews in today with our friend family. Is there anything that any quick parting words that you want to share with us before we wrap up today?
I just like to thank you all for the opportunity for being here and I really appreciate the time with you guys and also to the audience and I'm very excited to debut in an algorithm and excited for the future that is about to come. So thank you all and have a great day and hope to speak to you all soon again.
Yeah, thanks for having us great.
Appreciate discussions. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you very much everybody. As a quick last word to all the devs and tech enthusiasts listening to us live right now or checking all the recording later, please open up a new tab on your favorite browser right now in here.
www.yourl.org. Thank you very much everyone. I hope you all enjoyed the conversation and have a fantastic day. Catch you soon.
Thank you for it. Bye.
Thanks, cheers. - Cheers everybody, thanks.

FAQ on Creator CTOs: Artistic approaches to Web3 music tech | Twitter Space Recording

Who is the CTO at the Algorithm Foundation?
John Woods is the CTO at the Algorithm Foundation.
Who is the co-founder and CTO at NCC?
Aubrey Ederson is the co-founder and CTO at NCC.
Who is the CTO at Napster?
Brandon Wolf is the CTO at Napster.
Who is the CMO at Opulus?
Fernando Cruz is the CMO at Opulus.
Who is the CTO at Applied Blockchain?
Andy Kempel is the CTO at Applied Blockchain.
Who is the CGO at NCC?
Greg is the CGO at NCC.
What is John Woods' musical memory?
John Woods saw Prince perform live in his hometown of Malahide in Dublin. Prince played Purple Rain and it rained, making for an awesome experience.
What is Aubrey Ederson's musical memory?
Aubrey Ederson listened to Neil Young rehearse in his living room when he was a kid. Neil Young played very heavy music in the later 70s.
What is Fernando Cruz's musical memory?
Fernando Cruz's top musical memory is seeing Twenty One Pilots live at Lollapalooza in 2017.
Which speaker plays guitar and used to play in a band with a Marshall half stack and a Fender Stratocaster?
John Woods used to play guitar in a band with a Marshall half stack and a Fender Stratocaster.