Five days to release of my third record, Love You Forever, there’s this building, uneasy feeling that I’ve been trying to understand and articulate that’s slowly overshadowing my excitement and anticipation in sharing a new body of work that I’ve made for you.

It’s embarrassment.

I feel embarrassed for my ambition, for my desire to share myself with the world and for wanting your attention. I’m embarrassed by my vulnerability. I feel exhausted, reaching my hand out with fear and anticipation that my grasp won’t be met. I’m embarrassed that in order to grow I feel this pressure to dumb myself down to the lowest common denominator so that I’m more palatable to the masses. Not for you. You are brilliant and complex and capable of experiencing beauty and nuance and mess. But for the machine, the algorithm and the platforms that once democratized community and the distribution of information who have become the gatekeepers they sought to disrupt, creating the new, ever changing parameters for what content is deemed acceptable (and most profitable) to share to a wider audience.

The truth is, the decision to be an independent artist is a choice to exist outside the system. A choice that has been both exhilarating and isolating. A choice I made before the systems and supports that currently exist were fully realized. A choice that has granted me immense freedom and crippling anxiety. A choice that has given me ownership of my work, autonomy over what I create and the freedom to share my work when and how I want to. I have been creating art for a living for the last seven years of my life and will be able to continue on this path for the foreseeable future. Though I sometimes can’t see it clearly, I am an extremely successful independent artist.

We sometimes say the grass is always greener on the other side, but the truth is, when grass grows naturally, it’s patchy and imperfect. Some lawns with wealthy owners will grow pristine and green and those without automated sprinkler systems, those who aren’t plugged into the source will look at their well manicured neighbors and wonder what they’re doing wrong. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few years wondering what I’m doing wrong, wondering why I’m unable to play the game like everyone else, wondering why I can’t seem to break this ceiling above my head that seems to be blocking me.

I’m not lacking in pragmatism or grit. For me, sustainable independent artistry lives at the center of a venn diagram that seamlessly blends the creation of impactful, timeless art with the building of a sustainable and profitable business and living a full and meaningful existence. It’s a balance I’ve been striking for many years, though the cracks are starting to show. I know how to create art, I find the strategy and business aspects of building a business around my art both challenging and exciting. I attempt to find meaning in my existence through sharing myself and my world, but recently, my existence seems like it’s not valid unless its performative to a degree that’s so false and contrived and distorted to satisfy what feels like increasingly arbitrary parameters which feel like they’re forcing quantity over quality all in the name of virality.

As I sit about 5 days before the release of my third album, Love You Forever — an album about killing off the parts of yourself that refuse to let you grow, an album about cutting off the limbs that are holding you back, a body of work made to reclaim my own creative process, seven years into an independent career that has allowed me the gift of continued creation and forward momentum — I’m feeling my knives beginning to sharpen once again, preparing to cut myself free from myself. And as I sit, feeling like there is a constant resistance pushing up against me and all my forward momentum, the same resistance I imagine you feel pushing against you, I have an eerily positive feeling. I think that feeling comes with the recognition that I would rather die playing my own game than succeed in playing someone else’s unwinnable game. That I refuse to contort myself into the perfect position to fit into this mold that has been presented to me. I have spent all of this time and energy to maintain my autonomy both as an artist and a human to not have to compromise the core of myself to fake a smile and pretend to be peppy as I ask for your attention, as I ask for you to lend me your eyes and ears to experience this world I’ve built for you or maybe even ask for a night of your time to come experience it live, in real life, on tour.

I’m not writing this to ask you for anything. I have desires, ambitions and hopes for myself, for this record and for my future and I believe that if I continue to grind and push forward, step by step, the unexpected will materialize. I mean, yes… please listen to Love You Forever, it’s a fucking brilliant record, but that’s besides the point. I guess I’m just writing this to express this growing anxiety inside my brain and to challenge myself and you to take a step outside the invisible bubble that has been carefully crafted to steal your attention and optimize your consumption with zero care for us, our wellbeing, our creativity or our curiosity.

Defy the algorithm. It’s art.

Love you forever, VÉRITÉ.

The last eight months have been a test of resilience. Technically, this is a follow up to my piece analyzing my first year in web3, and while I feel as though my initial learnings are still applicable, the landscape has clearly changed. This has allowed me to zoom out and refocus on my career as a whole and critically look at my intention and strategies moving forward, analyzing where the tools and ethos of web3 fit into the larger picture. Since February 2021, I’ve been experimenting with different modes of distributing NFTs, dissecting the motivations for both purchase and participation, riding the rollercoaster of what feels like a full hype cycle—capturing the adrenaline at the top all the way down to the sobering perspective of the crash. 

This journey has left me and many others asking–why web3?

Challenging the practical impact of technology against the movement that technology represents is really helpful in distilling legitimate use cases for the tools being built.

Web3 has a branding problem that is hard to see if you’re too close. It’s not a monolith nor is it a definitive movement outside of the bubble. “Hashtag Music NFTs” has been meme-ified and doesn’t accurately represent how this technology can be utilized in the context of a full, sustainable music career. The language we use and the framing we build around emerging technologies and industries matters and has an impact on how that tech gets adopted by new users. 

Web3 has a scalability problem. The message of web3 doesn’t resonate with non crypto native audiences. Sentiments range from active vitriol and distrust to mild skepticism to a general lack of interest. The message of artists monetizing their work, developing new modes of distribution, streamlining valuation and payment mechanisms within the music industry do not peak the curiosities of the average music fan. We are not building solutions for audiences—we’re building solutions for entities to better understand who those audiences are. 

Web3 has been framed as a creator centric movement, but the entities we sought to disrupt are working on integrating the tech to continue their control of data in the pursuit of profit. Projects and platforms are unknowingly recreating many of the same systems that have already existed and building a better mousetrap that in the long term will become home to the same issues we are facing on web2 platforms today. Companies in web3 are looking to artists to innovate, share insights and build with them without offering proper compensation and equity.    

None of these observations are meant to diminish the strong community that has been built on the promises of web3—decentralized ownership, access to new channels of distribution, new means of networking and community building, a revaluation of art and music, etc—but meant to peel away the surface level enthusiasm and idealism to expose how artists can practically utilize these tools to their benefit while creating meaningful impact to their audiences and communities while recognizing the complex and competing motivations for participation.

Recently, I’ve felt like I’m walking a tightrope. How do I balance creating art, distributing that art, and building meaningful communities while ideating, building and deploying new products and experiences, while consulting for companies, optimizing myself for the algorithm, keeping my chops in touring shape, remembering to hydrate, and avoid collapse from burnout? Add to that navigating different sentiments on web3, operating carefully to not undermine my existing fan base as I build simultaneously in a new world. I’ve learned that my core audience doesn’t care about technology. I’ve learned that attention is a scarce resource and having an expectation that people will change existing behaviors is futile. I’ve learned it’s much easier to talk than to build something that will survive and thrive after the crash.

As a career independent artist who’s spent the last seven years intentionally building a project on my own terms, my goal has always been to actively advocate for artists to capture their full value though expanding their considerations into entrepreneurial mindsets that allow for sustained autonomy and creative freedom. This forces artists to view their projects holistically, focusing on the balance of art and commerce and recognizing that to make a living as an artist, you can’t have one without the other. What I’ve learned from my own experiences is that it’s important to have an artist centric mindset for one’s project that isn’t solely dependent on any label, entity or platform, but utilizes the limitless tools at our disposal in a strategic manner that fits each individual artist’s unique needs. Coming from this perspective and entering into the era of my third album, my strategy has been refined and refocused on how I can utilize the tools built on the blockchain to solve the challenges I’m facing and best amplify the rollout of this record to fans and collectors alike. 

So if the question is—why web3?

The answer lies in what specific problems we are trying to solve for on the blockchain. After so much experimentation, I’ve narrowed my strategy into two pillars that will be my main focus as I begin to release this next album. 

Scarcity and Access. 

Access:

Last week, I dropped The VÉRITÉ Crewneck, a sweatshirt embedded with an NFC chip that will act as the key to the next era of VÉRITÉ and unlock premiere access to my upcoming record. This is the first artist merchandise that will utilize this technology in collaboration with IYK*, a company bridging immersive digital and physical experiences, built with painstaking attention to detail in every aspect of the drop, from the point of sale, to the flow of the experience once you receive your garment, to the language used when discussing this drop to non-tech native fans. This crewneck is a high quality garment paired with an experience—getting to see and hear this new record first. The floor of value has been clearly articulated so that people are clear on what they are purchasing. Fans don’t have to interact with anything web3 in regards to the Crewneck, merely tap your phone to your wrist to hear my new single before anyone else. If fans want to “Claim” their Crewneck, they’ll be able to claim an NFT of their sweatshirt which will act as a digital certificate of authentication, transferred from my wallet to theirs. The VÉRITÉ Crewneck is at a $100 price point, available to purchase with USD or cryptocurrency on my Shopify. 

Access is key to adoption. Providing audiences with a simple and intuitive user experience and allowing the web3 component to exist as an option to explore—a doorway to an enhanced experience will allow for more natural exploration of the technology, giving fans the experience of digital ownership and the ability to receive the benefits of it. 

Web3 isn’t the product, nor should it be marketed as such. A great example of this is my experience with Royal, where I sold 39% of my single He’s Not You to collectors and where I saw the first glimmer of interest from any non web3 versed fans. This is because the proposition is clear—you can own a piece of your favorite song. We honestly framed our value proposition—you get to own a small piece of a song you love, you get an exclusive signed cassette tape and you get to be in the first cohort to do so. I communicated that this was not an investment, warding off purchasers who were trying to make a quick ROI from royalty payments. We sold out 505 tokens in less than 5 minutes, making 90k. The experience and the sentimental value were primary, the fact that tokens and payments are issued on the blockchain is a secondary and almost invisible process. 

For me, web3 is a vehicle for identifying my earliest and most consistent supporters without having to rely on a platform. I have access to some of this data through analytics on various platforms, but as audiences shift and algorithms change how content is disseminated, there isn’t a clear way to identify and reward my longest and most avid fans over a prolonged period of time. A story I come back to is early in my career, 2015, I had just quit my day job at Applebees on 42nd St. and I was having trouble transitioning into full time creative work. I had to go to the post office and randomly posted on twitter that I would write letters to fans who sent me a DM. Hours later, I had to set up a separate email and had over 500 fans send me their addresses requesting letters. I spent the next two weeks hand writing and mailing letters to fans. How amazing would it have been to have each of those letters claimable as a token, so that now, years later, I could identify those individuals and reward them for being there at the very beginning?

My strategy for access in web3 is enhancing and rewarding behaviors and participation. Some of these behaviors are monetized (attending a show, purchasing merch, etc), but I believe in the future we’ll be able to identify baseline participation and engagement, eliminating financial barriers for fans who don’t have means. This Crewneck drop is just the beginning of how we can add layers of value on top of existing fan behaviors to better serve our communities, reward our patrons and understand what they’re looking for.

Scarcity:

The issue then becomes, how can we create ubiquitous access and maintain a high value? In the music industry we’ve seen that this access has severely diminished the core value of music. Limitless choice leaves less leverage for artists and even labels to set their own price. One of the core benefits of web3 is the ability to create digital scarcity. Everyone can listen, one person can own. See: The Mona Lisa, which is how this concept was explained to me. Everyone knows the iconic image, anyone can look it up on the internet, print the image and pin it to your wall, buy a fine art print, even go see it in person at The Louvre, but there is only one entity that owns the painting—The French Republic. So actually, ownership of the Mona Lisa is somewhat fractionalized—owned and governed by the French people.

My strategy for scarcity is directly derived from the Mona Lisa. 

As the crypto markets have shifted, it’s been interesting to see the impact on strategy and pricing. I’ve seen a trend of pricing down to match diminishing demand for music NFTs, using collection as a tool for access and community building. We’ve seen that the consumer base for NFTs is not as strong and stable as it was in the bull market and that new audiences aren’t entering the space. While I understand the impulse to lower the price to attract more of an audience, I fear that we’re recreating the same fundamental issues we’re trying to escape from–devaluing the core asset for more reach. This could be because there’s too much dependency on web3 as an audience builder vs having web3 as a part of a larger tool box one can use to build a solid foundation for a holistic, sustainable career that can withstand the ups and downs of any market.

I want to embrace the creation of digital scarcity to fully capture the value of my music, which I fully view as fine art. For this next record, my goal is to maintain the high value I’ve established for my work. Like the Mona Lisa, there will be one NFT for each individual song. There’s then room for accessible, fractionalized ownership of music without losing the rarity. For me, this feels like the main ethos of web3–the ability to reinvigorate the baseline value of music while captivating a larger audience and using that larger audience to bring more value to the original work. 

Moving forward, the challenge is how to integrate my experimentations in web3 into my existing career seamlessly. There is no such thing as a web3 artist, just entrepreneurial artists embracing new tools at their disposal to better create and connect. Each artist and entity will use this technology in unique ways. There is no one size fits all—nor should there be. The more I build in this space, the more I realize that “why web3?” is actually the wrong question. As artists, we should be asking ourselves how we can sustain our independence as entrepreneurial artists, preserving our creative autonomy while building sustainable businesses using all of the tools at our disposal, regardless of their origin. 

If you’re interested in learning more, I highly suggest you buy The VÉRITÉ Crewneck and come learn more with me. You can also join me in the rollout of my upcoming record by pre-saving the first single, are we done yet? now!

This is just the beginning. 

Through my experiences, I’ve identified three main pillars of use cases for NFTs in music, each of which caters to a different type of potential fan.

-1/1 music NFTs: A one-of-a-kind, authenticated digital asset. Similar to a limited edition signed vinyl.

-Fractionalized ownership: Using NFTs as a tool to split ownership of an asset. This can be fractionalizing the ownership of a digital asset or having an NFT represent a piece of ownership of a real world asset.

-Experiential NFTs: Unlock access and experiences with NFTs, provide patrons and fans with real world experiences, create incentives to participate IRL and reward attendance.

This is just the beginning and I’ve only just scratch the surface of how NFTs and their utility can provide artists with increased freedom and autonomy over their art and businesses.

WHY NFTS?

Adapting to changing industry landscapes has become second nature to me. I started this journey in 2014 at the beginning of mass adoption of streaming. This was the time where Hype Machine was king and established artists were actively campaigning against streaming as an existential threat that would lead to the death of the music industry. From my vantage point as an outsider, it was an opportunity for access. Spotify and Soundcloud were legitimate discovery tools then, that allowed both for curation and the potential magic of masses of people stumbling across music and helping unknown artists to connect with listeners who were hungry for something new. The democratization of the creation and distribution of music lowered the barrier of entry into an industry that had been almost fully gated by major labels and allowed artists like myself to build a viable foundation of an independent career. Bootstrapping my project with tips I made at Applebee’s in Times Square, I was able to invest in myself, grow my fanbase organically, eventually bring on investment and distribution partners and ultimately run my independent project like a small startup. With every innovation that solves a problem and opens a door, there is an unintended consequence.

Then came the algorithm.

The emergence of the efficient, yet calloused, algorithm of social platforms and streaming services to manage millions of streams and hundreds of songs per day cut off access to an audience I’d spent years building–and it was frustrating as fuck. It became impossible to constantly shift social media strategy to adapt to an ever-changing set of rules in order to have my posts show up to current and future fans. Suddenly, after years of maintaining creative freedom, I faced the dilemma of either writing and producing music to optimize algorithm discoverability or staying true to my artistic vision and becoming invisible. Socially, I felt the pressure to become a “content creator” but consistently creating videos sharing every banal detail of my existence for a chance at going viral on TikTok felt like slow, contrived torture. I recognized that I needed to adapt or die and find a new route forward. Instead of caving to these systems, I decided to look forward and build something new.

INTRODUCTION TO WEB3

My introduction to web3 was a Twitter rant from RAC talking about how inept the music industry was at properly valuing music. Prior to having him on my podcast, Anatomy of an Artist, I had pretty fixed, narrow beliefs on the value of music, tied directly to my own experiences. Fundamentally, I feel that creating music and art for a living is the ultimate privilege—the ability to indulge artistic whims and not grind ourselves down doing unfulfilling, monotonous work, feels like a dream and I still have that core belief. My perspective did shift when we got to discussing the fixed pricing of music by the industry and how essentially, it limits the expansion of that value and limits the overall marketplace from determining how much something can be worth. We’re locked in and there’s no growth to be had in the current models. We discussed how the music industry is actually terrible at its job and drives down the value of its most prominent asset—the actual music. This led me to ask myself:

What is the value?

Is something valuable just because I say it’s valuable?

Does sentimental value create monetary value?

How can I create value for my fans?

Can I use NFTs to build a better foundation for myself and my community?

These questions sparked a series of experiments, recognizing that value isn’t a fixed proposition, but a dance between two entities, ever shifting, evolving and reacting to its environment.

1/1 NFTS

My first mint was quick and clumsy, mid-February 2021. I'd been granted early access to Zora and had a gut feeling I should just learn by doing. My independence was an asset for me, since I own all of my music and have a back catalog of 50+ songs. I decided to start by minting the first song I released as VÉRITÉ, Strange Enough. I pulled an all nighter, creating a very simple moving image of the Strange Enough artwork and paid four hundred dollars to mint the piece onto Zora. At the time I had zero concept of what gas fees were and just assumed they were the cost of doing business (I paid too much…). I said fuck it, minted the piece and promoted it with a tweet. I received ~10 bids on an audio/visual NFT of a song that I had released in 2014, each bid rising in the USD equivalent. The auction process was more unsettling than I expected, but I accepted a bid from a fan who was established in web3 and excited that I was entering “the space.” I accepted their bid for 1 WETH and haven’t looked back since.

Early mover advantage can be a real asset. I was mint #411 on Zora before music NFTs were popular and my debut NFT drop generated interest and excitement. In February 2021, there were very few musicians actively in web3 and almost all of them were male and electronic musicians, so every new participant was met with a spotlight of support. There’s immense value in learning through action and remaining curious of the result. My first sale showed me the power of letting the marketplace determine the initial value of a piece. Not setting a floor price, not limiting the ceiling and allowing bids to come in naturally gave me a sense of how others perceived and valued my work, which gave me insight into how I could move forward and grow. My first three drops had no reserve price and generated 17.5 ETH (~$50K).

https://zora.co/collections/zora/411

Since then, I’ve been part of the inaugural Catalog drop and experienced the reemergence of patronage in music through a collector who hoped that this exchange would provide me with the financial freedom to continue creating and sharing my art. My subsequent drops on Catalog explored the idea of merging this idea of patronage with experiences such as commissioning additional, personalized letters and exclusive access. I’ve also sold 1/1 NFTs with zero perks, but tried to create excitement around the auction by playing my song Somewhere in Between live at the Music NFT Movement event at NFTNYC, linking an NFC chip in my jacket to the auction, inviting people to tag my jacket and participate by collecting the song as a memento from the event. My Async piece, Warm Season, a song with 246 unique variations, allowed collectors to mint their own unique version of the song and experiment with different layers of soundscapes to create their own listening experience.

Overall, what I found is that collectors want to feel connected and like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to interact with the art they love while having an integral role in its continued success. 1/1 music NFTs create a top tier of value around the music-–they’re exclusive. While the idea of exclusively selling 1/1 records on Catalog seemed appealing, I realized that value proposition a) wasn’t available to everyone because of its high price point and b) wasn’t of interest to everyone as not everyone is a “collector” and not everyone values the exclusivity of owning something rare. This led me to consider how I could expand the scope of active collectors by bringing the experience of digital ownership into the real world by using NFTs as a vehicle for ownership of the actual song.

https://beta.catalog.works/verite/phase-me-out-1615252373

FRACTIONALIZED OWNERSHIP

I spent a lot of time reading about SEC regulations and what constitutes a security in the process of preparing for my release of By Now, a song where I auctioned off a percentage of the master recording to a collector on a sliding scale, with a one million dollar valuation for 100% of the master. This was April 2021, and I couldn’t find a relevant example of an artist who had sold an NFT in this exact manner and I decided that dropping a song in this way would push the conversation forward. I had already known that there was a market for purely digital assets and wanted to know if there was a hunger for real world ownership and “skin in the game” when it came to music in all realms. I created an audio/visual representation of By Now, wrote up a price breakdown for the auction, set the valuation of 100% of the master recording to one million dollars, spent hours in Clubhouse rooms, speaking and sharing my vision. By this drop, I felt the novelty of newness wearing off and felt it hard to gain traction in generating hype for the drop. I definitely was still existing outside of what felt like an elite NFT artist circle and I felt extremely awkward messaging active collectors to invite them to participate. Going into the drop I felt nervous, but there’s a power in executing and following an idea through.

The By Now auction settled at 11 ETH, which was 23,000 USD at the time, equaling 2.3% of the master recording. The collector and first owner of any percentage of any master recording of mine in perpetuity was a fan who swooped in at the last minute to secure the winning bid. Upon communicating post auction, he translated that he felt it was important for a genuine fan to own a piece of the work. This was the first time I had seen my work sell at my own predetermined valuation and I felt empowered setting my own worth.

https://zora.co/collections/zora/2720

As I continued to dive into the web3 community, I obviously kept one foot firmly planted on the ground with my core fanbase, curious if they would follow me into this new world. The short answer was, no. The By Now auction was the only concept that caught a little traction with fans on Discord, who admitted they would LOVE to own a piece of a song, but the high price point was inaccessible. For everything else, there was little interest and even less crossover between the traditional fan and the collectors of NFTs and I became curious what could possibly motivate a natural onboarding of a fan into the web3 eco-system. There is a bubbling of idealism that can be heard from those who are excited about the prospect of NFTs reinvigorating the value of music and allowing artists an opportunity to break free from predatory record deals and antiquated royalty payment systems. In the short-term, I felt that same idealism coming off my first few sales. I saw the vision and was tripled down on the blockchain’s potential to revolutionize the music industry, but having a long view, realized that in the long term, it’s necessary to have both the high value NFT collectors and the average fan be able to participate in the same ecosystem.

This presents a really brilliant and unique challenge for artists, one that we will be facing for years to come. The reality is that fans won’t want to get involved with NFTs and crypto until the technology is simplified with the UI seamlessly integrated and there’s a fear that this will only happen in a centralized manner, inevitably creating the same problems of platform dependency we’re currently trying to escape from. We need to consider that not every fan will be a collector and not every collector will be a fan. It’s my job to continue to explore and build with care and consideration to every person, despite their motivations for existing in my orbit, and if I do this well, I’ll be able to cement a new, solid foundation for myself and other artist’s to mirror.

EXPERIENTIAL NFTS

My focus is now, how can I use NFTs to cater to both collectors and traditional fans, viewing my project holistically and creating multiple access points to my world with the goal of not excluding any individual, not gating access to myself or my music and providing everyone with meaningful interactions. I’m extremely conscious of creating a floor of value, some sort of experience that solidifies the delight of the fan/collector that isn’t tied to the speculative monetary value of the NFT. An example of this can be seen in my collaboration with IYK called Guestbook, which allowed fans to collect NFTs by attending shows from my last tour. We created a flow which prompted fans to leave me a message at the show and enter ETH address to claim the NFT. I passed around disposable cameras and co-created the NFT artwork with the audience. The core of the experience is creating artwork and communicating with an artist at their show; that value expands when you claim your NFT and receive rewards for future attendance. This concept of creating a value floor of experience for fans will continue later this month, when I fully fractionalize ownership of a song. Each NFT will be tied to a limited edition, signed cassette tape and access to private discord channels where fans and collectors can dissect the stems of the song, request to hear alternate versions and get an in depth view of how the song was created. Crafting a sentimental experience for collectors, providing a positive onboarding experience into NFTs for fans and being conscious of each individual’s motivation expectation is extremely important for artists to consider as we continue to experiment.

My first year in web3 will officially wrap at the end of January 2022. In addition to fully fractionalizing ownership of a song, I will begin to create my roadmap for rewarding collectors and fans by giving away VÉRITÉ Black Cards to my top 5 NFT collectors along with two lifelong fans, which will be tied to our Black Card NFT and hold lifetime tickets for any VÉRITÉ show, I’ll be wrapping my first official audio/visual collaboration where we’re bringing our NFTs into the real world through interactive sculptures, bringing the digital art into real life.

What I found in my pursuit of continued creative autonomy in web3 last year was freedom and the ability to exhale for the first time in a long time. It’s been a nonstop rollercoaster of ideation, creation and execution. It’s been marked by the opening of doors and circumvention of gates and their keepers—a relentless grind that has tapped edges of burnout, taken a nap and gone back to grind again. The why’s, the how’s and the outcomes of my experimentation in web3 can be helpful for artists to dissect and see how they can move forward as they enter the space. I view NFTs, their utility and the community that comes along with them as a tool for artists to build their own worlds and their own businesses, not reliant on platforms or intermediaries, but grown with their fans and supporters. This gives artists the potential for freedom from the unrealistic expectations and demands of the music industry and social and streaming platforms. Once we expand the notion of what we can be as artists–not only conceptualizing songs and building productions and worlds, but also strategizing how we distribute music, create new business models and build foundations that will allow us to have lifelong careers–we will realize that ultimately, we are creative problem solvers. It is easy to lament the sad state of the music industry, but this is an invitation to any artist who feels boxed in and underserved by the current systems to challenge the status quo, actively circumvent gatekeepers and work to build your own independent communities, platforms and worlds, one experiment at a time.

V

Come say hi!

INSTAGRAM: @verite

TWITTER: @verite

https://discord.gg/cKWb5NEZ