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This is an article directly related to a thread posted by crypto angel investor DegenDaVinci on his bull case on why Music NFTs will 100x in under a year. I highly recommend reading that thread in detail before continuing with this article.
Get each article as it comes out by subscribing here.
https://twitter.com/DegenDaVinci/status/1527677913117601793?s=20&t=vRKP3SVuQbk2-aW606gqsw
A few days ago, music NFT twitter got a bit hot under the collar by DegenDaVinci’s long and detailed thread on the bull case for music NFTs.
DegenDaVinci’s thread is incredible. It is intelligent, nuanced, detailed and yet succinct. It’s probably the best piece of content I’ve consumed on music NFTs in general when it comes to seeing how someone can take quite a complex thing and make it read easy.
Very briefly about me - I have had pretty much every role in the music industry over the course of my career. I ran shows as a kid, went on tour in bands for years & did a degree in music before working in the space full-time. Since then, I have worked for publishing companies, labels and everything in between. Today I run an artist management agency working with artists of various different genres and career stages, and I produce a leading international classical music festival.
I have been shaping my own thesis on music NFTs (and was going to use this mirror profile as a place to store thoughts and musings), and so to see DegenDaVinci lay out such a cogent argument for the bull case was inspiring (and led to this response).
The few people I do know in the space of web3 and music were very excited about this thread, as was I (evidently).
He lays out his thesis with ten major points.
The first point is the arguably the most salient. Streaming is broken.
https://twitter.com/DegenDaVinci/status/1527677915902554112?s=20&t=vRKP3SVuQbk2-aW606gqsw
What I love about this point is that it is very clear where the thinking on streaming is framed. He is thinking from the artist’s perspective, and out of concern for how streaming has failed the artist. Streaming is indeed broken, FOR THE ARTIST.
Unfortunately, streaming is not broken for the average music consumer. It is an incredibly easy way to have access to the history of recorded music. Most people are not super fans and most people will listen to their favourite five or six artists consistently in the easiest way possible.
I believe the income (or lack thereof) from streaming is one of the biggest obstacles facing the industry right now, and yet it will be one of the most difficult things for web3 to solve. Until the average user has a better option than Spotify, Spotify will remain king, no matter how much shit artists throw at it.
There is an argument to be made that Spotify saved the industry from artists earning nothing digitally through piracy to at least earning something, but overall the streaming model has failed artists in many ways, and has probably robbed the world of many wonderful artists who’s music or aesthetic is not in keeping with the algorithm of the largest streaming services.
From most people involved in the industry at large, streaming is broken.
Even though most people aren’t superfans of any one artist, luckily they do exist, bringing us to point 2…
NFT Ownership Creates Superfans
DegenDaVinci goes from an artist centric point of view in his first point to thinking of the consumer in his second.
That feeling of being early to an artist is one of the best things in the world. It is a one-two punch to your endorphins. On the one hand, you are incredibly happy for this artist for them to finally be reaching the level of success they have long deserved, and also it shows that you have the ability to spot the diamonds in the rough. Your curatorial prowess is unmatched, your taste immaculate. Everyone loves that feeling.
NFTs give the individual ownership and a real financial benefit for having the foresight to notice a new talent when they were at an early stage.
Aside from the financial upside of purchasing an early NFT of an artist that will become much more popular, you will forever have the thanks of the artist in question for being an early supporter (see point 10).
This is a wonderful position to be in as a music consumer.
A financial upside is one thing, but music has always been about how it makes us feel. Music is something us as humans need. There is something in our wiring that has had us creating and enjoying music since the dawn of time.
DegenDaVinci realises this from his first hand experience of purchasing Daniel Allan’s “Overstimulated” on sound.xyz. He calls this the Emotionality of Ownership.
The track is actually a banger. Recommended listening. Jealous of DegenDaVinci for owning it.
DegenDaVinci isn’t the first to talk about the emotion of listening to music where you own the NFT, of course.
https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa/status/1474167795923316744?s=20&t=MiZCLNkwUcQfk-L_KMOaCw
After discussing the very real human emotion of what it feels like to enjoy music in a new and unique way that is truly web3, DegenDaVinci returns to the current market for Music NFTs and in his opinion, they are currently underpriced.
It is stark to see the difference between the visual art NFT market cap and the music NFT market cap when put side by side.
Overall, music is definitely the more popular artform amongst the masses, and therefore it seems only logical that there is a really asymmetrical upside to the music NFT market right now.
Although DegenDaVinci makes a very good point on how small the market cap is for the entirety of the music NFT market, there are two things to be considered here for a counterargument as to why they may not see such explosive growth in value in the near future:
1 - the current music industry is a joke. It’s embarrassing how little it is worth when put up against how all encompassing it is. Last year the global music industry was estimated to be worth $26 billion dollars. That is it. Everything that happens in music anywhere in the world at any given time is worth less than market cap of XRP. It is similar to the global value of the garlic industry. There are many reasons for this, which extend beyond the scope of this article, but needless to say, music has always been undervalued.
For reference, the film industry is estimated at $46 billion and the gaming industry is around $65 billion.
2 - One would have to wonder how much of the current music NFT market will hold its value on secondary markets. Most of the artists in the music NFT space are relatively unknown outside of crypto - with a few notable exceptions of course - and this proliferates the argument that without a critical mass of established music artists enthusiastically and quickly joining the web3 movement, growth will not be as exponential as DegenDaVinci believes.
Admittedly, this is the part of the thread that I have the least experience of. I am not a wealthy individual (thanks, all my heavy bags going steadily to zero) and so haven’t had the disposable income to invest in music NFTs to any real degree yet. I hope that will change some day and I will be ‘in the market’ so to speak. Basically, DegenDaVinci has a much better chance of being right here than I do, as he is one of the world’s biggest Music NFT collectors and I… well I am not.
Point 5 - Freemium Model Wins
When I look at the chart above, I see in plain view the way the big three or four gatekeepers of the industry have stifled innovation within the music industry. Music is stuck in the 1980s in terms of the way it is organised.
The labels and publishing companies that control the world’s musical IP are not incentivised to modernise or to clear up the clutter. Their power is in the confusing, archaic systems that they have purposefully built to obfuscate things on both the master side and the publishing side, to the point where it is probably 100% accurate to say that no artist on earth is collecting all the monies owed to them for their art.
We all have one trip around god’s green earth, and many artists/artist managers spend far too much of it looking at royalty statements, publishing accounts and the like. These systems are built to bog the artist and those who work for artists down in administrative drudgery.
Going back to the point of freemium, I see DegenDaVinci’s point, but isn’t Spotify and the like Freemium to a certain extent? With their model, you can essentially listen for free to anything you want, but you are subjected to ads. That doesn’t lend itself to an enjoyable listening experience. Whether your listening habits are Mozart’s 5th Symphony or Dr Dre’s Pause 4 Porno, the thought of being interrupted by ads isn’t ideal.
It will be very interesting to see how the industry within web3 adopts a Freemium model, and if it has a similar impact to what it had within the gaming industry, it is again another bull case for assymetrical upside, both artistically and financially.
DegenDaVinci’s next point revolves around the Live Experience Utility possibilities.
There is a very real point mentioned here that shows the original author’s incredibly in-depth thesis of the music NFT market as it hasn’t been mentioned much on the discourse on music NFT twitter.
Music NFTs have infinitely more possibility of utility than their visual art counterparts.
Aside from the opportunities mentioned above, he goes on to mention even more.
All of these have such an edge on PFP projects that it is insane to think that the entire Music NFT market currently sits at around $10 million. We have seen some of these utility opportunities happen already within the space, a salient example being the recent drop of a physical vinyl for Kloud NFT holders done by Soundmint.
Of course exclusive merch has been heavily utilised by BAYC, but most of the opportunities mentioned above are much better suited to music than PFPs.
The only caveat I would have to this is that it would need to be an artist of significant note in order to be an attractive prospect. Most of the artists that primarily work and release in web3 are not internationally recognised. I’m not sure how much fun it would be to be brought on stage when the stage is the local open mic night.
This isn’t a slight on web3 artists on the whole at all, but a lot of them do not have a lot of live traction when compared to the pretty significant sums of money they have made through drops. This is just another potential upside that will only truly come to be once more mainstream artists enter the space.
The single biggest opportunity I think that exists in terms of Music NFTs and the live environment is ticketing. That’s beyond the scope of this article but I have something written on how this could be a major disrupter to Live Nation & Ticketmaster’s vice grip on the global entertainment industry.
DegenDaVinci’s seventh point revolves around on-chain revenue splits.
Copyrighting, licensing, sample usage, split deals. These are the bane of the artist manager’s life. Everything is convoluted, overly complex, and lots of the time still requires a ‘wet’ signature instead of docusign or a digital sig. It truly is from the Triassic Period.
If I can point to one thing that I looked to web3 for in terms of its potential to shape the new music paradigm, it is to do with the collection of intellectual property royalties. I don’t wish to pepper this article with too much profanity, but the current system is a monumental clusterfuck of shit. Humans shouldn’t be doing this stuff. Onboarding the royalty collection of music on-chain would be a truly wondrous utilisation of blockchain technology.
DegenDaVinci realises this of course, and shows a detailed understanding of the current issues surrounding royalties.
If there was one point in DegenDaVinci’s thread that wasn’t in my own thesis on the bullish case for Music NFTs, it was his eighth point where he says that he believes emerging Music DAOs will replace record labels.
He goes on to reference an article by Kyle Samani, a Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital and a great thinker and analyst in the crypto space. The article is incredibly interesting:
https://multicoin.capital/2022/02/25/rebundling-the-audio-value-chain/
Whilst I think that DegenDaVinci and Kyle have very valid points, I do not agree that Music DAOs will replace record labels. I think Music DAOs, or as Kyle calls them - Music VC DAOs (I’m not quite sure if that’s the most endearing term to artists who are fleeing the corporate label system) will have a monumental impact on the industry, but record labels aren’t going away. I will posit my reasoning below:
1 - Major labels have too much money to fail
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG are in control of most of the valuable IP in music. They will always exist, and they will always be an attractive prospect for an artist that wants to make it crazy big.
I would always advise an artist to avoid the big labels as the churn and burn with artists is similar to shitcoins, but if you want to be absolutely huge they are the best (and only) option, for the most part.
2 - Record Labels remain cool
Being immersed in Web3 and crypto twitter, it can be easy to forget that most musicians would love a record deal. Most artists I chat to are trying to get on one of the ‘cool’ labels. The in vogue label of the day varies depending on the time and the genre.
In the indie scene, for a while it was Domino (who are now VERY uncool over their mistreatment of Four Tet), now it appears to be 4AD. It was XL before that.
For heavier music right now it’s Partisan Records, for experimental it’s Mute/Kranky/Ninja tune and so on.
Artists love the clout that being on a record label provides.
Also, speaking personally, having a record label is still absolutely necessary right now for the way most artists need to function. Getting on a good label means you have a team behind you who will make sure you get a good North American and European agent so that you can gig, then your agents will book you shows garnering you fans. The label’s PR team leverages these shows to further boost your profile and it’s a positive cycle that builds the artist’s ecosystem.
I am not saying all of my dealings with labels have been good. Getting the statements isn’t good when you see what is taken off it, and the terms of most deals aren’t advantageous to artists AT ALL. But they’re not going anywhere in my opinion.
3 - The psychological barriers to entry are still too high
Most artists are against crypto and NFTs. This is mainly due to environmental fud that has no basis in truth, but it got pervasive enough that many artists do not wish to engage.
I truly believe that the majority of these artists will come around and realise the potential, but it will be a gradual process.
Even getting to grips with the basics of crypto is hard, let alone learning NFT stuff. Another layer beyond that again is DAOs and DAO structure.
But hey, who am I to fade DegenDaVinci and Kyle, two very very clever people who’s thoughtful contributions to critical thinking within the space cannot be understated.
This positive feedback loop that I mentioned from the traditional artist label relationship is not dissimilar to what DegenDaVinci has as his penultimate main point - the virtuous cycle of web3.
This is indeed a more utopian virtuous cycle than the one I mentioned above that exists in the current record label model. There is no doubt here that artists have more autonomy, creative freedom and growth prospects from this virtuous cycle.
I think this is getting pretty deep down the rabbit hole here. DegenDaVinci has obviously been thinking deeply on this topic for a long time. Also - it’s obvious that this point is showing the obvious benefits to the artist and the fans all at once. Everyone wins.
I would love it if this came to pass. It certainly has a chance to, but it will take time and also it will take sensitivity to bring artists into the ecosystem in a caring and welcoming way.
DegenDaVinci finishes off his macro thesis by saying that this virtuous cycle enables closer artist/fan connections.
It is true that artists are incredibly grateful to their most ardent supporters. Most artists, even the big ones, are very happy to build a relationship of some kind with their megafans.
In terms of the fan, they have the social clout to be one of their favourite artist’s best supporters, and this is another prong in DegenDaVinci’s virtuous cycle of web3 and music.
After these main ten points, the author goes on to tag a number of projects and people who are prominent in the space, and briefly mentions the intention to invest heavily in the space.
Conclusion
I have consumed every bit of content possible on web3 & music and Music NFTs over the last number of months. Every article, twitter thread, podcast, discord town hall, you name it.
Out of everything I have read and heard, DegenDaVinci’s thread manages to bring all of the main bull theses for music NFTs into one place, and manages to be both incredibly detailed whilst being incredibly easy to consume.
If people as sharp-minded and bullish as DegenDaVinci are looking to heavily focus on and invest in web3 & music, then that’s the most obvious reason to be bullish on the space.
Thank you for reading. I have a lot more articles written on the state of music and web3 and if you would like to get these directly to your inbox you can subscribe here. You’ll just get an email when a new piece is out, never anything more.
==============================================================
This is an article directly related to a thread posted by crypto angel investor DegenDaVinci on his bull case on why Music NFTs will 100x in under a year. I highly recommend reading that thread in detail before continuing with this article.
Get each article as it comes out by subscribing here.
https://twitter.com/DegenDaVinci/status/1527677913117601793?s=20&t=vRKP3SVuQbk2-aW606gqsw
A few days ago, music NFT twitter got a bit hot under the collar by DegenDaVinci’s long and detailed thread on the bull case for music NFTs.
DegenDaVinci’s thread is incredible. It is intelligent, nuanced, detailed and yet succinct. It’s probably the best piece of content I’ve consumed on music NFTs in general when it comes to seeing how someone can take quite a complex thing and make it read easy.
Very briefly about me - I have had pretty much every role in the music industry over the course of my career. I ran shows as a kid, went on tour in bands for years & did a degree in music before working in the space full-time. Since then, I have worked for publishing companies, labels and everything in between. Today I run an artist management agency working with artists of various different genres and career stages, and I produce a leading international classical music festival.
I have been shaping my own thesis on music NFTs (and was going to use this mirror profile as a place to store thoughts and musings), and so to see DegenDaVinci lay out such a cogent argument for the bull case was inspiring (and led to this response).
The few people I do know in the space of web3 and music were very excited about this thread, as was I (evidently).
He lays out his thesis with ten major points.
The first point is the arguably the most salient. Streaming is broken.
https://twitter.com/DegenDaVinci/status/1527677915902554112?s=20&t=vRKP3SVuQbk2-aW606gqsw
What I love about this point is that it is very clear where the thinking on streaming is framed. He is thinking from the artist’s perspective, and out of concern for how streaming has failed the artist. Streaming is indeed broken, FOR THE ARTIST.
Unfortunately, streaming is not broken for the average music consumer. It is an incredibly easy way to have access to the history of recorded music. Most people are not super fans and most people will listen to their favourite five or six artists consistently in the easiest way possible.
I believe the income (or lack thereof) from streaming is one of the biggest obstacles facing the industry right now, and yet it will be one of the most difficult things for web3 to solve. Until the average user has a better option than Spotify, Spotify will remain king, no matter how much shit artists throw at it.
There is an argument to be made that Spotify saved the industry from artists earning nothing digitally through piracy to at least earning something, but overall the streaming model has failed artists in many ways, and has probably robbed the world of many wonderful artists who’s music or aesthetic is not in keeping with the algorithm of the largest streaming services.
From most people involved in the industry at large, streaming is broken.
Even though most people aren’t superfans of any one artist, luckily they do exist, bringing us to point 2…
NFT Ownership Creates Superfans
DegenDaVinci goes from an artist centric point of view in his first point to thinking of the consumer in his second.
That feeling of being early to an artist is one of the best things in the world. It is a one-two punch to your endorphins. On the one hand, you are incredibly happy for this artist for them to finally be reaching the level of success they have long deserved, and also it shows that you have the ability to spot the diamonds in the rough. Your curatorial prowess is unmatched, your taste immaculate. Everyone loves that feeling.
NFTs give the individual ownership and a real financial benefit for having the foresight to notice a new talent when they were at an early stage.
Aside from the financial upside of purchasing an early NFT of an artist that will become much more popular, you will forever have the thanks of the artist in question for being an early supporter (see point 10).
This is a wonderful position to be in as a music consumer.
A financial upside is one thing, but music has always been about how it makes us feel. Music is something us as humans need. There is something in our wiring that has had us creating and enjoying music since the dawn of time.
DegenDaVinci realises this from his first hand experience of purchasing Daniel Allan’s “Overstimulated” on sound.xyz. He calls this the Emotionality of Ownership.
The track is actually a banger. Recommended listening. Jealous of DegenDaVinci for owning it.
DegenDaVinci isn’t the first to talk about the emotion of listening to music where you own the NFT, of course.
https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa/status/1474167795923316744?s=20&t=MiZCLNkwUcQfk-L_KMOaCw
After discussing the very real human emotion of what it feels like to enjoy music in a new and unique way that is truly web3, DegenDaVinci returns to the current market for Music NFTs and in his opinion, they are currently underpriced.
It is stark to see the difference between the visual art NFT market cap and the music NFT market cap when put side by side.
Overall, music is definitely the more popular artform amongst the masses, and therefore it seems only logical that there is a really asymmetrical upside to the music NFT market right now.
Although DegenDaVinci makes a very good point on how small the market cap is for the entirety of the music NFT market, there are two things to be considered here for a counterargument as to why they may not see such explosive growth in value in the near future:
1 - the current music industry is a joke. It’s embarrassing how little it is worth when put up against how all encompassing it is. Last year the global music industry was estimated to be worth $26 billion dollars. That is it. Everything that happens in music anywhere in the world at any given time is worth less than market cap of XRP. It is similar to the global value of the garlic industry. There are many reasons for this, which extend beyond the scope of this article, but needless to say, music has always been undervalued.
For reference, the film industry is estimated at $46 billion and the gaming industry is around $65 billion.
2 - One would have to wonder how much of the current music NFT market will hold its value on secondary markets. Most of the artists in the music NFT space are relatively unknown outside of crypto - with a few notable exceptions of course - and this proliferates the argument that without a critical mass of established music artists enthusiastically and quickly joining the web3 movement, growth will not be as exponential as DegenDaVinci believes.
Admittedly, this is the part of the thread that I have the least experience of. I am not a wealthy individual (thanks, all my heavy bags going steadily to zero) and so haven’t had the disposable income to invest in music NFTs to any real degree yet. I hope that will change some day and I will be ‘in the market’ so to speak. Basically, DegenDaVinci has a much better chance of being right here than I do, as he is one of the world’s biggest Music NFT collectors and I… well I am not.
Point 5 - Freemium Model Wins
When I look at the chart above, I see in plain view the way the big three or four gatekeepers of the industry have stifled innovation within the music industry. Music is stuck in the 1980s in terms of the way it is organised.
The labels and publishing companies that control the world’s musical IP are not incentivised to modernise or to clear up the clutter. Their power is in the confusing, archaic systems that they have purposefully built to obfuscate things on both the master side and the publishing side, to the point where it is probably 100% accurate to say that no artist on earth is collecting all the monies owed to them for their art.
We all have one trip around god’s green earth, and many artists/artist managers spend far too much of it looking at royalty statements, publishing accounts and the like. These systems are built to bog the artist and those who work for artists down in administrative drudgery.
Going back to the point of freemium, I see DegenDaVinci’s point, but isn’t Spotify and the like Freemium to a certain extent? With their model, you can essentially listen for free to anything you want, but you are subjected to ads. That doesn’t lend itself to an enjoyable listening experience. Whether your listening habits are Mozart’s 5th Symphony or Dr Dre’s Pause 4 Porno, the thought of being interrupted by ads isn’t ideal.
It will be very interesting to see how the industry within web3 adopts a Freemium model, and if it has a similar impact to what it had within the gaming industry, it is again another bull case for assymetrical upside, both artistically and financially.
DegenDaVinci’s next point revolves around the Live Experience Utility possibilities.
There is a very real point mentioned here that shows the original author’s incredibly in-depth thesis of the music NFT market as it hasn’t been mentioned much on the discourse on music NFT twitter.
Music NFTs have infinitely more possibility of utility than their visual art counterparts.
Aside from the opportunities mentioned above, he goes on to mention even more.
All of these have such an edge on PFP projects that it is insane to think that the entire Music NFT market currently sits at around $10 million. We have seen some of these utility opportunities happen already within the space, a salient example being the recent drop of a physical vinyl for Kloud NFT holders done by Soundmint.
Of course exclusive merch has been heavily utilised by BAYC, but most of the opportunities mentioned above are much better suited to music than PFPs.
The only caveat I would have to this is that it would need to be an artist of significant note in order to be an attractive prospect. Most of the artists that primarily work and release in web3 are not internationally recognised. I’m not sure how much fun it would be to be brought on stage when the stage is the local open mic night.
This isn’t a slight on web3 artists on the whole at all, but a lot of them do not have a lot of live traction when compared to the pretty significant sums of money they have made through drops. This is just another potential upside that will only truly come to be once more mainstream artists enter the space.
The single biggest opportunity I think that exists in terms of Music NFTs and the live environment is ticketing. That’s beyond the scope of this article but I have something written on how this could be a major disrupter to Live Nation & Ticketmaster’s vice grip on the global entertainment industry.
DegenDaVinci’s seventh point revolves around on-chain revenue splits.
Copyrighting, licensing, sample usage, split deals. These are the bane of the artist manager’s life. Everything is convoluted, overly complex, and lots of the time still requires a ‘wet’ signature instead of docusign or a digital sig. It truly is from the Triassic Period.
If I can point to one thing that I looked to web3 for in terms of its potential to shape the new music paradigm, it is to do with the collection of intellectual property royalties. I don’t wish to pepper this article with too much profanity, but the current system is a monumental clusterfuck of shit. Humans shouldn’t be doing this stuff. Onboarding the royalty collection of music on-chain would be a truly wondrous utilisation of blockchain technology.
DegenDaVinci realises this of course, and shows a detailed understanding of the current issues surrounding royalties.
If there was one point in DegenDaVinci’s thread that wasn’t in my own thesis on the bullish case for Music NFTs, it was his eighth point where he says that he believes emerging Music DAOs will replace record labels.
He goes on to reference an article by Kyle Samani, a Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital and a great thinker and analyst in the crypto space. The article is incredibly interesting:
https://multicoin.capital/2022/02/25/rebundling-the-audio-value-chain/
Whilst I think that DegenDaVinci and Kyle have very valid points, I do not agree that Music DAOs will replace record labels. I think Music DAOs, or as Kyle calls them - Music VC DAOs (I’m not quite sure if that’s the most endearing term to artists who are fleeing the corporate label system) will have a monumental impact on the industry, but record labels aren’t going away. I will posit my reasoning below:
1 - Major labels have too much money to fail
Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG are in control of most of the valuable IP in music. They will always exist, and they will always be an attractive prospect for an artist that wants to make it crazy big.
I would always advise an artist to avoid the big labels as the churn and burn with artists is similar to shitcoins, but if you want to be absolutely huge they are the best (and only) option, for the most part.
2 - Record Labels remain cool
Being immersed in Web3 and crypto twitter, it can be easy to forget that most musicians would love a record deal. Most artists I chat to are trying to get on one of the ‘cool’ labels. The in vogue label of the day varies depending on the time and the genre.
In the indie scene, for a while it was Domino (who are now VERY uncool over their mistreatment of Four Tet), now it appears to be 4AD. It was XL before that.
For heavier music right now it’s Partisan Records, for experimental it’s Mute/Kranky/Ninja tune and so on.
Artists love the clout that being on a record label provides.
Also, speaking personally, having a record label is still absolutely necessary right now for the way most artists need to function. Getting on a good label means you have a team behind you who will make sure you get a good North American and European agent so that you can gig, then your agents will book you shows garnering you fans. The label’s PR team leverages these shows to further boost your profile and it’s a positive cycle that builds the artist’s ecosystem.
I am not saying all of my dealings with labels have been good. Getting the statements isn’t good when you see what is taken off it, and the terms of most deals aren’t advantageous to artists AT ALL. But they’re not going anywhere in my opinion.
3 - The psychological barriers to entry are still too high
Most artists are against crypto and NFTs. This is mainly due to environmental fud that has no basis in truth, but it got pervasive enough that many artists do not wish to engage.
I truly believe that the majority of these artists will come around and realise the potential, but it will be a gradual process.
Even getting to grips with the basics of crypto is hard, let alone learning NFT stuff. Another layer beyond that again is DAOs and DAO structure.
But hey, who am I to fade DegenDaVinci and Kyle, two very very clever people who’s thoughtful contributions to critical thinking within the space cannot be understated.
This positive feedback loop that I mentioned from the traditional artist label relationship is not dissimilar to what DegenDaVinci has as his penultimate main point - the virtuous cycle of web3.
This is indeed a more utopian virtuous cycle than the one I mentioned above that exists in the current record label model. There is no doubt here that artists have more autonomy, creative freedom and growth prospects from this virtuous cycle.
I think this is getting pretty deep down the rabbit hole here. DegenDaVinci has obviously been thinking deeply on this topic for a long time. Also - it’s obvious that this point is showing the obvious benefits to the artist and the fans all at once. Everyone wins.
I would love it if this came to pass. It certainly has a chance to, but it will take time and also it will take sensitivity to bring artists into the ecosystem in a caring and welcoming way.
DegenDaVinci finishes off his macro thesis by saying that this virtuous cycle enables closer artist/fan connections.
It is true that artists are incredibly grateful to their most ardent supporters. Most artists, even the big ones, are very happy to build a relationship of some kind with their megafans.
In terms of the fan, they have the social clout to be one of their favourite artist’s best supporters, and this is another prong in DegenDaVinci’s virtuous cycle of web3 and music.
After these main ten points, the author goes on to tag a number of projects and people who are prominent in the space, and briefly mentions the intention to invest heavily in the space.
Conclusion
I have consumed every bit of content possible on web3 & music and Music NFTs over the last number of months. Every article, twitter thread, podcast, discord town hall, you name it.
Out of everything I have read and heard, DegenDaVinci’s thread manages to bring all of the main bull theses for music NFTs into one place, and manages to be both incredibly detailed whilst being incredibly easy to consume.
If people as sharp-minded and bullish as DegenDaVinci are looking to heavily focus on and invest in web3 & music, then that’s the most obvious reason to be bullish on the space.
Thank you for reading. I have a lot more articles written on the state of music and web3 and if you would like to get these directly to your inbox you can subscribe here. You’ll just get an email when a new piece is out, never anything more.
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