Sound.xyz: Music Without the Middleman with David Greenstein

Transcript

Sub coordination on the pod today we've got David Greenstein, the co-founder and CEO of sound.xyz. Sound is a platform to help recording artists monetize their community through NFTs and is designed to help musicians leverage web3 tools. So um I wanted to have David on the pod to talk about how sound is helping artists both in how they can get their music heard and how they can monetize their work. I think that there is a huge opportunity here to create a more regenerative crypto ecosystem by regenerating the regenerators. So music and art has been an inspiration for me in my life and the work that I do. I can't produce any music or or I'm not that talented of an artist myself but I

consume a lot of music and especially while I'm coding. I love to listen to music and for me artists such a source of inspiration. One of the ideas that I think is really interesting is how do we build coordination mechanisms in web3 decentralized coordination mechanisms that fund the people who are doing the best art and the best art for me and what are the ways that we can alter music discovery and the way music is funding excuse me funded and remove the intermediaries that have traditionally stood between artists and their fans. So building coordination mechanisms and platforms that uh help people find the music that they would that they love and helps musicians pay the bills so that they can continue to create great art.

And so David is an inspiration. I mean he is building a platform sound.xyz that helps you discover music that you care about and helps artists get funded and uh again this is to disintermediate A record labels but B in the technology age most most music is discovered on TikTok or YouTube or MySpace and other platforms of that nature. So how do we disintermediate the way music musicians relate with their fans and how they discover each other is the subject matter of this episode. So, if you're into funding the arts and more prosocial web3 communities that center around artists, then I think you're going to enjoy this episode. But now Valley DAO is an open global collective working to finance and democratize the

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What's up, David? How you doing? I'm doing great. Coming off a long weekend. So, I'm excited for this. Yeah, samezies. Well, I'm wondering if you could take us deep on sound.xyz. What is it and why did you found it? Yeah, so sound is a set of web3 tools that help artists monetize and experiment with their music in new ways. We started with this idea of artists, you know, the first thing they want to do is put out their song. So, we built an experience around releasing music and making it fun and social to support an artist through their music. And basically get the credit for for basically being there first.

Which was something that I was always on the internet as a as a kid just browsing, you know, music on YouTube or SoundCloud and and always trying to brag to my friends that I found something first and played a little bit of the origin of, you know, I believe in building building things that you want to see in the world and use. And you know, I music has I've talked a lot about this a lot before, but music has been my passion ever since I was a kid. Um and I honestly got a bit of luck. I grew up in New York and started working at a record label when I was a child. Uh cuz I always say that the CEO of Atlantic, Craig Kallman, came to speak at my high school um when I was a kid cuz he went there as an alumnus. Um

and so I got my exposure just working with with uh in the music industry at a super young age and I was always just fascinated by the business model of music, like in order to understand um music, uh you have to understand the business of music. Um and so I always thought there was this dichotomy around um you know, artists are some of the most creative people in the world. Um but they're all sometimes trapped in like a business model that is very far from creative in terms of you would hear things that you can't put out music unless you got certain other people's permissions. And that just like led me down this journey of like how do you create things that help artists, you know, make a more sustainable living off their music? Um and how do you help them connect with their fans directly? And

now I've been going to concerts since I was again just growing up around music and yeah, it's just been something that's like always inspired me and I think one of the things that's about music that I think particularly caters to me is like uh I always say three I have the attention span. Uh uh I can't you know, can't you know, I can't can't keep focus for too long. Uh and so music is something beautiful about music is that it takes three minutes often to change your mood, change your life. Um it's much different than other forms of media and so I think it's the perfect media form for me and so I've always just gravitated to music because it's how quickly and how meaningful one song at any point any time can be to just influencing people's day and how anyone can kind of engage with music, whether

you're at work, whether you're uh you know, running, whether you're you're uh browsing the internet, it's just something that's with you at all times and that's something that that's always just inspired me since since since I was a kid. Yeah, same. I mean, I've just always found music to be a way to change my mood, a way to focus, um uh and just a source of inspiration and beauty in my own life and and I I I think that I've been drawn to music for that reason, but it sounds like you went even deeper even to understand the music industry and you observed that the institutions that allow music musicians to go from not being known at all to being stars, that there's sort of like an opportunity there to reinvent how

that happens and to remove the intermediaries to help musicians build their first fans. Can you tell me a little bit about what those problems are and and how Sound solves them? Yeah, so I I know there's a couple couple problems in the music industry. Um one is obviously how do you help artists reach people with their music and I always call that music discovery. Um and two is how do you help artists make money on their music? Um and you know, obviously that's music monetization. I think with music discovery, I always say that the tools to create music have never been have never been better. Like, you know, there's more songs than ever being uploaded before. Um but the tools to discover music have largely remained unchanged and there's only been like four main music discovery platforms uh in our lifetime. One is, you know,

MySpace, two is YouTube, three is SoundCloud, and four is now called TikTok. And I think each one of them has like served their purpose and, you know, been net positive I think for the world. I think the main thing is that we need more tools to discover new music. I think one of the things that bothers me about music is that it's not an efficient form of talent discovery. I think some of the best musicians are not yet discovered and how do we build things that actually, you know, allow us to come through the sheer volume of music being uploaded per day. I think the last, you know, the numbers came out as like 100,000 or whatever tracks per day uploaded to Spotify. Uh and so we need more ways to connect with music and I and not only just more ways to connect, but more active ways to

connect. I think today music consumption is really really passive uh and people are falling more in love with songs uh and even videos than they are necessarily artists and how do we build this direct the best fan bases in the world are some of these most direct connections between an artist and a listener. And that's something that I think we've moved away from from like the CD and iTunes era where people were actively connecting with music cuz they were actively supporting the artist. And the next is obviously like how do you help artists make more money on their music? How do you have more artists being full-time musicians? And I think the the interesting thing there is like today where one problem that's kind of emerged is like there's one price for every single song, one price for every single stream.

That's actually always been the case in the music industry, but I think one of the things here is coupled with the amount of music that's being uploaded plus the types of music that are being uploaded like sleep sounds or you know, you've got all these like I guess like six sounds a good example like just like short really like repeat songs that get played on Spotify today. You know, Stairway to Heaven is competing against those sleep sounds. And so they're all competing over this some songs are 30 seconds. So it feels weird to put everything in this in this one one-size-fits-all business model. And how do you create more ways for people to directly value and support music all in a pursuit of like you know, how having artists live off their music.

So I think those are the problems that we're that we're obviously trying to solve. And I think you know, in terms of who's actually been solving those in the past, well, it's really this organization called a record label. And a record label has historically done three things. One is that they've obviously played a role in financing artists. I think that's the easiest to dismantle mainly because money can come from anywhere. You know, $10 who cares where it comes from as long as you're obviously the artist is getting that money. And so I'll get into how creative capital plays a role here. Two is like actually making the records, which is like a term called A&R artist and repertoire, which is you know, I think the thing that tech will play the least role in terms of you know, there are some people that are fundamentally better at making

records than other. And I think it's a unique value prop. And then the three is like the marketing and and distribution of the records. I think this is another thing that's vastly changing. It used to be that you have to sign to a label to get into a record store. They literally controlled who got in the record store. Today the beauty of the internet is you can upload and put anything, you know, anywhere and I've always been skeptical of viral gurus who say that they can help you go viral because if they can really do that, you know, then they should be the most most influential person in the music industry. So, I think honestly, it's a bit of a double-edged sword, but I think nobody really has the advantage to go like to go viral on the internet at this point. I think it that it is the

internet's domain. But at the same time, it's becoming harder and harder never just to stand out. So, I think to focus on that first one, creative capital has always been the first thing that, you know, Sound has gone after in terms of how do you help artists make more money on their music if if listeners are willing to back an artist and basically collect their music NFT. We can get into why they would do that. An artist can get creative capital at low to cheap or or even no cost, then that's a net win for them because that means that they can fund their career, they can make more, you know, living off their music and I think, you know, one of Sound's proudest metrics today is that we've been able to pay out $5.3 million to artists in a year and a quarter,

which again is something that I think further emphasizes just the need for more creative solutions for artists to make a full-time living off their music. Over $5 million to artists. We should have led with that. I feel like we're burying the lead a little bit. That's huge. Yeah, it's been something that, I mean, I think I always like to go after a little bit of delusional challenges. But oh, you know, I just talked about the two problems, the the the ability to pay artists, the ability to basically help artists get discovered. Historically, those two things have actually been quite separate. Like if you look at the music discovery platforms, MySpace, YouTube, SoundCloud, TikTok, I've never been contacted by an artist saying I got, you know, hordes of cash from YouTube, SoundCloud, TikTok, or or

MySpace. But they've been really helpful in like discovery and, you know, where artists kind of break on the internet. And and you look at the music monetization platforms, whether that's Bandcamp or or or iTunes or Spotify or CD stores, you know, all they they have paid artists, but I've typically again not been contacted by artists saying my song is breaking on one of those platforms. Um and so I think part of Sound and part of the challenge that I wanted to experiment with is can you help artists build their fan base at the same time as actually getting them paid? Um not like as a as a byproduct, which is how like TikTok feels to me today.

It's like you you go viral on TikTok, but then you actually monetize somewhere else. Can you monetize and help them build their fans? Because most artists are looking for listeners. They're looking that they don't have a captive. It's much easier, you know, much different problem when you already have listeners that want to support you. Um but I think that's part of like the the giant experiment that we're running over at Sound is can we actually, you know, monetize and help artists just, you know, reach new listeners at the same time? Um which again, we're we're super early in our journey, but I think something that we're really proud of is that is that 5.3 million dollars.

Um so it feels like musicians want to get discovered. They want to find a way to monetize their work so that they can go full-time being an artist. And then listeners want to get access to discovering new music, new content, and new artists that that they love. And now that we've got blockchain-based, web3-based systems, there's an opportunity to disintermediate the role of the record company or the promoter and the people who have typically helped musicians cross the chasm from unknown into household name. Um that's not going to happen in a record store anymore or a CD store. That's going to happen via the internet. And you know, maybe the old intermediaries were the record labels, and the new intermediaries are YouTube

and and TikTok. What are the opportunities that web3 offers in evolving how people discover music, how artists monetize music, and how they how they reach their fans? Like what do you what coordination mechanisms mechanisms are you most excited about? There's there's a there's a couple that I think um you know I'm most excited about but two to call out in particular are one is like the music industry today is not exactly known for fast transparent or accurate payouts. Um and I think part of like why building in public why you know blockchains are interesting is this public ledger uh and when things are public you know uh it's easier to coordinate you know good actors and uh I think uh today artists to still don't get paid out in real time um and

it's not always clear where all the money's flowing where do they have insight any artists are first and foremost focused on um you know making music not being accountant. Um and so one of the things that really interested me is can we build this global payment system for paying music uh making sure we don't lose funds making sure the right people get paid you know accurately um instantly uh and that was an area I really wanted to see was like can we actually pay artists in real time um without ever you know losing funds cuz in the music industry there's a there's a couple places where you know it's very common for funds to get lost or if you don't claim your royalties they get disappear or get dispersed to other people.

Um and so that was one thing that that was deeply inspirational and then two and it's always so I think catches people off guard which is how simple some of these things are but still to this day an artist has no access to their fans on on any major streaming service they have to go through that streaming service to message them or do anything with those fans they don't have their email addresses nothing. Um and so one of the things that really excited to me was like an artist can build their audience on sound and take it wherever they want whether it's the wallet addresses the emails um those should all be things that are publicly accessible to that artist. Um they should never you know have to ask the platform to to to to get access to that. They just truthfully it's their fans it's their audience you know I

always say people don't collect sound things they collect things from a particular an NFT from a particular artist. Um and so it's their relationships, and so, you know, today on Spotify, um, you know, there is no ability to message all of your or take the email addresses from everyone who follows you and take them somewhere else or, you know, sell them t-shirts. Everything has to go through the platform. Uh, and so to me, building, you know, an open music graph, um, where artists own their listeners and you can see what other listeners, you know, are supporting, is super super interesting, um, because I think it lets people build on top of uh of of that network more opportunities for, um, public infrastructure.

Uh, and that's something to me that I think is really really exciting. Yeah, it feels like the huge opportunity here is just to disintermediate the way that artists have a connection with their fans in something just as basic as not sitting in the middle of that relationship and giving open access to the musician to their fans' contact information could be really powerful. Um, and so I'm excited about protocols that can disintermediate that kind of work and can also, um, I would just regenerate the lives of artists. Uh, and and the way that connects to regenerative cryptoeconomics and the whole green pill theme to me is that art is such a way of regenerating our own spirits, and if we can

regenerate the regenerators, there's going to be this this fractal wave of hope and inspiration that will go outwards as as artists can actually monetize their work and and not be pinned down by business model that doesn't support them. So it feels like a massive wave of creativity and and hope and optimism that could be unleashed if if that if we can figure that out how to coordinate it. Yeah, totally. I I think something today that's, you know, present. And I think one thing I always feel strongly about from a building perspective is the next, you know, innovation in the in the music industry is not necessarily, um, you know, going to look like the um the the last.

Um, and so to me, uh, I I think one of the things that I feel strongly about is like today connection between an artist and a listener is very very passive and how do we make that as active, you know, as as as as humanly possible. And so how do you create ways to directly support an artist? You know, I always say like if I'm a huge fan of an artist today, let's say I'm a huge fan of Rio Cragan, who's an artist on Sound and I'm listening to him on Spotify, there's no way for me to listen to him on Spotify and directly support him through his music. I can listen to it by by by streaming. But then even then my my subscription doesn't necessarily go to the people that I actually stream.

And so creating a way to directly support an artist through their music is not presently there today on, you know, most streaming providers. And again, something as simple as that is kind of the the the the direct connection. I think, you know, does get people feeling more more passionate about supporting artists through their music. And it's something that's not not present today. So I I think, you know, one of the things about Sound is that I've always wanted to build things that aren't present in the world and rather than try and copy existing business models or existing products because that's truthfully like where the the exciting, you know, green field is to me is things that don't things that exist today, the net new per se, not things that are already existing in that, you know, we can already already,

you know, take advantage of. Yeah, too. I mean, could we get into some of those coordination mechanisms and what you're really excited about? I just I mean, I'm excited about music NFTs just from following Cooper Turley and hearing about how you can make more off of a music NFT as an artist than you can off of what like 10,000 streams or something like that. You know, what are the mechanisms that you're really excited about? One of the things that's really, you know, building on the point that I just mentioned is like there are some per stream rate like $0.003 per stream today and it's the one-size-fits-all option for every single artist. And if I'm a huge fan of an artist, I only give them like, you know, three basically some amounts of dollars per year no matter how big of a fan I am of that

artist. And one of the reasons why is the only way to directly support an artist today through their music is to listen to it, and that takes time. Um and there is no, like, you know, let me just give them 100 streams worth of money just cuz I really, really want to support their music. Um and so, I think, you know, music NFT kind of comes in as a way to directly support an artist through their music. Um and there's, you know, a couple of things that I think are really interesting. Well, one is like the ability to track who is there first. I do think that plays a role because regardless of how much money you have available to spend, you know, something that puts everyone on the same playing field is who is there early. Um and it kind of makes this this status symbol of

basically showing like who was an artist's day one fans. And I think one of the things that's always bothered me as an artist, again, has no data on who was really there for them first. They get the messages all the time saying, "Hey, I found you before anyone else." But there's no actual way to prove that. Um and I think at the core of this music experience is like we should we should reward people that were there to support artists through their music. And we should make it fun um to basically or you know, to find and check out and discover new songs. And then the next is this idea of like who's this hot backer, who's really like putting their money where their mouth is.

Um and, you know, there's there's ways that obviously you can, you know, keep track of who's collected the most from an artist. And so, you're basically building this this this global network of of music, you know, super fans and super collectors that, you know, directly want to support music and believe in the arts and believe in, you know, artists um stories and journeys. And I think, you know, one of the things is is Spotify really owns the the the passive music consumption and the casual music fan. I've wanted to lean into the opposite, like the hardcore music fans and the independent artists. Um because those are the ones that are, you know, the most underserved today in today's market. Um and so, I think, you know, music NFTs serve as a coordination mechanism for building a

giant network of hardcore music fans that really believe. And I think part of the interesting thing is music is inherently social. I think there's nothing that will get me to check out a song more than my friend saying, "Hey, you I think you'll like this song." More than any algorithm or any, you know, recommendations or an artist that I I really I do I really trust. And so by nature again of everything being public and built in web3, I think something that's really really really exciting is the ability for you know, artists and listeners to basically see what everyone's collecting and be go to rabbit hole that way and dig into to music and everything. And so something I'm also really excited about. Is there an opportunity here? And this is just totally kind of a layman thought, but it

feels like we've got the artists who want to reach the fans. And then we've got the fans who want to discover new art. And traditionally, I I feel like record labels or technology platforms like YouTube or TikTok have sort of organized that. Is there a way to leverage the most active fans in order to create a signal aggregation mechanism where you can cross the chasm as an artist. I guess another way of putting it is like instead of having an an an agent or or someone who works on behalf of the artists, could you create like a decentralized coordination mechanism where those most active fans are the ones who are are jumping on something an artist first and buying their NFTs and that's a signal that ooh this this project is

really up and coming and then that helps them cross the chasm. It feels like there's maybe an opportunity there and maybe that's what you're saying, but I'm just putting my finger on it now. Yeah, there is. I mean it's funny you say that because I I think the thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about is what is the correct minting format and basically how do you incentivize reach and obviously helping artists get paid at the same time and they're kind of different things. If you want to maximize reach you could argue you'd give it away for free in the sense that you know, that's how you reach as many people as possible and that's why if you look at YouTube or SoundCloud or TikTok they've always been free platforms to use. But at the same time as I like we talked about the $5

million and obviously we want to pay artists. Um and so how do you basically pay an artist while maximizing, you know, reach at the same time? And those are some of the mechanics that we've been working on is kind of how do you How do you Yeah, how do you How do you reach the most amount of people with their music but still pay artists at the same time? Um and how do you build this breaking mechanism? Because I think one of the things that I believed is like there's so much music that can be about it or that's a fact. Um and the problem with humans is that they they only have one set of the ears. We can only listen to so many songs per day. And so how do you I believe in wisdom of the crowds. How do you leverage the internet to find

and, you know, collectively help in breaking an artist? And that takes more than more than one person. I think one of the big things that I've always said with music in relation to other art forms is music is not just about making money. Like you know, if a song on Sound or Music on a chain Sound sells for $10 million tomorrow, it does not mean that that song will be considered a big song. A big song means, you know, that everyone knows the lyrics. Everyone can sing the words. Um and so I think, you know, part of this is how do you build something that can actually cause that reverberation across the culture.

Um and that requires a sheer amount of audience and and and participation. And then I think the other thing to look at is like Look at some of the most successful fan bases in the world. And I know I It doesn't matter if you're talking about the Grateful Dead or Taylor Swift or even, you know, people who did it themselves like Nipsey Hussle. A lot of the times it was not just the artist because the truthfully the artist is focused on making music. Like they're at the end of the day they're artists. They became artists to make music and have a full-time career as an artist. A lot of the times it's the it's the listeners and the fans that are doing the marketing with the artist. And so to me I I'm less interested in like artists speaking down to their fans and like, you know, having this like

artist, you know, at the top and the fans at the bottom just listening to information. I'm more interested in the spider web where you have the listeners talking to the other listeners and the fans talking to the fans and the artist is obviously a critical and still the still the spokesperson of the community for sure, but it's really how do you get these active fan bases that are you know, promoting the artist all over the internet? Um that to me is the more interesting opportunity today because it definitely I think and I think this is part of the the the pressure of an artist today is they have so much work to do. They have to make music, they have to promote it, they have to you know, they have to manage their community, they have to post exclusive content, they have to do all these

things. Um I think that's why when you look at the the biggest fan bases and you know, one example um is like you know, if you look at uh if you look at Phish as an example and you go to you know, Phish show um you know, a lot of the times you'll see homemade merch that is being sold by the fans in the community outside the shows etc. And that to me is something that I think is a another like a good example of a blueprint where how can you get your community contributing as much to the reverberation of that music across the internet without you know, with while still giving the artist space to go create which is ultimately you know, a thing that they're uniquely to do. Um and so yeah, 100% um and I think part of what sounds been working on is how do we

go minting mechanics um that incentivize reach and payment at the same time. I think the the the earliest example of this was you know, many years ago Radiohead an album called In Rainbows um where you know, you could directly pay what you want for an they gave away the album for free and you could pay what you want. Um not saying that that's like the winning mint mint mechanic uh but I I was always inspired by things like that because I I think it at the very least it was an experiment and I think at the core of what's going on here, it's all experiments um and how do we incentivize people to to to spread the word about the music as possible but still at the end of the day get an artist paid because that's ultimately you know, one of the core problems is

having the creative capital to be able to be an artist full-time um and making more artists full-time careers so that you know, the goal is obviously um you know, when you hear that somebody wants to be an artist, can you make that as reputable as being a lawyer, doctor, or any other business profession out there? Which doesn't always sometimes feel that way. It feels like there's sort of a pro- profound parallel to me in the example that you gave about in this the Phish community, how they'll sort of home make their own Phish merch and then they'll sell it. And and you know, I also am aware of these stories from the early Grateful Dead communities that they would tape shows and there was actually a market where you could send a copy to

a show to someone over I think it was a bulletin board or something that you could you could mail people tapes or something in. And in these all to me feel like very early examples of headless brands, brands where you allow a community to sort of co-own it with you and instead of strictly enforcing the copyright, you let the community co-own the experience with you and in that energy reverberates out into the community and helps create a stronger community in in music. And and I'm wondering, you know, what the lessons are for that in the networked age. And you really feel like you're on the frontier of that, David, which I think is is is really cool. And so, you know, I'm wondering if if if you see any sort of parallels between those early networked music experiences pre-internet

and the work that you're doing today with Web3-based coordination mechanisms. Yeah, and there's a lot of opportunities for people to co-create alongside the artist and or even at a collective level like just getting listeners to create kind of like a marketing funnel for for new music. A good example of this is we built a feature where if you share a link to a song or make a playlist, you know, the playlist creator or the link sharer can earn, you know, 5% just by people collecting through that link or through that playlist, which was an early experiment in just being able to monetize curation, which historically has been something that's been like very

undervalued. Like if you go on streaming services today, you won't find any user-generated playlists at the forefront. And I think again, to me, one of the things about Sound that I'm trying to do differently is I'm less interested in Sound having the biggest playlist on Sound. I'm much more interested in having users have the best, most popular playlist on Sound. The complete opposite of how it works on dominant music platforms today, because I think to that is the opportunity. It's like, how do we have these individual people Anyone can be a music tastemaker. You just have to build them the tools to to basically be able to do so. And how do we kind of status signal that this person is really good at finding pop music early. And this person is really good at finding, you know, Latin music early. And how do you how do

you create this network of music um Yeah, you know, everyone has different taste at the end of the day. And how do you how do you basically funnel people to the right, you know, how do you create as many avenues to discover new music as possible, instead of concentrating in any one brand or one collective or one group's ability to discover new music? Because ultimately you're bottlenecked by how many songs can go on that playlist? And that's why you know, I call them like traffic driving mechanisms. But you need as many places to to traffic drive music. You don't want one place, because ultimately that it becomes something where only a select few can get heard or get discovered.

And I think that's kind of the interesting experiment is can we look can we leverage like music listeners across the world to break in pay artists at the at the at the same time. So yeah, 100%. Really excited about this. I've got sound.xyz up on my browser and there'll be a link in the show notes. If you're listening to this episode and you enjoy music, take sound.xyz for a spin. Um anything you want to say about the the experience? If if I'm listening to this episode, what what's what's the first thing I should try on sound.xyz? Yeah, I mean, one is the first thing you should always do is listen to a song. I think, you know, there's so much incredible music on Sound across different genres, across different locations in the world. I think people are always surprised to to just hear the sheer level of talent that's already,

you know, on Sound. And that's why it's such a privilege to kind of build alongside these artists is um a lot of them are featured superstars and already, you know, we've seen so many artists kind of really start to expand even outside of Sound. So, one is just listen to the music cuz I think it speaks for itself. Um and then two is just try, you know, collecting a music NFT. Collect you know, a couple um from different artists and kind of join their you know, uh respective communities and just get the experience for directly supporting artists and their music, seeing your name show up in the audience section, seeing you know, the ability to leave a comment on the song. We just launched a mobile app, so you know, download the mobile app and obviously like there's something that just hits a little bit different about when you're

listening to a song you see your comment pop up on the song page. You can feel that support directly from that artist. And I think one of the things that really catches people off guard is how is how receptive artists are to basically connecting with people that directly mess you know, um support their music. Um and I think there's something that's just it's such a personal experience for supporting an artist through their music that doesn't exist today. Today you're so abstracted. There's so many people in between an artist and a listener. Um and I I think that that's kind of the, you know, the the thing about Sound that I think is special is the social element and you can see very easily kind of start to rabbit hole like what other people that collected the same song like you are collected. You can click their

profile, find other songs. So, it creates this endless behavior of just being able to to collect the artist collect art um and really support artists through their music. And yeah, I think that those are probably the two things. Listen to the music and collect some uh collect some music NFTs. And third would be make some make some playlists and start sharing them cuz I think that's, you know, pushing on the uh uh and that's like kind of where I see a lot of Sound headed in the future is kind of creating more curation tools for for the listener base. Um because as as ultimately, you know, Sound started as a curated platform where, you know, we were onboarding artists and you know, really building this tool alongside of them. But in the future, where you know, we're opening up soon and I've been publicly talking about this as as we

open up, there's going to be more and more music, the same problems that, you know, faces everyone and we need to build more ways to discover that music. And I think in order to do that, it's going to be the listeners and the and the curators and the playlist makers that are going to be responsible for how everyone you know, finds finds the song. So, those are those are the those are the the three things to do. Well, you know, let's actually segue into my next question. In a world in which you're maximally successful, what is that what does that look like? So, take me 5 or 10 years into the future if Sound is maximally successful in helping artists get discovered and people collecting music NFTs, what does that world look like and how has it changed the way art is produced and marketed and

and distributed? Yeah, so I I I think my dream for starting Sound was like, if you were a talented uh uh making music and you want to do music full-time as a career, like you shouldn't have to know anyone in the music industry, you shouldn't have to relocate to Los Angeles, you should be baby be able to be based anywhere in the world and be able to to make money and have a career as being an artist. Uh and so if Sound is, you know, successful, I think you'll be able to just simply sit there and upload music to the internet and all you'll need is obviously like a wallet.

And basically, you know, anyone around the world will be able to collect your music and directly support you on the journey of being an artist. Um and so we'll have more artists, you know, making a full-time career on their music. And then, you know, we'll be doing that without artists obviously having to give away their rights and and, you know, there'll be more sources of creative capital for artists. And I think that to me is one of the things that I'm hoping to change. I'm not necessarily saying like let's remove labels per se, but let's create more funding opportunities for artists. Um because the more sources of capital, the better. I think where, you know, you get into trouble is if there's only one source of capital for artists, well, then they have all the leverage in the world and they can dictate whatever terms. Um, and so, I think the more net

new positive net new, you know, sources of funding for artists, the more the more the terms are going to get better out better better and more fair across the board for artists, even if it's outside of, you know, web3 and sound. Um, and so, that's kind of, you know, the the maximal state for me is a is a utopia where, you know, if you're talented, need to know anyone and anything and you you can directly make a full-time career off your music. Is there anything I didn't ask that you want to say? No, I think you covered a lot of it. We we went we went pretty uh pretty deep. I think one of the things that I think to pay special attention to is what you talked about, which is how do you build coordination mechanisms for for for reach and and making money. I think

there I'm not satisfied personally with either or. So, I think there are things that I would do if I were just focused on trying to get an artist to blow up their song, but then I would be no better um, than any of the other music discovery platforms today. They don't necessarily pay artists. And there are things that I would do to get an artist paid, but then, you know, if they're only catering to 50 people, then they're ultimately like a lot of artists' goal is to have, you know, thousands and hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to listen to their music. Um, and so, I I I I think there one of the things about obviously NFTs and crypto is the coordination side of being able to incentivize people to take, you know, some positive force.

Um, and I think, you know, to me, that is the challenge that I I've been really thinking about is, you know, how do you build different mechanics that incentivize those two things together? And I think, you know, scarcity, which is how we got started at sound. We started with like this 25 fixed edition. There were only 25. It's like a, you know, limited edition. Um, that that that was awesome because, you know, it had scarcity, something that people could really understand. But then you're sacrificing the reach because only 25 people can collect it. You can have open editions, but then you have to get all these mints in a particular time period. Um, and so, we've been looking, you know, we built something called sound swap, which was like a an unlimited open edition where the price rises and you know, we swap the secondary market with the bonding curve.

It's kind of this little wild experiment. That's been you know, going really well. But I think we're always and it's certainly not the last. We're always trying to push the envelope on how do we build scalable mechanics that allow There's a lot of you know, details here but that allow anyone to participate and I believe part of what makes music so special is the ability for for it's a it's a universal language. Like it doesn't matter. It's it transcends socioeconomics, it transcends race, transcends everything.

And so to me the beauty of music is the ability to bring us closer together. And so one of the my rules for for collecting and supporting artists is each as much as possible should not be price prohibited in the sense that like everyone who wants to participate should be able to. It's part of the reason why I was inspired by like Radiohead pay what you want. At the same time, we obviously want to get artists paid so they can have more of a career off their music. And so to me I think I'm I think today I'm I'm not satisfied with the mint mechanics across the board for for NFTs and I think you know, hopefully sound can pioneer a couple that I think are interesting formats if you're looking to solve the reach and monetization problem that that that we're looking to solve with with

music. So something that I'm really excited about is to continue to launch mint mechanics that incentivize those two things. Well, I'm wondering you know, at maturity how much the mint mechanics and the way that we discover new artists on sound and other platforms like it resemble the way that we fund our public goods in in web 3 and you know, listeners know that I'm the founder one of the founders of Bitcoin and that I've since decentralized myself out of it and I'm disaffiliated from leadership but but basically, you you public goods have this problem where people want to fund public goods in general, but they don't know which public goods to to fund.

Um and so you have to create a signal generation mechanism where you can fund the right public goods, not just any public good. And I feel like there's a parallel there with music where it's like, well, people like music, but they don't like all of music. They have a certain amount of taste to them. And so how do you build a web of trust? How do you build a coordination mechanism? How do you build a mint mechanic that upregulates the projects, public goods, musicians that people actually care about? And and I think that that's the interesting idea set in web 3 is that in web 2 we could we could sort of use likes as a mechanism to measure what people like, pun intended. But in a way, likes are kind of like the ultimate shitcoin because you have a million of them. You have a ton of them. And uh

what if we could introduce something more scarce like a microchip or a microtransaction and use that to create a stronger signal of which things people people care about? So, um you know, I guess I maybe just thinking out loud here, but maybe there's some some parallels between the coordination mechanisms that work public goods funding and regen crypto and the ones we can use to fund artists. And so I'll be keeping an eye on which ones you're most excited about as things evolve. Yeah, I I I think collecting really for me is the new like. Uh and I think it is a like with like a serious amount of intent. Largely because you you know, sometimes there's a lot of times there's like a paid mechanic to it. And as I said, when people vote with their money, it's a the strongest signal that you could possibly get that somebody really

really cares about this. Um and so to me like the way, you know, in the past 15, 10 years in the internet, people have really talked about their followers or how many likes they got on, you know, something. I think in the future, you know, you're going to see the same set of of of fervor around like who are my collectors. Um and you know, who who believed in this first, who are the top collectors. Um and it's, you know, the ability to to kind of signal uh through through collecting I think is where things are things are things are ultimately headed. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for, you know, public music grant funding so that people can cuz you know, we're talking about like the the process of like the music is already made, now we want to monetize it. A lot of times

like there's a there's another problem that we're we're not even after today, which is like I need the funds in the first place just to be able to create the music or create the world around us. And how can we create systems as well that maybe fund artists to maybe buy their first instrument or buy their first computer so they can make make make music in the first place and then monetize it obviously afterwards. Um and so I think there's a lot of opportunity and I think, you know, one of the things I I'm a student of music history and I think one of the things that's always interested me is like this this country Sweden that like is dominant in like pop and like electronic music. And I think ah, it's not a big country per se, it's like, you know, 6 million people. And a

lot of the, you know, it's not an accident and it and Spotify obviously and even SoundCloud is like Swedish roots. Um and you know, it should bring the question, why is this country so good at generating such like a large amount of music. Um and it's I you know, one of the things that's interested me about the country is like the public music education system there is like so much more ingrained than it is necessarily in America and it's like completely like I think like 30% of people um go to public music education programs and it's like not just something for like the talented and gifted. It's like anyone who wants to pick up a, you know, music can pick up music. And I think to me that's a, you know, good example where if you put the effort to kind of

create systems that reward uh artists and and and and people who want to play with music, the downstream effects can be quite can be quite powerful. So, um yeah, I think there's there's more coordination mechanisms than just the releasing of music. Um even the creating of music is is super interesting as well. Yeah, that is super cool. Well, we'd love to have you back in a couple years and see how sound is grown and see what the decentralized network of artists and collectors looks like at that point. So, um thanks so much for joining the pod, David. Really excited to see how how things evolve and for the audience, check out sound.xyz.

Perfect. Thank you so much for having me and uh yeah, we'll be back soon.