This Week in Music NFTs - Dec 12
You met the Criteria. Rising Tide. Music NFT Aggregators.
Free to listen. Valuable to collect.
There was a lot of debate this week around Music NFT aggregators.
In short - many artists were unaware that their music was automatically populating on aggregators like Oh La La, Spinamp and FutureTape. You can find the full 5 hour conversation here.
There was a smaller conversation around compensation around these plays, but more importantly - the focus was that artists should always be in control of where their music is being distributed.
Here’s my take.
Aggregators are extremely valuable.
Just look at DeFi projects like 1inch, Balancer or Yearn. Connecting liquidity to offer the best rate(s) possible benefits the end user.
I would argue music is no different. The more exposure an NFT gets, the higher likelihood it is that someone collects.
Very soon - I expect aggregators to allow listeners to collect directly in-app - creating the end-to-end experience Music NFTs have been missing.
After all - it’s about the relationship with the music, not how many plays it gets.
To this end, I’m proud to be starting an event series in LA called Rising Tide.
It’s meant to spotlight emerging artists and create a space to discover new music - beyond the tech.
If you haven’t already - smash that RSVP.
This Wednesday is going to feature a lineup of artists that very much fit the criteria.
Speaking of which - Criteria.
2500 editions (Sound’s largest collection to date) from Daniel Allan and Reo Cragun - two web3 powerhouses.
Time to take web3 music to the next level.
See you out there.
Upcoming Drops
Freshly Minted
Top Stories
Daniel Allan and Reo Cragun Announce Criteria
Two leading artists in web3 debut a 2500 edition collection - Criteria.
Sound Celebrates its 1 Year Anniversary
Sound drops a mixtape to celebrate its first year of existence.
Rising Tide LA Event Series
I’m launching an event series for emerging artists in LA
Artists Debate Music Aggregators
A big conversation breaks out around music aggregators.
Decent’s 1st Birthday
Decent shares learning from its first year.
Zoom Remix Contest on Apreggi
Reo Cragun’s remix contest kicks off a wave of Framework remixes.
Bonus Reads
This Week in Music NFTs is free to subscribe. Follow me to stay up with the latest!
Disclosure: I am an investor in Sound, Decent and Apreggi. I am a co-host of Rising Tide. I am a project manager of Criteria. I am a collector of most of the artists mentioned in Freshly Minted.
Cooper
Your take is interesting and I mostly agree with it.
The debate about music trending to free is a tough one and an old one. I remember sharing a platform with the EFF at the 2001 MP3 Summit. They advocated that all music should be free but when faced with the reality of artists needing to ‘eat and live’ their tone softened as they realised that this was not a sustainable position.
My perspective is that music should be as free as an artist wants it to be and for them to be paid in the way that they want. That’s how it used to be when it all began, if the singer does not want to sing, the show does not go on.
This is where your second point resonates and I agree that the right for the artist to control the usage of their content should be paramount. I am of the opinion that this cannot be solved by licensing or a legal framework. It needs to be done by a trustless content distribution mechanism that is under the control of the copyright owner. Once that is in place the legal frameworks can be settled on. We considered this distribution solution as the key component when we started to build our solutions and settled on Eluvio as our underlying content fabric. To date it seems to be hitting the mark and there may be others but we could not find them. I would be interested to hear if you have any thoughts as to other ways to solve as IFPS or Arweave seem to me to not be up to scratch in a complex global environment.
Keep up the good work.