André 'RAC' Anjos - Meet the Nation

Transcript

on wednesday october 14th coindesk is throwing an invest ethereum economy virtual event which i'm really excited that coindesk is getting into the ethereum space more vitalik buterin is going to talk there as well as heath from the cftc and i am also giving a talk as well on the bowl case of ether so here i am right down here defy dad is also talking rune christensen is also talking uh some really all stars who are giving some really fantastic talks so i i've seen the schedule i've seen the list of talks and i'm really excited about it they've done a really good job picking out the right topics there's a link in the show notes where you can register with the code bank list to get 25 off of your ticket so get that ticket and then watch me talk about how awesome

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addresses into the zapper.fi dashboard and zapper will give you a report as to all of the assets that you own and where you've placed them in d5 you can also invest right through a zapper portal so if you just don't want to go to all the different urls for all your favorite preferred d5 protocols in order to stick your assets inside of them you can just go to zapper.fi and click on where you want your assets to go you can also add multiple wallets in case you use multiple wallets and you can add them all into one seamless portfolio view by adding multiple wallets in zapper check them out at zapper.fi unstoppable domains is where we get human readable blockchain domain names that are also completely censorship

resistant one of the really important features about unstoppable domains is that you can set up a website that has a domain that the any nation state cannot take down really important for being a self-sovereign individual in this world additionally what's also insanely cool about unstoppable domains is that bitcoiners or any other blockchain can use unstoppable domains to make their bitcoin address human readable right so no longer is this just technology built on ethereum now unstoppable domains brings this to all other blockchains so you can tell your bitcoiner friend to send you money to davidhoffman.eth or you know your name here dot crypto check them out at unstoppabledomains.com all right bankless nation we are here with andre

anjos who is actually more commonly known as rac who is a grammy award-winning uh music producer music artist who i'm a big fan of i've been listening to uh since even before i found out that he's an ethereum d5 bro uh so that's just exciting andre welcome to the meet the nation thank you thank you for having me i'm stoked to be here uh oh yeah oh yeah i had to i had to um no i'm stoked to be here and and i i'll probably wear the the badge of uh of uh ethereum d5 bro um did i say chad i don't know but uh i don't know we'll go there but we'll we'll we're we're welcome to it we're welcome yeah so what was your intro entrance into the the world of defy like

how did it capture your attention in the first place so i actually um maybe just give it a little more context i i got into ethereum like late and we can kind of dive into this deeper but i got into ethereum late 2016 early 2017 and that was sort of like i i definitely rode that first wave i was like very interested in it um especially for its applications and music but then like you know after the bear market and all of that i um that's actually when i when i discovered i mean i've been following maker for a while because it's been sort of been built i think they've been building this 2015 or something like that and i was really fascinated with this concept of synthetic assets and all of that and so i i've been following it and it finally came out and i was like oh this is

awesome i'm going to open up a cdp i'm going to do all of that stuff and then uniswap came out i was also like i was like this is so cool you know i had read that first uh blog by vitalik and i was like this is such a cool idea because i i actually really hated uh order book um like based uh dexes like like ether delta and all that it was such a yeah it was a big pain basically and i just didn't think that model made any sense for something that was like relatively slow you know uh you know compared to like the centralized stuff so so i was like you swap it's amazing such a brilliant concept and i can be a liquidity provider i can make fees you know i was like this is cool it's a way to sort of park your funds and and just

collect passive income to some degree um and this is before i really understood what impermanent loss meant which is a little more permanent a little more permanent than the name implies but uh but yeah yeah no so i became like really interested in a compound came out and i was like oh this is so cool um and you know we're talking about like two to three percent apr or apy whatever and it was like oh like that uh it's it's actually gaining value over time you know it's like even though i was probably wasn't even making up for the gas fees but anyway so i i sort of stumbled into it early just because of my interest in uh in ethereum before and um it wasn't

like i'm not i don't come from like a financial background i'm not um you know obviously a musician by trade so it wasn't like something i was like super knowledgeable about but it was just like oh cool like a way to sort of make uh extra a little extra income on on this crypto that i'm holding anyway it's like i wasn't going to sell especially not at the bottom so right so yeah it sounds like that you were part of like the 2018-2019 bear market gang right like like look at the people that stuck it out after like being inspired from from 2017 but also you're a musician at the same time so like in you know real real per person world you make music so tell us a little bit about that yeah so i've i've been making music pretty much for my whole life it's uh

since i was like 15 years old i i got my sort of first recording program and um you know that i had sort of taken piano lessons the kids it was important part of my life i i um maybe i'll just briefly talk about this but basically like i i i'm half portuguese half american so i grew up in portugal and i remember being really confused about the language and it was that was actually kind of where i discovered music uh because it felt like a sort of an outlet that wasn't language specifically because it is a form of language uh communication but it's not it it felt less judgy or something like i i mean this is all in hindsight but but at the time like it just made sense to me so you know i was always very drawn to it early on and then you know

uh eventually going into you know since i was 15 i just started writing and writing and writing and writing and sort of developing skills and just learning this is for youtube no youtube tutorials for me uh you know just kind of trial and error and figuring it out and then um about like 2015 2016 i started to work a little bit more professionally i did uh in 2015 and i did a remix for block party which is actually my first like official like remix and i that was before even rac existed and i had been in bands and things like that and um so in 2007 i was in college in the u.s and i started rac and then that was sort of like the beginning of the snowball and

it it it's sort of that was the first project that really worked for me and i i just worked with like uh you know that my first client technically was remixing the shins so i was like uh you know just a great introduction you know sub-pop records in seattle like it was it was sort of my my first entry into into the real music industry and and from there it's really never stopped and i've i've just been doing remixes for for this entire period i got into original work that actually ended up sort of taking over my life too so the remixing is it's still something i do but the original work is really where most of my focus is these days and you want a grammy yes uh yeah yeah

i feel like that was a lot of background but but basically that was sort of just you know me i guess if i can convey any point is music is sort of just inherent part of who i am it's it's a way that i communicate with the world and and it's something that is as easy as a as a form you know a language to me so um it's just something i do a lot and spend all day thinking about and and eating and breathing so um yeah and so in in 2017 um i think after almost 10 years of doing remixes professionally i um i got nominated for the second time and and eventually won for my uh remix for bob moses so uh that was obviously a big moment for

me um my manager actually after i won he he turned to me and said it's like well that's one for the obituary and it's like wow it's pretty much but i mean that's his sense of humor by the way that's like but but but it's also like he's right it's gonna fall you everywhere um forever no matter what else i do in my life it'll always sort of be grammy award you know whatever it'll be on the poster it'll be everywhere so it was kind of a significant thing um and um i mean definitely changed my life you know um there's no other way to look at it and uh and you know like i i feel very grateful for it and but then again you know my my approach to all this stuff is like okay

i got there now um now what right right and you know i just keep making music and continue doing what i do and um i guess if i have to plug anything i just put out a new album so go check that out um yeah i actually did listen to that it was fantastic that's actually funny that's actually that you won the grammy in 2017 which i think you were also paying attention to ethereum at that time so that was probably a busy busy year for you uh yeah you both passed of your life maybe you really didn't consider ethereum part of your life back then but i think you do now oh yeah i think where this conversation is going and why i wanted to bring you on here to meet the nation was that you seem to be on the frontier of experimenting and pushing the fold

with using ethereum as a tool to assist your your music right and and mainly to kind of disintermediate or also connect more directly with your fans right and so i definitely want to talk about some of the things that you've been you've been learning about and things you've been experimenting with plus your your very much a very recent announcement with the rac token yeah yeah but let's first talk about like the perhaps why artists might be frustrated these days with like being an artist right and also you know getting an income from this industry that you know it's probably decently saturated but not only is it decently saturated with artists it's also decently saturated with with middlemen so why might an artist be frustrated nowadays yeah so um i i

should preface this like this happens a lot when when you start to talk about the problems of the music industry where it's like well where to begin because that's really where we're at like there's at every point there's problems every step of the way there's somebody taking too much um like i think on average um i don't think a lot of people realize this on average the artist makes 12 percent of income and to me that's that's insane because a hundred dollars of value gets generated and then the artist is pocketed in 12 12.

you know to some credit whoever is to doing that pocketing they're generating some of that value too right 100 kind of it just kind of seems like maybe the artist who's like at the base of everything should get a little more than 12. yeah yeah yeah i don't think i don't think anybody can really make the argument they're not adding any value of course they're adding value i mean th they certainly play an important role in a lot of this i just i do think uh and this is my viewpoint obviously i'm biased because i'm an artist but i i think that they're they're taking too much um and and they have no real accountability um so i guess like you know what when i'm when i say that it's it's like a it's a industry-wide problem it's something that dates back

to the 50s like this is like we've made a lot of strides it's it's improved but at every step of the way there's three or four middlemen that are taking a large portion of the profits and and the thing is like even when you're negotiating contracts for example like when you say 50 you're talking about 50 of net after like this this and this person already took their cut so like the the the value that you're generating is already watered down by the time it even gets to your contract so so it's it's just like it's it's a cycle that keeps getting perpetuated and it's almost like nobody involved is really i mean directly responsible for it for the infrastructure but it's sort of we're

responsible for perpetuating it for continuing this cycle so i i think that's kind of where we're at where it's it's at this impasse where where nobody does anything because it's like well that's how things are done you know right and so if i were to ask you like all right well who's doing it who's taking the cut like you would you wouldn't really be able to give me a straight answer because it's probably circumstantial based on artists based on contracts but overall if there was a theme of like kind of who takes like the lion's share out of the music industry which which is the the the middleman that kind of takes the lion's share or or the few of them um yeah so there's a couple a couple of them the the main one i think um and i i do want to add a disclaimer to this

after but basically like the labels i think are a big one and there's all kinds of labels so there's like the major labels which they they will often take 80 of income so it's pretty substantial but then there's like indie labels that um it's a 50 50 net revenue split which is a very different model which to me feels a little more equitable um i think there's room for improvement there but so so there's a spectrum i guess is what i'm saying so i don't want to paint all labels as evil or whatever i think there are labels um including labels that i work with that i'm very happy with and i think that they do add value but but there are certainly players that that extract too much value i i think so i think labels are one of them uh distribution is sort of this is sort of the first

step um so so let me maybe walk through uh the the life's the life cycle of a song you know sure please so a song gets uploaded to spotify um spotify collects let's say 15 a month for uh per for a premium user or something like that each play generates i think 0.0 i don't know whatever it is like we count in millions of plays like like basically one million plays generates about 4 500 pre-distribution so then that distribution go that that that money let's say you make you get a million place okay that money goes to just a distributor that

i don't really know why we have distributors to be honest um you know like it's the digital age but whatever um they take uh anywhere from five to fifteen percent so right off the top that's that's that and then from there that goes to the label and then that's where your your deal comes in so um you know that you if you have a 50 50 net split um it gets if it's recouped as in if all the bills have been paid that's 50 50. so out of that 50 then you have to pay like if you have co-writers or anything like that um or if you have somebody else that participate in the master site i feel like i can definitely get in the weeds here but like i hope that i'm just conveying that like basically every step of the way there's somebody that's like well uh that's my

cut that's my cut here's my cut and then by the end of it you're and you end up with about 12 percent at the at the end of it and um and you're all the artist is always the last person to be paid so that's the that's to me the big line right like the artist gets last rather than first and i think like we could come up with a similar model where like there are all the the different middlemen who are adding value but if they just got paid after the artist rather than first i think that ordering is really important right and it also it also speaks to like the priority of like who should get paid uh who who should get paid because obviously the artist should be paid first because everyone else who is taking a cut is getting

supported by this artist right like you're the one making the music originally you're the one producing the actual product being sold right so it kind of makes sense that you should be number one yeah you'd think i mean that that's that's my viewpoint again i admit my bias but but i'm just but but i agree i i think like um yeah so whether that's that that's first or at least somewhere up higher in in the the cycle i i think i think makes sense um i i i think what i'd what i'd also you know because i think about this a lot like how to solve this really it's it's i i think it's just a change in dynamic so if if the artist has more power in this in this dynamic then i feel like

there's room for the free market to sort of flourish you know where we have perhaps um like if we separate the funding side from the creative side so labels may end up being more like creative services where um they add value through uh you know finding the right artists to do album art or or um or they they they help with marketing which is important super important for for an album uh you know maybe maybe they become more like marketing services and then i feel like there's room for like maybe they can compete on that level you know like let me um let me start with the album and let me pick a label that seems best suited for me uh to to to put that out in the world or to or to help you know sort of

strategize and how to market it properly that to me feels fair like if uh you know just finding the right fit for it as opposed to you being at the bottom and just hoping that you know the person at the top does their job properly you know because they're not that incentivized to make your share bigger you know i mean to some degree they are but not really because they already take they they can make somewhat calculated bets where it's like well if we put x amount of money into this then we can most likely get you know a 15 return but a 50 return on their money may mean a loss for me right so it's not it's not quite there you know what i

mean the incentives aren't perfectly aligned yet right and so you've been experimenting uh in the defy world with different ways to kind of get around this and i think uh correct me if i'm wrong but this started with your tape on zora tell us about that story yeah so um uh again just for a little bit of context like i so i had released the album in 2017 one of my my second album i released it through ethereum not exclusively but where people could could buy it like literally from a smart contract and um deposit x amount of ethereum you get an ipfs link like you know that's all it was like it's awesome uh so so i thought that was cool a cool experiment at the time through that i worked with this this group called ujo music which was part of

consensus and one of the guys jack jack spallone he he uh hit me up i think late last year in 2019 was like hey um i know you've been working on an album let me introduce you to the zora guys they're uh they're ex coinbase guys they're doing some really cool stuff with uh you know they didn't really exist as a full company at this point so i had seen what they had done with st fame so it was sort of like taking that model uh and but applying it to you know uh a limited edition good of some sort and that's where we came up with this idea of of doing a cassette tape because i had actually never done one and i always wanted to because i think it's kind of a cool novelty type of thing and right

right um yeah yeah and and uh the the album is actually very much about my childhood so it's like thematically it aligns and there's there's a lot of stuff there that made sense so i was like okay cool let's let's do a limited edition tape and uh but okay so the cool thing about zora is that they uh the whole idea is like they open up a market for it first and and people can buy into that market and trade it um and then at a later date you can redeem it so uh the idea is that through opening up a market you have real price discovery right for this limited edition good because okay we actually we started and this is all in

uniswap by the way which i think is cool right uh so so you know we had uh you know we i think we started the price at 20 bucks which we knew it'd probably go up from there obviously but stuck on down right right right how many and before we talk about the the price how many tokens were there uh so there were a hundred hundred limited to and and we we really specifically only made 100 tapes there's no like extra buffer or whatever like right right this truly was like a hundred tapes in fact i got three just for the record so and i redeemed mine right so you bought them on unit swap right is that what you're saying no no they we actually we we gave you five to ourselves um which was actually so the zora team has one i think my manager has one and i

have three just because i wanted to have a couple copies for myself sure so so the first five were actually freebies but we we sort of uh we we decided that we were just going to redeem them you know we don't want to participate in the market that would be unfair like i think we we just want to be you know we just want to you know a lot of people to buy and trade it whatever so okay so we so we did that launched it i i didn't know what i expected but i didn't expect that kind of reaction um and what kind of reaction what happened when you launched it people were a little bit crazy with it so um it went um it went from i think in the first day or two it's like went from 20 bucks to 950.

yeah wow wow that's something that is crazy that was before d5 yield farming degeneracy right like what month was this ah this was may so may okay so maybe there's a little bit of it but but not really with this type of thing you know um right and like nowadays people are both really hot on nfts and also really hot on like selling and distributing tokens through uniswap right right right compound uh issuance came out like uh not too long after that and that that used unit swap and they had crazy price discovery and then other people are also using unit swapped and getting crazy crazy price and so like to me i when i saw this i saw this like oh something is coming because this totally worked uh

and so many people are going to try and just copy that model and that seems to be exactly what happened yeah yeah yeah and there's uh you know i'm really happy about that i i want this ecosystem to flourish because i i think okay so like there's a couple things i learned from this like um first of all the thing that i love to say is that music has value like uh and and this kind of proves it right like yes it's a niche thing it's a cassette whatever but like there is sort of an intangible value that that as humans i think we're bad at um at pricing ourselves as individuals but through artists especially artists especially when you're in a game of just like you know corporate finance people who have calculators and you know algorithms

and you're like how much is my work worth i actually don't know and they have so much more data behind them to be confident in their answer and then therefore like create negotiation skills right exactly artists aren't famous for infamous for for not being able to like price their work very well right yeah and we're they're sort of like it's sort of like a meme of like the hang on i think i just i think i just lost your sound where's that on my end for you there we go okay yeah okay we're back um i i i was just saying like there's there's this meme of of the of the poor artist

but think about like like just objectively like the value that uh an artist a musician gives to your life you know like uh think about the amount of hours that you spend listening to music and getting enjoyment out of it like i think that's valuable right how like how much mood how much your mood is elevated right you know how much how much time that is more more valuable versus listening to a quiet room right exactly so like i think everybody understands there's there's value there but we're not good at like sort of determining that so this whole thing with zoro is really just like okay let's open it up to a market let's let price discovery like the most capitalist thing ever um let's let people you know

because people can buy it right so so how much how much do you think were your fans who wanted to buy a tape and how much do you think were a d5 djs that were speculating i'm gonna this is a complete guess but i'm gonna say about 20 fans uh eighty percent uh dj's now do you think any of those eighty percent degens became fans as a lot probably maybe yeah like if anything it was great marketing i mean i think i think i had a tweet that i that i put out around this time where there where uh it was like kind of a a signal saying like yo there's this guy rac produces great music who is learning and experimenting with like monetization strategies on ethereum to benefit his fans and then like he's also like enabling like vehicles for defy degens

who then also might become his fans right right previous fans might also become deep hydrogens right right right and we can really just like share it's a cycle here absolutely and and like yeah it's i mean if we're just talking about it from a pure marketing perspective i mean think about it like cassette tape sells for 950 it's actually a 2 000 today by the way like it's this is crazy wow yeah does it have anything to do with your most recent uh announcements yeah we can get to that in a second but but it actually hit 4800 the other day which is like crazy like this is it's insane but anyway so um like think about that like just from a marketing perspective that story writes itself it's like

it's crazy i mean i mean it let's call it what it is like it's kind of it's a we we're having our own little bubble and that's fine but like uh and there are some extra incentives that we can talk about with the token whatever but but basically like um you know it's just market cycle that means what happens with other tokens and it's sort of happening with like a physical good and i i find that to be absolutely fascinating like i think when the the price dipped down like after the first sale it dipped down to like 200 or so 250. and it stayed there for a long time today in context yeah uh so but but i i guess like at that time i was like i mean i guess that kind of makes sense you know that's

sort of where things settled you know um where if if people wanted uh you know maybe there's still a little bit of a speculative element there but like maybe those people kind of cleared out and now it's just fans that just wanted the cassette and that's it um and uh and you know then it kind of settled there and that that that's that's that's what it is like that's sort of maybe where the value of this item lies i i don't know i mean i'm not saying that the market is and like so for example like if i came out and and from if i just posted you know i was like i'm selling cassette tape for 250 people like you're insane like what are you doing thank you but but the fact that it was determined by a market and not by me um that's like

right that's it is what it is i i i don't know what to tell you um i didn't participate in it you know so deal with it yeah so what did you learn from from all that experience of issuing this token and the tape cassette um well uh so i i think that like um maybe there's one kind of little technical thing that we we learned with zora is that uh uniswap is amazing obviously but uh unisop doesn't do very well with like small uh token amounts um so like the the 100 uh like the the 100 uh limit is actually not really conducive because then towards the end it like slopes to infinity yeah which is not great so actually zora ended up moving to their

own sort of custom pools which are a little bit flatter and they can kind of control the beginning and end price so it's it's less like it's like tape goes to 100k you know it's like it's it's sort of really count right yeah that's right volume up there right it's like a flash in the pan yeah we i think we've been seeing some other uh other teams kind of experiment with that as well like uh the the perp team did an issuance with balancer yeah they actually made the price tick downwards over time but then when somebody would buy one it would go back up right right like if there's like and what's great about that is at the end like all the tokens are distributed right and so the tokens all get out into the hands of the people rather than it being like stuck

inside a unit swap so i think there's a yeah a lot of experimentation with with people that want to issue tokens like this where they don't want them to be they don't want it to be a currency right so there isn't going to be a million units but they want they still want to be able to distribute a low number of units you know pretty widely and i think we're going to see some experimentation with how to do that the best way yeah the the perp token is a great model i i really appreciated it and i actually haven't looked at it in a while so i don't know where it landed but i remember seeing that slope and like people just like buy it and then like it's like human psychology it's like oh no this this is it this is this is the

floor i need to get in here you know but then it goes a little bit lower then it goes back you know it's uh it's fun um it's just you know markets in action i guess but i i love that we're sort of able to do all this you know and that it's relatively user friendly absolutely compared comparatively to work right yeah getting better getting better every day so let's talk about uh your most recent uh blog post to your most recent announcement which is the rac token itself so this seems to be a natural evolution with your experiment with zora where you found out that tokens allow for fans and others to express things in a more direct way i feel like that's kind of like the through line here yeah the rit token tell us about that yeah no i i think that's that's sort of uh a

fair way to explain it i maybe all so this is all happening in in a certain context so like in in the midst of covet i uh i started live streaming and i started doing consistent streams and this community started to develop around them like people that show up to every stream they started to get to know each other then they signed up for my patreon and then suddenly we're in a discord and so it's like this mix of like twitch patreon discord this community really kind of just came out of nowhere and the the it was maybe it maybe started around my music perhaps or maybe that was like sort of the catalyst that brought people together um

and uh but this it kind it's kind of taken on a life of its own and i i found that to be really fascinating and and i think what i realized is like it's pretty fragmented across platforms like maybe discord right now is is the is the primary hub perhaps you know um but it's sort of a permission thing it's like you know you have to have you have to be a patreon supporter or twitch sub or hold the rac token to get in you know there's like a couple ways to do it but um it's sort of like the water cooler i guess of the community right and and people play games they post cat photos they uh you know like photography design like all kinds of stuff like it's it's cool like its own little thing

um and i i just saw this emerging sort of like self-organizing organism whatever if you want to think about it that way where i was like this is like super interesting and in in the midst of all this okay we're seeing like uh all these d5 projects and and uh okay like one thing like yam certainly had its problems but like this idea of like okay let's self-organize let's get a group together and we're all sort of a part of it and then we sort of decide what the future of it is right i think that was a very interesting kind of moment where it's like oh this is fascinating yeah

we don't even know what this is going to be but like we're all incentivized to work together because we all are a part of it so taking a lot of these ideas i mean obviously the you know i was pretty deep into yield farming and all that and uh and it was just like you know basically playing with incentives really that's what we're talking about right and some of them better than others uh you know like there's not much stickiness to uh to being an lp you know because uh people will just if once the apy goes out you know they're not gonna stick around so it's like but playing with these incentives in in in um you know i'm trying to think of like other examples but you know uh basically anything where you had some

elite maybe even even just a feeling of ownership over the over the protocol itself i think that has some power all this stuff like this is fascinating like why don't we like how do we bridge that into my world you know right and and again i wasn't thinking about this from a financial standpoint like it wasn't like it's not an ico obviously it's like you know um like it's it's not that kind of a thing it was like how do we like basically like how do we get this in the hands of people that um are sort of part of this community uh and and give them sort of a sense of ownership over this and and give them a say in how it develops right you know so

that was sort of the beginning of it and um and the more we we got into it we just like okay uh it's funny because we actually thought of the retroactive thing retroactive thing before um before uniswap and uh we weren't as heavy on it but once we saw how una swap handles it and how well it receives it's like oh we should actually really double down on this because there's something to this right um because i think what we saw is a lot of people that got your uni tokens or whatever i mean a lot of people sold them but a lot of people didn't right because a lot of people didn't because it could have dumped super hard because of how much how much it was distributed and it didn't yeah so it to me that was like oh interesting okay

so i mean these are the i don't want to make a direct comparison because these are obviously different things you know like ones that just exchanged but but this idea of of incentivizing people that are already a part of it giving them a stake in it um i i don't want to put too much emphasis on the financial side of it because like i a token is representative of ownership and that does have a financial value attached to it but but it it's more about this kind of collective cohesion right and and that's what i find really fascinating and um you know with yeah with with with rac that was sort of like okay how do we in in look i i'm not going to say that i

have this all figured out by any means and i i hope i i was sort of pretty open uh about that even in the blog post was like let me just get in the hands of people right let's let's start there let's see what people do with it you know i've been pretty critical of personal tokens yeah yeah i know in the past which which we could get into it and like the the personal token that i i was particularly critical of was alex masmidge's token where like and and i think why i was critical of it is because it seemed to him that it seemed to me that his token came before the work right and so he's like tokenizing himself for the sake of tokenizing himself but he does frequently lay down this line where he talks about like the alex token is a way

for him to like receive feedback from like his stakeholders right and so and i think i think this works really really well with somebody like you that you have an artist with a fan base and different fans are trying to like probably get in your ear and be like hey hey andre like will you produce this with this in this way like will you do this thing and like maybe you don't know how to listen to these people because like you i'm sure you can you know get a twitter a billion twitter dms every single hour but but with it when you get a token involved and and some and some fan that is ready to show their commitment to your music right who is willing to put money on the line by purchasing the token it's a way to get signal from the people

who care the most right who are most incentivized for you to i don't know do something with your music or do something with like i don't know another thing with zora right right both for the good of the token but also leverages your skills as a music producer right is this kind of what what you were thinking about yeah yeah absolutely i mean it's a powerful signaling tool doesn't make sense it's i think what i love about this is actually many things it it it can it can it can be many different things and that is definitely one of them so for example like if i put out a song with uh like chris brown i'm pretty sure people are gonna dump that token you know what i mean like like i would hope so i don't know like i'm not gonna do that by the way but you

know what i'm saying like like that that chris brown r kelly collab you know it's like oh gosh so like like this is obviously a an extreme example but i'm just saying like it can be a powerful signaling tool at scale i mean obviously we're just starting but like um you know that there there's a lot that that kind of goes into it and it can be it can carry very various utilities so it like uh i mean for example like the most basic utility it has is like well it gets you into the discord okay that's not that's come somewhat interesting to like right you know not like not worthy of a whole you know feeling well yeah but you also said that you're

not you're not trying to make this token go moon right right yeah first and foremost trying to get the right people in the right places with this token right right and and like that's sort of why i'm giving it retroactively that's why i'm i'm i'm first of all i gave it to anybody about merch i'm giving it to anybody that like bought us like a like an mp3 on bandcamp since like uh of course a lot of these people are like wait what what is this like they probably don't even know what it is but you know it's there if they want it um they can claim it um so it so if you generate a community of rac token holders say you know 100 150 200 1 000 people and they all start you know

brainstorming things that could be done with this token obviously these individuals are going to be incentivized to figure out how to make this token number go up right like number go up i think that's that's somewhat inevitable right right yeah it's kind of well that's where incentives are like this right experiment incentives and if you own the token you're incentivized for number to go up uh so are you would you be receptive to community efforts to try and get the token number to go up yeah i mean i think like uh i think i think the point is like i i'm gonna be receptive to whatever people want to do with this wherever people want this to go like okay like stepping away from the financial side of it like that that is definitely a of course like i'm not going to deny that but but like for

example like if maybe the incentive is to grant tokens to somebody to build a tool that the community wants you know whether that's like a website or like some i mean i i don't know what that is but like you know if they want um a specific maybe they want a discord bot to do something maybe they can just vote to uh you know give x amount of tokens to somebody that uh to build it you know for example or or something like that it brings them value that's not that's not always necessarily financial you know what i mean so there's ways to to gain value that aren't just number go up right but i think it's all sort of part of it and um and i i think that's what i like about

it is like how broad it is um i mean you know let's check back in a year see how it goes but but you know like i think i ideally that's i i think the intent is is is there um and i i think we're just starting to sort of at this point we're just getting it in the hands of people um like we haven't even um done like this there's not a whole lot you can do with it yet right yeah so about that like uh what's what's going on in the back of your mind you got any like secret plans that that you could share with what you think might might happen with the token in the future yeah so um so again like the only thing at first right now is discord access and in the the

other uh so i'm gonna do a whole bunch more drops on sora so like custom merch like things like that limited edition goods but as an rac holder basically you get first dibs so that's great i think that's that see that kind of solves that problem for me where it was like with with tape a lot of my fans didn't get into it because by the time they even saw the website it was already 250 you know whatever it was already going crazy so this this allows my most um active fans to get first access and hopefully you know a more fair price or a better price before the speculators really get in so that's that's one thing um also i i want to use it as incentives for other things so like for example like audience which is um com i don't

know come out at some point but basically if like i can incentivize kind of like liquidity mining but for listening so um you know you get x amount of rac tokens for listening to my music on audios or uh for example like actually on wednesday uh well i guess i'm telling you now i'm gonna launch my my first like collaborative nft um with this uh with a friend of mine and uh so i'm gonna do like a small um like you know like a thousand tokens or something like that to to the winner of that nft or the the top bidder so it's like there's all these like little incentives that i can kind of do um and for the other thing i want to do is uh so you know twitch it's pretty common to

have sort of ad space um for your stream and i mean as as you know with a podcast whatever but we're basically um gonna use uh tokenize it so so like uh we have to figure out like the pricing whatever but basically like uh you know x amount of tokens uh gets you a anywhere from like a shout out to like you know full-blown you know like like ad space and um so that's something i kind of want to experiment with as well um and you know i i think there i i guess the other way that i'm thinking about this is like this is this is sort of like a layer on top of all these other platforms so uh okay so i've been doing this for a long time like i've built i've built

followings on myspace on facebook on instagram on on tumblr literally everywhere like i've sort of participated in all this stuff and at one point in time those platforms go away and and i'm left with uh you know not much basically um i i'm left with like like basically begging people to come over to the new platform du jour whatever right and and that gets kind of old so i i like this idea of creating this layer on top of all these other platforms where it's like not only do you get sort of like an ownership in it but it's it's sort of it's more permanent persistent right yeah it and like it's it's adaptable enough it's just a

token so it's adaptable enough that um you know it can change to like if discord goes away we can switch to a different platform and and i mean it's still rebuilt but but there's still you can still there's still stickiness right yeah so that's kind of how i'm thinking about it um it's i guess like maybe i'm just kind of thinking about this now that we're talking about it but it is sort of more of a glue or stickiness to that community that isn't really possible with any other technology so right these are sort of some of the ideas that are circling around my head now um i obviously this is a very long term project and i just want to continue to add um value to it you know and and just keep building it for the people that are

involved in it and i i and i we're already seeing like the people that are in it are like really stoked about it and wanna have a lot of suggestions and ideas too so uh yeah that's that's kind of where we've been seeing tokens across these yield farms and and even before that as like the coordination tool like the reason and purpose for why the community exists right and like even to the point where we saw like the meme token where like the meme token was just created just to just as a mean but then there was this thing to rally behind and all of all of a sudden people started contributing different reasons or different incentives for why somebody might be wanting to be a meme owner right like it allowed you

to do things that like people without the meme token couldn't do and that seems to be like what uh what you're doing with the rac token where and i think if we could bring on like a bitcoin maximalist onto this podcast and be like why do you need a token like you can do this without the token and like it's you're just making this own currency and it's like you're getting perks on like the merch and you're getting out right discord you're just making your own money uh but right it sounds like it's friction right right yeah right so what's the difference between your token and like the chuck e cheese token well to me i actually kind of think that this the rac token comparison to the chuck e cheese tokens actually really really good because like yeah you're making the rac like chuck e

cheese like right you like my do you like my music do you do you like what i do like come to my playhouse right like discounts on merch you get early access to tickets like you get all these fun little activities like i think it's totally viable like nobody is forcing you to buy this like sure yeah i in fact i i'm actually discouraging that because like i actually i would almost rather people sort of participate in in some way and earn it and like that feels just feels a little bit better to me and like you know add value to the community and and and um and and you know like earn it that way like that to me feels a little more holistic way in my specific scenario um but to your point about the chucky cheese thing like if you really think about it i mean

that's that is you know talking about multiple utilities i think that is one of them right it's like airline miles you know like they're redeemable for something um so like i mean it feels weird to say that for an artist you know like but but to some extent that that that is a part of it and i i think that's cool i mean why why not right like what like what am i taking away what's what's the downside here like you know what i mean um like i if it gets people more engaged in in my music or or if it it it allows people to form a community and and like i think that's sort of a trend that we're seeing in general with covid it's like where people are moving away from these mass mass social networks to

smaller social networks yeah and i think those are becoming more powerful um the whole new creator economy patreon um only fans to some degree i know it's a bit of subject but it but it came out of covet like like subject or um i mean um uh sub stack and uh like like different platforms like that that are that are sort of emerging out of this these smaller more niche communities are starting to develop and people are getting more out of that than they are from these mass this idea that we all need to fit under one umbrella i think it's sort of falling apart so i i see this fitting into this new wave and um i don't know i'm excited about it i i think it's to some extent it's taking the power

back and being like hey uh audience my fans whatever people in this community let's build this together let's build it for us let's let's do something cool for us and that caters to what we care about and and um and not not try to fit into some bigger molds you know absolutely that's and that's why i love to hear so andre if somebody's been a part of the bankless nation but they haven't heard of you until this video where should they go to listen to your music or find out more about what you do um okay so there's many many places uh i would say like i'm on pretty much every platform uh username rac so that's probably the easiest way to find me um but yeah i feel like a lot of crypto

people are generally on twitter so i'm just set rac um feel free to ask me questions whatever i'm actually in the bank list discord so uh actually i should change i should change my name to to actually have rac on there so you know who i am yeah but um yeah i'll i'll do that but by the time the video is out yeah for sure awesome and for what it's worth my favorite song is cheap sunglasses oh nice this is yeah well thank you that's the one i remember listening to all throughout college yeah so yeah guys go check them out on spotify or wherever you listen to music uh the the it's a very very chill to listen to i i like to do it with work because it's not blaring in my face it's not not in your face type music so so go

check out andre and say hi to him in the bankless discord andre thanks for coming on to meet the nation no thanks for having me it's still to be here