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Music NFTs 🎧 The Next Web3 Wave with @sidneyswift @naithanjones
Recorded: Aug. 30, 2022 Duration: 1:21:01Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you for being here.
We have some incredible friends joining us for a conversation this evening, speaking
about the next Web3 music wave.
We're here with Nifty Kit, and I'd like to say hi to my friends, Dan and Jessica.
Hi, Jessica.
Hey, guys.
Yo, yo.
How's it going tonight?
We are hanging out tonight, and we are having a nice chat about all three of Music Web3.
We have our friend Sidney Swift with us.
We have our friend Nathan Jones joining us, and we have an exciting little topic lineup.
So we hope everyone here can get some value out of the conversation as we chop it up with
some friends from Music Web3 around the metaverse of things.
Dan, how are you tonight?
How's everything going?
Good, good.
Busy as always.
There's no weekends in Web3, so I don't even know what day it is anymore.
Sometimes they're starting to blur.
But, yeah, definitely staying busy and hitting the ground running.
Any traveling for the end of the summer here?
Which is kind of like a loaded question based on, you know, your last answer.
No rest for the weekend.
Yeah, probably not.
Yeah, exactly.
I feel like no weekends in Web3 would be like a great retreat name for people in Web3.
Who wants to invest?
No, I'm kidding.
Right.
I see we have some friends in the audience.
I'd like to shout out Hit Piece in the house, Ari in the house, Juvie in the house, Chris in the house.
Welcome.
We're just waiting for some friends to join us.
The world is yours.
You want to play some music while we wait to have some people file in?
Yeah, let's do it.
I'll play a joint real quick, and we'll come back.
Please, everyone, share.
Please, everyone, share.
Thanks.
Please, all you have a seat.
Please, all you have a seat.
Woo-hoo!
And this is what he said.
I'm good.
Oh, we're good.
Thank you so much for thinking.
always stood out to me was kind of what what is the incentive layer of a business and going back
to um all disruption when you think about it it all starts at the incentive layer of these businesses
and so you know with the opaque nature of any business there's all it's always going to be
um an opportunity for something to come along and create value um where there's some opaqueness and
i think that's certainly what's going on here with web3 um and music and i think that's why a lot of
not only music artists but artists in general and i think creatives in general um have have took to
experimenting wildly with web3 i think we're i think we're in very very uh early days of this
um i think there's no definitive proclamations that can be made about what's what it's going to be
uh 10 years from now um it looks a lot like the experiments that were uh you know made in in the
early web two days of web one days i should say um as far as the music business goes it's interesting
the music business is really changing if you talk to a lot of the executives there seems to be a kind
of a switch over happening between the old guard and these new up-and-coming executives that came
that came of age with with mobile phones in their pocket which is a different mentality
of understanding how consumers work and so the old guard of executives didn't come up that way
and so there's a new way of thinking that's starting to emerge and the business you know
from our conversation with managers with artists and with labels the business is certainly changing
and adapting um to what's happening and so um i i do see a lot of different um uh thoughts on where
the industry is going and there doesn't seem to be a unified idea uh at least not at from the indie
labels or to the big labels on on what is going to happen in the next five years i mean we all know
what the existing infrastructure is and how labels get paid how artists get paid um but i think there's
an openness to experiment now that i i haven't seen i haven't seen in a long time so i'm looking
forward to this conversation and digging deeper into that yeah we're definitely in the era of
experimentation and exploring and where it's okay to fail uh we're in an era where we've tapped out
the resource we've been able the resources we've been able to exploit in web three and get the most
out of and you know really squeezed the most per dollar almost uh and now we're here and we're
experimenting and exploring more than ever uh nate is there may be one thing that you're seeing while
you're out there with these companies that is the lead that is the lead things they're trying to change
whether old guard or new guard that you're you're seeing you are seeing quicker implementation
across the board is there any are there any uh anything standing out there yeah there's a few
artists i talked to one in particular just got signed by a major label and um right off the bat is
is keeping all of his masters signed a very i would say for a first deal a very nice lucrative size
uh signing bonus and the deal effectively acts like a joint venture between the label and the artist
more so than you know what some artists would consider to be uh a more like employee ish type
relationship with the label um whereby you know you're renting services from the label and you're kind
of under their thumb creatively in this case um there's a lot of creative control in the deals that i'm seeing
um and there's a more of a revenue split type of a an arrangement between the artists and the label which is
it's more of a joint venture and a partnership than it is a typical label deal because the artist is
going to own their their masters outright um and then you know on the back end there's splits on
licensing and and some of the other revenues and then they're going to give up some things on the
back end uh as far as merch and some of the nil rights stuff that the label might want to do if the
artist blows up which is which will which is the the label saying we're taking a bet on this artist and
if it works out we're going to make our money times 10 so it doesn't really matter i think the labels
have figured out that you know for artists that do end up making it big there's a lot more money
to be made in the back end of all that kind of stuff and so why not just do partnerships especially
in a competitive situation where there's a there's a bidding war going on for these artists and that's
happening more and more so um you know young young artists now are they're a lot more educated than
than their cohort from 10 years ago they understand the business going in a lot more than the artists i used
to talk to 10 years ago that was new to the business they are they really understand the
accounting of the business you know they understand how the money flows um you understand their rights
how licensing works you know you know what it means to own your masters all these things i never heard
artists talking you know like this at least not the the new artists that just got signed i never heard
them really talking like this 10 years ago so you know there's been an education that's taken hold in
the community of artists and i think that in and of itself has provided quite a bit of leverage and then
of course then you see you know disruptive innovation like web3 come along uh thrown it over to sydney
sydney in speaking with people in and feeling with the trends that are happening are you seeing any of
these new conversations up where the artists or labels are uh having a quicker model to change over to
more of a web3 minded or partnership minded in the type of a circle where you know we're we're an equal
partner in a circle instead of owner and uh you know owner and server uh yeah i mean i think it all
boils down to leverage uh going into you know a label deal or any kind of deal really like you know
if the artist is if the artist or the team around the artist is well equipped equipped with the tools
and the education and the following like you know to to have that leverage then like you know
yes everybody's willing to do anything to to get a deal um i with artists without leverages i think
you know it's still the old ways um you know like nate was saying like we have like luckily youtube and
like tiktok and all of these ways that like you can you can get educated uh quicker um and and be
more efficient in negotiation tactics but you know i i still like you know we do a lot of a lot of
consulting and a lot of like jvs with labels at defiant and you know it's late it's funny i always like
to say the music industry system is broken but the employees are great you know everybody that works at
labels have really good intentions usually everybody like you know loves who they're working with i mean
it's like a blessing to be able to say you work in the music industry it's just like the system
uh in which they have built you know their empires around has so much red tape and you know so much
bureaucracy that it takes 20 email chains to get a yes on like a date change you know so like when
you're talking about innovative technology and disruptive technology and everybody here is well aware that
like one day in crypto is you know is three months in in the real world like like shift moves so fast
that like it's you know a deal that was being made in january you know that's going to be done in
november or like i mean be done in like the next quarter usually like it's the entire narrative and meta of
the ecosystem has shifted you know especially when it comes to artists who are are not fully immersed in
web3 you know and i think it takes time to like really immerse yourself into the web3 space so like
i i i think the bet like usually when i talk to artists and i talk to labels the first thing i do is
like try to especially like artists and labels who like i want to get into web they're like web 2.5
they're like halfway there like they're not against crypto but they don't have a meta mask yet and like
the first thing i say is you've got to treat web3 like its own genre of music you know and like if
you're a pop artist you wouldn't release a hip-hop track like tomorrow you know like that shit would
just look whack as fuck right like it would be inauthentic it looks like you're trying to come in
as a culture vulture it looks like you're trying to monetize the whole culture like it's bullshit
like no like the strategy in the rollout would be like if you really wanted to get into that
into that world like go live it go study it go experience it and like that's how i explain to
artists you got to do the exact same thing in web3 you need to join you know the narrative you got
to jump in the culture you have to learn the why why are we using this tech why does it matter why
are we all so passionate about it and then once you do that you can make informed decisions and
that's from the artist side and from the label side agreed sydney would you say uh that you could
agree that we can tell maybe some newcomers that are here that we haven't even seen a case study
where somehow someone has had success unless they've physically been here going through the jungle
and trying to get to the other side of uh a project i i haven't seen it i haven't seen where
the artist you know says hey i'm a little busy making music i haven't been able to show up sorry
um yeah you know um you know there's it we're really really in a no excuse zone where uh showing
improving and showing up is a big part of the battle question sydney for you and nate um had are you
seeing um are you seeing any influx as we've seen in a couple waves here in crypto and in the nft market
um vcs coming in to partner up are you seeing it on the record label side where vcs are coming in maybe
wanting to spruce up um a record label or um are you seeing any other areas where vcs are coming in to
uh partner up and and and support uh sydney first and then nate please yeah i mean like i'm sure nate
nate's in that world way more than i am when it comes to the vcs um but like from my experience yes
i think that's gonna be an incredible shift in or one of the main shifts in the music industry is like
you know when when when that when smart money and vc money gets involved at the ground level
and like you know artists become i mean i think kanye tweeted about it like a year or two ago like
when artists become their own corporations and realize that like they are the product in the
business and not to put that in like a negative way at all it's just like you know they're they're
selling themselves they're selling their brand the product is the songs you know and and the more
that you can give a better experience to your listeners and your customer like the the more you
can monetize and and the better you know it is that everybody wins but the fact that like you know
the age-old model of like in order to get to radio you had to go through the big three and they were
the gatekeepers of you know being a billboard hit and that's completely shifting and i think vcs now are
realizing that and it's a we're in a really interesting place right now with like music and culture because
you know it's it's it's it's the wild west when it comes to what how far can you push this like
for instance i was just on another space talking about you know how australia is now you know counting
nft albums on the charts you know and the question now is like well what's stopping anybody from
wash trading all their way to number one in australia so it's like there's like these really really
interesting storylines and and experiments that are about to start happening in the music space
and i don't think the rec the majority of of the record late like the big three are are are not
prepared at all for it there's a couple i don't want to say everybody isn't prepared like you know
what what celine's doing is incredible at universal like they you know there's a couple really really
amazing champions in in these buildings uh but other than that like you know it's going to be a crazy
rude awakening when you know a independent artist can come in and fund their way to number one
yeah and we saw this week uh the the announcement that the grammys now has a new music category for all
live performances in the metaverse so there's a new category and that'll be uh that'll be interesting
interesting to see how that uh fills out i can't wait to see the band i didn't know the band that
was nominated or won this year it was an asian band maybe a k-pop band but uh yeah it'll be
interesting to see how that lineup fills out uh nate um yeah you're you're what kind of what kind of
insights do you have as far as what you're seeing with vcs coming in and partnering up and trying to get
in on the ground floor of this thing that we call music and web three you know it's um it's interesting
you know because you know some people make the argument that the first venture capitalists were
were art investors you know the medicis so some people would make the argument that you know the
roots of venture capital actually come from investing in art and so um it's an interesting time to ask that
question i will say that most venture capitalists are looking for rent and when i say that i mean
they're looking for the platforms that are going to scale and capture all the value from the shift
you know i i try to explain to entrepreneurs as much as possible who are building and raising capital
that you know venture capital essentially is not there to actually invest in businesses they're there
actually to to provide risk capital to consolidated interest and consolidated interest
is primarily to help change over market behavior so if you have a theory that you know the market
you know consumer behavior is changing and that you know there's going to be one platform that takes
all or maybe it's two or three but it's a huge expanding market and you need to capture all of the
behavior the new behavior of the consumers then you're not really investing in a business at that point
time you're investing in a market and later on obviously it becomes a business when it when it
gets really really really big but the risk capital is there because in the beginning there's no capital
to to you know to take the market in the business it's not actually a business yet it's an experiment
and so you know the way the vcs behave is typically around consolidated interest so you know when you see
these giant fundraisers and you ask okay why did that happen you know there's a firm belief in
this founder this team there's something about them that they think that they're going to be
able to consolidate the interest of the market they're going to be able to captivate the press
they're going to be able to provide a product that has usability in a way that is going to prove the
concept and they're going to be able to repeat that behavior so i think vcs are looking at it from that
standpoint at scale but i do not think the vcs are looking at it from a an individual maybe label or
artist standpoint and i think that's actually where the opportunity is for the artists because
um there's you know you kind of hit on it which is there's an opportunity here for artists to be
small businesses and be entrepreneurs in ways they never were before and to etch out an incredible
living right um you know there's a lot of art that we never get get to hear because people have to pay
their bills they can't sit in a studio for eight to ten hours a day they have to go and they have to
work a job that they hate you know and we're we're slowly entering a future where more and more artists
are going to be able to actually make music all day and that in and of itself is kind of a quality of
life change right liberating liberating it's a quality of life change right so think about the first
time you ever opened up your mobile phone and you called an uber you're like damn a black car came
and got me that used to be something only rich people could do and you know i remember i remember
back in the day when i did it you know for the first time impressed my friends they thought you
know they thought i was a boss they're like how'd you do that right it's crazy but it's a quality of
life shift and it's like novel and i think that's what's going to happen now is there's going to be
another quality of life shift um that enables artists to do things that they weren't able to do before
at scale and i don't necessarily think when that happens that the label deal is going to be as
sought after it's like there's going to be a lot of artists that are going to be like i'm cool my three
to four thousand fans support me i make music for them i make 100 to 150k a year i'm good and it's
going to be i think we fail to to recognize the middle class of artists there's going to be a
burgeoning middle class of artists that is going to be enabled to do all of this without a record
deal at all this is not going to displace the labels but it is going to give us a whole lot more
music we wouldn't have otherwise heard and it is going to provide a healthy lifestyle for people who
otherwise wouldn't have been able to have it so i'm i'm i'm championing championing that more so than
anything else i'm gonna throw a big amen to that nate um when we talk about quality of life we talk
about all you know we all it's usually an improvement in some some sort of technology or a change of
behavior um are there any standout models that you're seeing out there that are exciting you
maybe in the last month or two and the same over for you sydney anything that's exciting you
that you feel they they could be a game changer here where it is improving on our quality of life
improvements have been made and noted and maybe you guys are seeing it out there in the world
nate to you first please yeah i'll just i'll just quickly say that you know a lot of the bickering i
see online is kind of silly around web three because you got your you know web three maxis and you got
your haters and and the conversation you watch it go back and forth and the whole time the lead is
kind of being buried in that the killer app for web three is already here and it's ownership it's
shared ownership and we keep trying to say you know i think there's a lot of projects are trying to like
where is the value and it's already it's pretty simple like if you look at if you look at all the
like expansions of of of economics of of access to the economic mobility ladder over time uh especially
the ones in the last couple centuries were tied directly to property rights so when you look at
what's going on now this is nothing more than property rights on the internet for me to be able
to say an asset that could only be purchased in the past by kkr primary weight which are big
corporations or private equity can now be unbundled and sold to retail investors art i'm talking about
music um and also uh catalog can now be sold by artists who are not huge names now um in this way
to me those are the big those are the big the big headlines here those are the big headlines and you
know all these companies should continue to experiment there in different shared ownership models and i and
i honestly think once there's a huge breakthrough in one of these shared ownership models where either a
brand or an artist goes mainstream and goes really really big and the early backers um who were not
venture capitalists who are not angel investors just regular average joes and jills like me and you
and they become or they you know they get a little bit of satisfaction out of that brand or that artist
doing well financially i think that's going to be the moment people have the light bulb moment they have
the aha and i think that that's what we need to be focusing on here which is we can distribute and
share ownership and success and share the success of this art and everybody's going to get access to
be able to do that in various ways you asked me a very specific question about models i think there's
a ton of experiments going on some around licensing some around royalties like us you know others are
um literal ownership of the mp3 file um to be able to do whatever you want with it um rights over that
um there's going to be a ton of experiments around this and you know some things are going to win
some things are going to fail today and then they're going to win again tomorrow and we're
going to see what happens but i do think we're very very very early and i think people underestimate
just how early we are this is incredibly early and we're well ahead of the expectations which is why
there's a lot of shade because what people are imagining about this technology is not where we're at
yet you know so i think people are i think people are rightfully disappointed and i think one day we
will be there but i think you know that disappointment is being internalized as this
this is uh you know this is all a sham you know and this is all fake uh and i think optimists which
is what our artists typically are as optimists are going to stick with this thing and they're going to
be the ones that get us where we need to go nate what was the epiphany you had if you could just share
like your emotion or your your logic when you when you first realized that it was true that royalties
uh uh travel along with the artists in most cases what was your first thoughts and reactions to that
when you learned that about an nft in the blockchain so first of all my family experienced not having
ownership over your intellectual property my family personally um experienced what that pain was like
so i i've carried that with me most of my life and all of my adult life um you know being at
andreessen horowitz and seeing web3 come online my question well before any of these platforms were launched
like sound catalog royal opolis um well before any of them were launched was crypto is definitely going
to go there but what the model is going to have to be some sort of way um that there's an
incentive for fans to market the music and to engage the artist in ways they hadn't before and that
all had to be pieced together obviously web3 is a novel way to bootstrap networks and the strongest
network of artists has is their fans at the top which are their super fans and so if you let's go
if you can consolidate that group of people organize them and then incentivize them then you've got a
very powerful thing and i always knew that crypto in general has the ability to organize and incentivize
so i knew music was going to go there i had been thinking about it you know talking about it with the
crypto team at accz every music company that came in to talk about it i would hear the pitches
but you know i had thought about the royal model for a long time but i didn't know anybody was
building it especially not justin i mean i knew justin i bought his first nft back in 2020 um when
he first minted and um but someone introduced me to say you need to you know jd i met jd and he
introduced me to just said you need to hear about what we're building they didn't even get halfway
through the pitch before i understood it i'm like yo this is what i've been thinking about this is
exactly the model and it wasn't the first time i've been pitched obviously a music crypto company
but it was the first time i'd heard one where i was like yo okay this this is along the lines of
where this thing is going this might not ultimately be the final model where it rests at ultimately but
directionally this is it and um you know so jd was you know they asked me you know let's go on the
journey let's you know let's ride and that's you know when i decided to to leave a very lucrative
position at a16z to do this and you know i've been having a lot of fun i don't regret a single
thing it's been an absolute blast how long was that build how many months was that build
we've been building for a year and um we've been doing very curated drops to prove the concept
uh but we're about to launch uh soon enough in the next uh i would say in the next six months we're
going to launch our marketplace uh six to nine months we'll launch our marketplace and people
get a chance to to see what that's about as well but again it's so damn early it's crazy how early
it is and that's that's actually what excites me because in a down market in a bear market you get
rid of all the distractions you get rid of all the detractors and you can actually build with a very
disciplined focus uh very very clear and clean focus when there's no hype around i actually i'm
very much enjoying this environment uh nate you you're a powerhouse it's a pleasure to speak with
you today and hear your insights they're invaluable and just wanted to hear from sydney on sydney what
was your first insight or you know emotion when you realize that there is a royalty that that that goes
along with nfts and artists selling work on the blockchain could you share that with us yeah i mean
it was it was an incredible moment because i i you know started my career off as a songwriter and
producer you know behind the scenes working with you know all the all the biggest artists um from
to you know 20 2010 to 2017 and and you know during that time it was also you know the the blow up of
spotify and streaming and and as a songwriter producer uh you know it's it's really tough to
make a living um and it's really tough to have to you know wait for your check and and the money to
clear and and you and you have to account for it and it's just like a it's a it's a really hard hard
business to be in the anxiety every day every day you're probably thinking about it multiple times
a day exactly so when i mean that's that's the most taxing is the anxiety of it yeah exactly and
like as an up-and-coming artist you know your your main job should be creating you know not like
accounting when you're checking when you're gonna be able to pay your rent so like you know that was
really the shift for me i mean like i you know i i have i've been in crypto since you know the
beginning of my career and really dove into it in 2017 um but you know like 2020 was when when i
really started experimenting with nfts and being able to see artists that i mean like you know i'm
really really good friends with spotty wi-fi and like he's a classic case example of like he he must
have 50 monthly listeners on spotify but has made more money in in with nfts than you know every b list
artist on on a label from royalties that like and from from primary and secondary sales so like to see
somebody be able to you know not have to grind out on tiktok not have to grind out for you know
stream farming and and that whole that whole world and try to fit through this door where everybody's
trying to fit through and he just like saw the door and walked around and opened his own door
and like that's really when i got excited
yeah i couldn't believe it when i had first heard it in a room that you know this comes along with the
deal i stuck around we're still here we're driving the conversation um we're 40 minutes into this
beautiful interview and time is flying because i haven't even looked at the clock so just resetting
the room um i'm here with dan from nifty kit ceo i'm here with sydney swift an og that has worked on
many many music projects of success i'm here with nathan jones who's joining us formally from i can't say it
right nate help me with your former employer and seen horowitz i'm sorry andreessen horowitz yeah
andreessen horowitz and now rolling with royal the music platform um partnering with uh blau who uh
if you were here last uh march if i'm not mistaken had a very successful nft album drop that he'd worked
on for at least nine months and uh we were here to join him in uh these social rooms while he was
having to drop and i i don't think i was ever involved with such an exciting uh drop of an album
across the boards in hip-hop reggae or pop music as i was that night i mean it was groundbreaking to be
and hearing and feeling the emotion and seeing these assets sell after watching you know uh artists
only getting paid from a one dollar or ten dollar per month subscription stream
and nate uh what do you what are we seeing in the new models uh we're getting away from
subscription what are some of the things you're seeing out there that are looking exciting to you
as far as artists bringing their assets to web3 and how they're getting paid
with their smart contracts of course and smart contracts like the ones that nifty kid offer and
the tools that they offer um yeah what are you seeing out there yeah i love tools that allow
artists to control and write their own contracts i do love some of that stuff um it can get a bit
tricky right now obviously with the murky waters of regulatory law um you know and so i think everybody's
trying to figure out what that means tax law is not that clear either so everybody's kind of learning
together on all that stuff but um yeah any any tool that you know enables artists to do this who
don't come from a technical background you know somebody it might have been you sydney mentioned you
know web 2.5 earlier and um you know there's two kind of schools of thought on this which is
um one you have to be a web 3 native or you at least have to sit in the web 3 ecosystem and learn
what's going on for a period of time um before doing anything and i though i get that i feel like
it's antithesis to the creative process because um creators when they have a moment of inspiration
they can't wait they have to get that they have to get that moment of inspiration out and so
um i think it would behoove us to do as much as we can to make the on-ramp for artists as smooth and
as easy as possible to not be cliquish um to not create cultural walls that make it hard to scale to
get into and be accepted and to be able to do this but to be as welcoming as possible because it's not
the technology that's doing this it's the technology that's enabling us to share this with each other but
it's the artists and their inspiration and their you know it's a spiritual gift that they have
that's the value here and so i what i don't what i really kind of you know i'm wary of is you know
that we get so wrapped up in being you know so web 3 improving our web 3 credentials that we we make we
make this seem too daunting for a certain class of artists to even get in and adopt it and then they
become bitter i wouldn't want that to happen and so um again i think the better models are the ones
that make the arm ramp the onboarding as smooth as possible and hides the complexity um both from a
technical standpoint and from a cultural and from a social standpoint into this community we win when
all of these artists are making music and sharing it with us so um i think that's kind of that's more
a philosophical answer than it is a specific or technical answer and i but i think if you filter
it if you filter my answer through that i think you'll come to your conclusion on what tools i like
and sydney would you like to um speak on that yeah absolutely i couldn't agree more i i one thousand
percent agree that on the on-ramp right now for from web 2 to web 3 is uh is a difficult one um and
and i think that the like that's i'm i'm on the same exact boat like i'm most excited about tools
that you don't need to say the word nft but like everything's still on chain and the digital
ownership is still there you know like at defiant like we're working on a couple different a couple
different things one thing i'm most excited about is a is an audio plugin that allows you to mint
directly from your daw uh so like you know i mean the majority of people are music creators you know
that's their most comfortable place right is like inside that computer like you can see all your stems
you and then you know usually the the process to to get your music heard is you press export
and then you go put it on spotify or soundcloud like you know so like i'm really most excited about
you know allowing yeah yo i gotta shout you out man because let me tell you something i said this
to someone the other day i said whoever figures out the distro kit of web 3 is going to absolutely
change the world for the better i'm so glad you just said what you just said because being able to
take your music and get it minted and get it out there as quickly as possible and and and like
having all of that in a very easy to understand format even built in or integrated into the tools
you're using to create i think that's i think that's genius i just had to interrupt you i apologize
i appreciate it man i appreciate but i agree like you know nine times out of ten like you know these
artists don't i mean most artists they just want to be creating you know that's it you know and i like
you know when i tell artists you know don't just drop an nft without understanding the culture
like i i'm purely mean that from a sense of like the tools that are available now you know means that
you have to go you know drop a collection and you might not even know why you're dropping it
you know and and i think that like over i mean it's going to be really interesting because like
over the next throughout this entire quote unquote crypto winter i think the entire narrative is going
to shift between you know how easy it is to participate in web3 you know i think like you
know custodial wallets incredible i think like you know removing the word nft from the vocabulary of it
all and it's just like another another way to distribute your your music uh is incredible like
and and and i think that's how the people you know i always go back to the story with my sister i don't
even know if she's on here or not but she like she works with us and uh and and you know back in the
day when i was trying to onboard her to web3 you know it was like me explaining blockchain and me saying
you got to do this and this is changing the world and it's disruptive and and what but you know like
she was like all right cool whatever whatever like you know it's christmas dinner like shut up bro
like but eventually i was like all right listen and i just sent her i set up her meta mask for her
i sent her some east and like a week later she hit me up and she was like yo you sent me 100 bucks
but like now it's at 150 what happened and i was like yeah like welcome to web3 and like i know that's
not like all of web3 but it was like a good like you know way to just get her involved and then she
went down the rabbit hole herself from that point and i think that like that's the key is like these
finding these mechanisms where like the consumer doesn't realize they're participating in web3
until they experience value and then when they experience that value they go back and say
well wait a second let me go do some research and let me really dive down this rabbit hole
so like those are the things that i'm really most excited about yeah i mean myself i hadn't felt
the connection to a project until i was actually in the room on the day of a drop and and you know
heard about the day before and then you know as i was learning about whatever the tees were
i finally felt connected to that first project that i was you know sitting in on and i felt like i was
there from the beginning until the end of the room and it gave me a feeling of inclusion which made me
have a deeper connection to the to the asset which is a beautiful thing um sydney thanks for sharing
those insights nate uh we brought malachi and wine bags to the stage malachi do you have a question for
any and all of our guests um yeah i was just wondering if anyone in here has heard of the project
thug burr it's kind of random but i was just curious no but what would be a question that applies
to it uh as opposed to a shill of that project not really trying to shill it it's just like one of my
favorite projects it's an og project on solana so i was wondering if people here were familiar with
like solana and the other black train as well is it at least a music project
uh yeah it's a it's it's a og project and it turned into a record label like started signing artists and
releasing music and so on and so forth well i i personally haven't seen it but it sounds like an
interesting model and i'll check it out thank you for sharing it with me and us yeah thank you
you're welcome and wine bags uh welcome how are you wine bags hey how's it going can you hear me all
right uh we can hear you all right not bad at all uh thanks for joining us how are you doing i
haven't i haven't seen you in a few weeks but um you've been holding some incredible music rooms this
year so for me and everyone here on stage and the members of the community thank you for uh you know
standing here and being here all the time uh for the community and all things music and web three thank
you yeah thank you for having me up i mean it's yeah i you know there's there's a reason why i've
you know dedicated pretty much all of my time for the last couple years to this stuff and it's exactly
everything that everybody has been talking about you know in this space and uh yeah it's always
exciting to see like especially like nifty kit up and you know following along with nifty kit for a while
to see them hosting spaces about music nfts uh is super exciting so i'm just uh yeah i'm happy to see it
and uh i'm just very bullish on music nfts and web three in general
thanks wine bags well we'll continue to show up for you we appreciate you showing up for us we're
here with nifty kit tonight jessica dam the ceo of nifty kit we have a lot of members of the nifty kit
team in the audience a lot of musicians artists jeff jagg we have rolling lifestyle abc dj uh we have
bodie in the house juvie lofton from the team and so many more we really have a big room going tonight
so i want to say you know first and foremost thanks for everyone taking time out of their night
to join us these exciting conversations continue through the week and uh we're going to continue
to drive the conversation with amazing guests like we have here tonight like sydney and nathan
um we did bring justin up justin over to you if you have a question do you have a question for our
guests or the room yeah i do uh thanks guys um i'm justin i'm uh i've been a producer for like 12
years works a lot of big artists um and i noticed that one major pain point in this in in the in the
music industry um that that i'm curious how web three can solve is like the money that gets withheld
by labels um from artists say spotify does a deal with a label you know the light to put the music
on the platform the label maybe doesn't pay the artist um you know labels are just they just are
such a major bottleneck for a lot of money that comes that's supposed to be going to artists and
also producers who have um who have who have master points on the records and all that um i'm just
curious like do you guys think that there's a way that web three can solve that or do the does the
whole label structure just kind of need to like go away in general
uh simply would you like to take that yeah i mean i could start and like i'm gonna preface this entire
topic around the fact that we are so early and like you know the the systems and infrastructure
of major labels has been around since the 40s or 50s and they have been building the doing those
building blocks uh of distribution channels and and payout systems and and the whole thing is is has
been it's it's been a while so to to i do think we will get to a place where everything is on chain
and i do think we will eventually get to a place where you know i mean it's just better tech and better
tech always wins you know like i mean not always but some form of a better adaption of a technology
is going to always beat out like it's its predecessor so it's just the question is how long does it take
to get there you know and and that really boils down to how many how how many artists begin to leverage
this technology until spotify until labels until until they have to accept smart contracts instead
of paper contracts you know i that's like a metaphor what i mean by that is like you know i send a label
my wave file and then their system tracks that wave file and that's from publishers and from the label
side of thing right and there's third parties and there's the pros and then there's like you know
like overseas uh collection agencies and like there's so many people double dipping triple
quadruple dipping into that pie yeah and like i've literally seen a situation where like the same song
like right there was two writers that had the same percentage on a song and you know it it did
relatively well on the charts and one writer was on bmi and one writer was on ascap and they got paid
differently they got two different checks and then the question is wait a second how the fuck are they
calculating differently when they have the same percentages and like that just goes to show you
like the the the problem is like at its core how the system is set up you know and it's going to take
like it's going to take a time for artists uh to to to stand up and i mean say listen like i'm not going
to send you my my mp3 file like i'm gonna like here's my nft you have to buy my nft you have to
use the nft like you know and and it's those in i think the infrastructure is not there yet but the
infrastructure is going to be built over the next 10 years you know and this last nft i mean this last
web 3 bull run like has sparked it i think like to like a snowball effect to whereas like by i mean
you know fingers crossed over the next five to 10 years the infrastructure will change and it's not
just going to change over the music industry it's going to change over all of the entertainment
industry because like all of these problems like i mean i'm not in film but i can guarantee you that
like screenwriters are probably you know dealing with some royalty issues as well so like all of
these issues are and then the infrastructure in the entertainment industry is going to change over
time the question is just how long is it going to take to get there and like just are are we all
willing to stick around you know and build while that's happening
that's amazing answer thank you so much
i think um crypto beat had their hand up and then adrian stern
hey yo it's crypto beat radio home of the nft musicians how everybody doing out there
well hopefully all you guys are doing wonderful and beautifully uh my question to nifty kid is
um what is the difference between the drop kit creator pass and paying for a membership
yeah so uh simply all of the good drop tools are on the drop kit pass the regular membership is if
you're just going to do small one-of-ones but if you hop in the discord we can uh definitely answer
any other questions and point you in the right direction for some stuff that uh will help you check
that out and where do i find the discord um i'll go ahead and uh post the link here for you
yeah because i paid for a membership but i don't see any change in my account
yeah no worries we'll get you we'll get you fixed up all right thank you i just want to i just want
to want to butt in real quick and just talk about nifty kit because i know they're not going to show
their own shit but i just want to say that they have the best customer support i have ever seen
like dan the ceo will get on a call with you and walk you through an airdrop it's happened to me
it is beautiful they are incredible guys so like if you haven't heard of them definitely get
definitely go jump on the on the discord they're amazing well uh to everybody out there
um signing off this is crypto beat radio home of the nft musicians so if you guys have music that
you want to get in rotation you definitely can send it to crypto beat radio at gmail.com
i'll post if it's okay i'll post the link up at the top uh yeah so that's free of charge you guys
can get your music in rotation you know it's community and unity so tap in on me peace and blessings to all
i'm keeping it upbeat definitely we'd like to keep positive vibe but no shilling so for everybody
else who's coming up to ask a question hopefully it's directed at our guests we'd love to continue
the conversation um geared towards you know what they're bringing to the table tonight so with that
adrian please go ahead and and what do you got hey what's up everyone thanks for thanks for the
space uh nifty kit fam really really enjoy it sydney always good to to hear you talk and they
great to great to finally be in the space with you um i feel like i have a question that will probably
uh be addressed it to both of you because i you know we're talking a lot about sort of music and
fts but i feel like it's it's such a broad category right um with with my company reveal we've
been talking to to different projects like like chiller x who are putting out like decentralized
uh albums to like ticketing companies to even you know other like fractionalized ownership companies
who want to share revenue and so i feel like music nfts are are are this broad category and my sense is
that that kind of like confuses uh you know fans and and customers in terms of like what am i really
getting when i'm buying a music nft and i'm wondering what your thoughts are around you know
the terminology should we just drop the word and if that like music nft and say song nfts fractionalize
like song ownership like um and and perhaps what are sort of the use cases that you guys see
being the most relevant in terms of the value proposition that that um is going to offer to to
to onboard more uh fans so we'd love to hear your thoughts around that
you want me to jump in there how y'all want to do yeah
well if you go to royals website you know we don't mention crypto web through nfts anywhere we
just mentioned ownership of music so you know that's clearly where we stand on it i think
you know when consumers go to shopify they don't care that you know the transactions
happening on an apache server like they don't care right and i think that's going to be kind of the
the way that this thing scales to to mass consumers is that um we really really can't care
or we really can't put the technology forward we have to make it to where the technology is super
easy to use and understand you talked about from a right standpoint very very critical
i do think the category is very broad there's a lot of companies that are not doing or projects
i should say that are not doing the same things but they're all categorized as music nfts um um
there's a few kind of drivers to why a fan wants to do this one is obvious patronage they just like
the people i was in a space with this person they told me their personal story i listened to the music
i liked it i wanted to patronize them so this is what i'm doing i'm supporting their art
um then there are investors um which are saying hey look i think this artist is going to be the
next really eilish the next weekend and this is my opportunity to get in on the ground floor
and own a piece of the intellectual property of this music then there's exclusivity which is clout
which is more personalized to yourself you want to be able to say i own this one of one thing that
nobody else has um you know and i i want to be able to brag or i want to be able to do things with
it that nobody else can do and for me that's personally satisfying and so there's the altruistic
there's the selfish um and then there's the um um the prudent which is the investor and so
there's various models that you know sub models that fit underneath those and i think we do have a
we do have a mandate to be very clear about what consumers are getting because i have seen some
confusion out there of consumers thinking they have more rights over some of this stuff than they
actually did and by the way that's not limited to music nfts that's been nfts in general but
it's been greatly exacerbated with music uh because of the nature of uh how music is commercialized so
um to answer your question yeah i do i do think that that's a thing that needs to be stressed in
this community more and more um and i and i think the best the best projects that you see out there do a
really good job and the artists themselves do a really good job of educating their fan bases on what
exactly they're getting or what they're spending their money on and i think that's um that's
appropriate and i think that's responsible
yeah that that all makes a lot of sense really appreciate the answer
sydney do you want to take adrian's question
i i i agree i agree a thousand percent that like the word nft needs to be removed you know right
now it's it i get why it's there it's like to i i easily identify a vertical that you're going to
be target marketing to but like if you want to scale you need to remove that and and you know
obviously like amplify the vertical across across everybody um so yeah i mean i agree i don't know
what it's going to be called you know like and and and yeah i don't know what it's going to be
called i think it might just like like just go away and like end up just becoming like the expected
digital experience like overall whether it be music related or show related or whatever it is like
you know it's just the future of entertainment at the end of the day like i mean at least for what
the way that we're talking about it obviously like you know is like you know musicians are at the
end of the day entertainers you know and like i think that like the you know earlier in the
conversation we were talking about like some of the models that i get or that we're all excited
about for me is like you know separate from blockchain web3 you know i think also encompasses
just additional experiences layered on top of traditional media and i'm like extremely bullish
on the idea of like when you're at a live show that's like the inflection point point for becoming
a passive going from a passive listener to an active super fan you know and the reason why is
because all of all of your senses are triggered and you're getting the full experience you know you're
touching somebody's arm next to you you're drinking something you're hearing the vibrations you're
touching you know the the the merchandise you're you're hearing all of the the words of this like
all of it is an encompassing experience that like converts you like like that in what would take
normally an advertiser you know 10 15 20 times of repetition in order to get you to convince you to buy
something in that moment it's usually like in an hour they convince you that like yo i really like
this or i don't like this and i'm extremely bullish on web3 including blockchain but also you know like
all the other technologies on on web3 when it comes to ar and vr you know like like adding additional
experiences on top of traditional so like when you think about a song right like
for the last 100 years or so you know a song is a song and you buy it and and that's the that's what
you get right and then they started to layer these different different experiences that whether it be
like a music video okay cool now there's this visual aspect to it okay cool now we're gonna bundle
i think web3 opens up a whole new world like and it's gonna be a renaissance of like what you get
attached with a song whether it be you know more information about what the the artists uh and
songwriters are doing whether it be a gamified experience during a music video whether it be
you know a discount code to their their ticket like all of it should be happening at the inflection
point of like you experiencing the content for that two minute song right because that's when you're
most you know that that's that's when you're experiencing and your value is is is the highest
level of of i guess happiness you know while you're experiencing that so like that's what i'm
extremely bullish on the idea of like taking everything all your traditional content and then saying okay
cool how can we layer novel digital experiences and like next generation like like gamified experiences
creative experiences you know monetary discounts all of it on top of this like two minute moment in
time that people are getting
i'm gonna go ahead and um throw it over to mix um this is going to be our last question for tonight
i want to respect our guest tonight and really grateful for all the time that you've given us tonight
in the space and for the um the audience so go ahead mix yes and follow our speakers right before mix
please let me just mention that uh please follow the speakers that are here and uh any friends and
might see around that look like cool people uh that's how we build our community here web three
we kind of reach to the left reach to the right reach up reach down and um we share uh the least we
can do here is share with a tweet and uh that's often accompanied by somebody sharing your tweet when
it's your time to drop some information that you want shared so let's return the favor to one another
and uh over the mix thank you hi please when my turn to come tell me to speak i'm waiting
hi so the question i have about music nfts like in the way this landscape is right now is
i can't see all right i'm maybe i'm just not seeing where these platforms are or where these outlets are
for an artist who's just like focusing on art has a good product who hasn't really spent time on
promotion yet is there some place where they can mint and put stuff out or where they can
where it's going to be more effective promotion than them sending a youtube reactor 10 a 10 donation
the short answer is yes there's many ways this question could be answered mix um would anybody or
does anybody have a certain insight for mix that they would like to share
uh i mean yeah there is like a lot of ways you can go about it like um
so yes there are platforms that you can mint your song on that like already have an active
you know user base that are are there to just like discover music um you know mint songs catalog
um there's a bunch i know music fans listening does that make any sense like versus just artists
promoting to artists yeah absolutely there are music fans on there's music fans but like
i think like the new terminology that i like to use is like there's music collectors on those sites
you know who are who are there like to collect those that those nfts um you know which then become
you know the the more they collect the more they become fans um you know but i i think my hack when
i talk to like artists that are trying to like distribute in web 3 my hack is buy an nft from
some a couple collections that you like go jump on the discord and just start talking to people and
and and when you start to talk to people you you build you build a trust and then when you say hey
guys i just dropped a song you have a hundred people like ready to listen to it like ready to
support you it's not a diff web 3 is amazing right now because it's tiny there's like it's it there's
it hasn't scaled to the point oh i understand that i completely understand that versus like competing
against 40 000 spotify tracks that drop a day which is like the actual number which is pretty daunting
but like but i mean like yeah so and i get it it's a smaller field it's a smaller pond to play in so
you get support a little bit easier um but yeah like it's not easy to find those services
if that makes any sense i'm like not finding where those services are or which ones are effective
i don't see any like data on any of that really or i don't know where to find the data on any of that
stuff yeah i mean i think like like i said like i mean and nate said the same thing like we're still
super early so like you know i don't think there are platforms where there's thousands and thousands
of music fans waiting i mean actually i mean royal is a great a great example of like a platform that
like has people waiting for their drops you know because they know it's going to be amazing shit
so like i think all all the music nft platforms that are like a year old right now are just building
their their customer base and their user base and like over the next couple of years is we're going
to get to those scale levels and like as an artist you know get in early you know i mean it's like
it's like we're at the time right now where it's like remember when like tiktok was popping
you know and everybody was like why would i make tiktoks you know and then like the artists that
like reigned supreme on tiktok in the beginning ended up you know dominating you know during the
pandemic just like crushing it you know and it's like we're right there again with with these
platforms and music nfts is like those that are are just in it and like serving up like
drop after drop after drop are just slowly building up their credibility getting ready
to scale when it does when it does happen so i i i get that like but i guess there's nothing
right now that can like just there's no platform that could bring in artists like some kid from
the hood like where they just like figure out how to mince a track that they just made and just
blow up off of nfts to the point where they'll go mainstream yeah right hundreds of sites that
somebody could have that happen to hundreds and yeah and nfts really really there's literally
hundreds of sites you can quickly go mint a song to and share that um on on twitter or you know
on any social media and there's a chance anything could blow up right so the answer is definitely
yes i'd say literally hundreds of sites um what i'd say though wrapping this room up because we're
just about out of time here like with our guests and we want to respect their time is that
one thing i've learned in over almost 800 days studying web3 and getting up in rooms like this in front
of people and speaking about it when i know just a little bit about you know maybe one part of the
subject is that if you come to web3 with the same expectations that you had in web2 um you're probably
not going to see the magic you're probably going to be let down you're not going to see the same type
of sites that we see and the ease of use yet and the uh transferability of things how you want you're
not going to see that yet so what i what i've learned here one of the one of the key things i've learned is
if you adjust your expectations you can gain greater in some cases and definitely different results
and coming here with the right reason of wanting to mint your work on the chain to share it to possibly
go viral to sell out to sell a piece to have these assets in friends wallet for it to grow in value
for you to collect royalties for those royalties to go on for many years um there's a magic in that
so what i've done personally is adjusted my expectations and therefore i've seen different results
i've come across different communities i've built with people that i probably wouldn't have built
with if i just brought the same set of expectations from web2 so i hope that's something you can explore
uh the people here and the guests on stage are are are definitely exploring things like this in many
directions i'd like to thank all of the guests that joined us today all of the speakers all the
friends that came up and asked questions and uh dan thank you so much for joining us nifty kit
uh jessica it's a pleasure um just because jessica has a much more beautiful voice than me i'm going to
let her end the room and i just want to say thank you to all we will continue this conversation with
nifty kit the creator's pass is live now go check it out it's a tool for all creators music uh visual
um 2d 3d animators people that want to care about their standing and minting their collections on the
blockchain with ease of use and with the least amount of friction um that's what nifty kit
exemplifies from what i've learned and i'd like to say thank you to them so thank you nifty kit and
jessica just to you for the last word yeah thank you guys this has been a really great room i love
hearing about innovation with music in the space um because like i said i'm just a listener i'm not
i'm not a music creator exactly but i actually have a request from you tom i would love if you could
play us out on that nas clip again because i feel like i need to hear that again and there was a lot
of people that weren't in the room at the very beginning when you played it and it was really
really powerful so i would love if you could cue that up if you're down you got it i got it again
no problem thank you everybody this is thank you everyone this is really quick a a a short 30 second
clip from a nas interview pre-covid uh it's it's today is the first time it's ever been heard this clip
ever and it's uh i asked nas what he saw as what what he thinks makes a real dj and here's what
nas had to say oh hold on here we go oh man i think what makes a real dj is someone who really
loves music you really have to have true love for music and you know vinyl is deep because every time
you drop a needle on vinyl i think it sounds different from the last time you played it sounds
always different a cd sounds the same as computerized but a vinyl has is a whole world
between that needle and wax that go that's going on and to manually be working at is a thing that
been going on for years that almost died out during the mid 80s when the cd the compact disc
became the popular thing and replaced vinyl but the dj keeps the whole thing alive it keeps hip hop
alive and keeps music alive and this is tom larock and with the continuation of this story and this
discussion of web 3 is alive and more alive than ever thank you to sydney and thank you to nathan
thank you to all the platforms represented to our relaxed conversation of all things web 3
and we're signing out for now and it's been our pleasure thank you so much
thank you so much
