Where music is going with AI, Web3 and the metaverse

Transcript

GM GM welcome to the Webster Academy podcast your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet I'm Kyle redhead and I believe that web3 is going to change the world and that's why we're covering a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3. today I'm joined with Rob avalo who is the founder of where music's going who's helping artists and Builders grow more connected audiences through new technology Rob has been in the music space for a really long time and he's also someone who's very affluent in technology and so these guiding artists guiding Brands Etc into space and how they can continue to grow continue to

build a strong business and maintain relevancy in a technological world this discussion today we dove into how music is going to be impacted with web 3 and blockchain Technology how it will be impacted with AI we even talked into how I'll be impacted with the metaverse right these are the sort of three encompassing areas of web 3 blockchain technology Ai and the metaverse and so very very interesting to gain Rob's thoughts on this and his perspective because he's not just thinking through this stuff I mean he writes a newsletter which is incredible talking about kind of the intersection of of music and Technology but he's also been in the space for a long time for he's been 15 years in the trenches working with artists he has founded a record label previously in an artist management firm

so he's kind of been in the weeds in the music industry for a long time throughout this sort of transition in the digital world and now he's sort of like he's deep into the web 3 space really understands what's going on there deep into AI he just comes from so much experience to be able to combine the technology world and the music world and just sort of like zoom out and look at where this is all going and think a little bit rationally in that sense too so very very interesting conversation I know we've done a few episodes on music and web 3. this one's one of my favorites by far I think Rob is just extremely extremely smart in this space and gives a lot of wisdom so if you're interested in music if you love web3 this is the perfect combination and it

gives you just a good insight into where the music industry is going some of the problems it currently has but also how we're going to use technology to really create a positive impact on this industry and create better experiences for music listeners ideally drive more revenues and more money into the pockets of musicians and really so much more so just such a great episode I hope you guys enjoy it before we get into it let's just take a quick second to hear from our sponsors the future of social media is here and that future lives in web 3 on top of lens protocol web 2 social platforms are broken and right for disruption you see the epicenter of social media is the creators and yet they are the most neglected web 2 platforms like Facebook Tick Tock and Instagram are all essentially robbing creators of their worth creators are a

new type of entrepreneur forming new types of businesses yet with web 2 platforms creators don't own their content to their profiles and that's their product in business instead they are tied to the platforms they choose to create on well just like how crypto is freeing us from Banks web 3 is freeing us from these centralized platforms on lens protocol creators own their content own their profile and even their social graphing followers in the form of nfts this allows you to move freely from one social application to another with your content profile and followers moving along with you lens protocol enables self-saverty for your social graph and interoperability across the internet at web3 Academy we believe this is the future of Social and that's why we've

partnered with lens to ensure that the path of social media is heading in the right direction visit lens.xyz to learn more today did you know that web3 users lose billions of dollars every year due to phishing attacks if you've been in the space long enough then you or someone you know has probably Fallen victim to one of these scams this is why we've partnered with wag your guardian in this digital Wilderness wag is a tool designed to help you spot the difference between malicious links and legit ones with wag you can rest easy knowing that every link you click on is safe this is an an absolute game changer for web3 as part of our partnership with wag we'll be using their platform to create verifiable links to our community feels safe knowing that what they're clicking

on is the real deal if you don't have a community to protect and you're just looking to protect yourself wake has you covered with safe stops which tell you exactly who created the link you're clicking on head to the link in description click it see that it's verified by web Theory Academy and start protecting yourself today just use the code free 1000 when signing out and if you're among the first 1000 users you'll get free access for Life Rob ablo welcome to the Webster Academy podcast super excited to have you here thanks for joining thanks for having me gal yeah look we've been talking about music quite a bit obviously we're web3 enthusiasts here on the Webster Academy podcast and our communities is Webster enthusiasts but I think almost everyone in the world is also a music enthusiast so I think the intersection of music and

web 3 and not even just you know web3 in terms of blockchain but web3 in terms of AI and kind of whatever else is going on the internet right now there's so much that technology is doing to impact the music space and I think it's very interesting and so we we really want to get some insights from you because this is a space that you are diving into with your newsletter this is space you've been I know working with a lot of others with so let's just start here let's get a bit of your background walk us through kind of your journey in this space and sort of why you ended up here writing about kind of the emergence of technology and music I spent the last 15 or so years in it's like traditional music industry managing bands and running a record label the mentality or

kind of the the philosophy I always had when I'm working with all those artists management or label was kind of like the web 3 ethos before web3 existed the Thousand true fans mentality although I always say you know hopefully a lot more than a thousand true fans but taking that approach of you know really engaging directly with your biggest fans over delivering for them and kind of like having that grow over time and having that direct relationship and had a lot of success with that with a lot of different artists I started seeing you know the last five or so years getting a lot more difficult for new artists to kind of break through with the technology the way we listen the way people are operating their mindsets

these days I moved away from taking the kind of one-to-one working with an artist approach to see how I could affect things in like a one-to-many systemic approach and the first way I did that was working with some different music technology companies as an advisor and a consultant to help but kind of got like web three pilled a few years back and through the music end you know and and seeing okay there is so many cool ideas I always wanted to do in terms of like incentive creation and fan clubs and rewarding our biggest fans that was just not feasible with the technology that was available we would try like these kind of half-assed ways of doing it that either was made possible by web3

or like eventually could be possible if all these kind of dots connect so I went full down in that world I founded a company called Doper with a couple music neuroscientists that at first was Creator tools but went heavy into the music nft space and kind of taking every bit of music and audio or any music nft on chain and analyzing it getting good metadata giving you information about it and then creating a kind of taste profile where you could find artists and projects you loved based on other stuff you love that's in the process of being acquired now so they moved on from that I really am in the mindset of there's been this democratization in music of

creation and distribution and marketing but there hasn't been a democratization of knowledge for those Earnest there's so many you know artists trying to get into the business either to be Pro or as a hobby whatever it may be and I wanted to kind of provide a one-to-many resource for them on how to grow their business and how to grow something sustainable so I launched where music's going some music and kind of emerging Tech web3 is a very very big part of it very cool very cool I just I gotta ask what was it in web3 that kind of made you give you the aha moment where it clicked like oh this can apply to music was there already like a music out of T that launched well I mean I was very familiar with crypto and investor in different

coins but it wasn't and there was already music nfts and if when music nfts first came out I was very dubious actually like I didn't see why it mattered I'm all for artists making more money but I didn't see like what the end value necessarily was for the user I don't know what the moment was for me like but I remember I mapped it again when I was growing up was a big fan of a band called fish and you know they have a million different shows they play with different set lists and there was these message boards where people you know you can log in every single show you've seen from these like third-party sites and it shows your stats and everybody wants to wear this as this like proof of fandom and it's feminative gamified I I was able to start mapping that approach upon

everything being authenticated and verified and plugging in to everywhere else around the artist's career and what an artist could do with that and how fun The Fan Experience could be and it just kind of opened up it was just like taking these deep fan experiences and being able to like interconnect them and have the artists and fan know that somebody's done all these things so it I don't know what the nft or what the project was but at one moment with the technology just clicked for me there right okay so for listeners we're gonna dive into all the different sort of use cases of web3 and Technology to sort of help with music in the industry we'll also talk a lot about AI I think as well before we do that let's talk a little bit about just the current state of the music industry we did a

podcast a couple months ago with Austin hurwitz who's also a pretty big in the music industry doing a lot with music nfts it was a great discussion and so he kind of gave us the whole history of sort of the music industry from back when it was like records to up until this point we didn't dive a lot though in where the music industry is at now in terms of like streaming services and how that's impacting artists so I want to just get a bit of a framework if you don't mind it just kind of set us up like where's the music industry at now what is good of it with how we currently use tech for music and I guess what is bad from it as well so yeah I'll give you kind of you know some of my thoughts on it so we say the last decade

streaming kind of brought the record industry back from the break of what had been happening with napstered free data loads and and just unbelievable Revenue drops that's a good thing you know it added more paying customers than we've ever had before that are like participating in the music industry gave the entire Globe like easy access to the entire catalog of Music essentially that's ever existed but kind of in the pursuit of scaling to like every incremental Global customer at one low price there's definitely been some consequences to that so I mean music is very commodified the context is ripped away and artists are detached often from their music and the way we listen to it

and it's very much so more than ever kind of songs over artist economy I mean you experience music in a playlist it's got The Branding of a tech company it's recommended to you about by then that algorithm all of those things are great and serve a lot of purposes but it kind of changes the experience we have with music and definitely changes the experiences we have with artists the kind of way I look at it is like the goal of you know major stream of platforms is not to get you to fall in love with artists it's to get you to not fall off the app which is like essentially avoiding unpleasant or surprising experiences which is where a lot of like Serendipity of Discovery and like deeper fandom actually end up happening it's um

like we're a lot of surprise happens add in kind of like the democratization I was talking about before means there's more artists and creators and songs than ever before that's great that so many people can kind of participate but with all of this like the streaming is built the pie back up like it's bigger than it was in 2013 10 years ago when Spotify like really started kind of growing but it's actually not as big as it was even in 1999 on an inflationary basis so you have one of the biggest kind of like media sectors that everybody loves and participates in so well and it's smaller than it was in 1999 which is a pretty hard thing to find anywhere else I mean call that a

success and you compare that to video games that have grown you know 270 percent you know in 2013 and it's because they're kind of taking a very different approach and much less passive approach to how people engage um so the way I look at it is like you know lots of good things more people than ever all priced and kind of looked at in the same way casual listeners and that experience is super served and there's lots of artists lots of slices the slices are really small right so I think a lot of people right now are realizing how unsustainable that is even the business model seems to be pretty unsustainable and there's a lot of good things here but that there's more we're missing more we can deliver on where we could add

interesting I saw a chart I think it was like yesterday on Twitter and it was sound.xyz which is a platform for music nfts they had posted a chart and it was comparing video game the video game industry to the music industry and it was like they've both grown in terms of like users and that and listeners but the revenues of video games have gone basically exponential I forget what the Figures were I think you might have just mentioned it as well but music has almost stayed flat like it's kind of a bit but not much like you said why is that is it the business model is it the technology is it because there's I don't know greedy labels that aren't allowing this to happen like what is the reason for this kind of like Fork they seem to both be like you said are now in the

ears of everyone right everyone's playing video games everyone's listening to music why are we able to like generate revenues from it so much better video games than we are in music I think there's a lot of reasons me to think one is that the perception is that music is free you don't pay for music you pay for the convenience it's really the reality right it's like we all got to the point the music was free we weren't going to pay for it Spotify streaming came along and said and listen like we'll get rid of the viruses we'll organize it really well eventually they end up recommending really well you're paying for that you're not actually paying for the music and it's all a very low rate hasn't gone up but there's no way to get people to like incrementally pay in more through that experience I mean if people want to

go deeper if you're a really big fan or absolutely love something there's very few ways to engage or gamify especially directly in that experience you need to go elsewhere you need to seek out the artist you need to go to their concert when they rarely come through which are you know not not part of like the recorded music business so I think it's kind of that like in video games they're building a world that you love but that's like the basis of how you're then going to go deeper and you're participating in it much more closely and I think there's a lot of opportunity there for music which we can get into for sure one of the things that I remember when I was talking to Austin I had kind of a bit of an aha moment on the music world to me what I saw is that

the music industry is almost turned to like musicians are like content creators content creators create content on Twitter Instagram whatever they don't necessarily monetize their content but they can monetize Their audience by selling merch by selling newsletters subscriptions courses like other things usually off platform and it seems to me that that's kind of the way the music industry has gone it's like you create music to grab attention but you don't really make a lot of money off of your music you then go and sell concerts and merch and like I don't know records if people still buy those and like whatever else is that a fair comparison it's a great comparison I mean even if you look at the artists who are making money and streaming I mean it's essentially taking money that you maybe would have made in

the first two weeks of an album release and it's spreading it out over a longer period of time and even if that money ends up being larger for an artist who needs that now and needs to reinvest it's not as helpful it's why you got to see it's like great for large catalog owners because they have time and tons of stuff that's out there accumulating but it's harder for the individual artists and I think was a challenge for a lot of the artists is that you know how do you connect with that person how do you get them into that next space what is that next thing that you're offering for them what are those Frameworks what's that funnel and how does everybody win and how do you do it in a way that like can still be authentic to the content you want to put

out so it makes sense when someone's buying your concert tickets Etc but if like you're trying to look at it as like patreon model or something like that it's often difficult for traditional music artists to use that business model because like they're not in the habit of like creating at that pace and and so it hasn't been like that yeah you know it's just nobody's nailed that on like the traditional artist and quite yet web 3 music nfts have a possible solution there interesting Okay so we've got a bit of an idea of sort of the issue the big issue in this industry which is that musicians aren't really making any money or at least it's very difficult and those who are it's very like a small amount of musicians are really making most of the money and we didn't really touch on this a lot but is most of the

money I guess going to the platforms is it going to Spotify like where is like there is money in music where is that going is it just a certain subset of artists or is it going somewhere else yeah I mean people give a lot of numbers to make it seem like in some ways that's a bigger problem I think sometimes that it actually is like Spotify takes essentially 70 sorry 30 which you can argue that either way but even if you gave a hundred percent of what was coming in there like it's just not that much right well hey I don't think that like solves the issue like I think we need to raise everybody's boats to win uh raise like the water for everybody's boats to win you know if you're assigned to a major label it depends on that deal right they're going

to be taking quite a bit but they're also going to put a lot of money in Risk into you like you just have to debate that for artists who are working with Indie labels it might be like a 50 50 split of what comes in but there's more artists than ever before and it's the fastest growing segment we're releasing directly through you know tune core distrokid they're paying 10 bucks a year for distribution and then they're getting all of the money Spotify pays through so it's different for each artist type to me it's there's a lot of money but it's that the people who are making the most on it are the ones who own deep catalogs and especially have a very long like back catalog because older artists are getting revived and are a bigger part of the pie but with so

many different artists and creators coming in and like you know 120 000 songs a day AI bringing that up I think even the major labels now are realizing okay this pie is getting split in so many ways like how can we do this in a way that you know the people who are the most committed win the best artists win they get money to them and they can kind of redevelop instead of everybody making such a small amount I kind of think of it as like the Uber thing where it's like okay this thing came in and democratized cabs and we were all really happy at first because like it was subsidized by VCS so we just had cheap cars that were always available and were like really nice but then as the business model became like closer to reality those costs were not sustainable

the cars got crappy it was more expensive it's less available and it turned out you just blew up an entire industry and now instead of having these cab drivers like careers with tons of people who are just hobbyists there's a similar element of that to music and you have to weigh okay how much of that is great like we want anybody to be able to come in but we also want to make sure that dedicated like artists who potentially have a big future have enough going back to them that they can stay in and cultivate their career right so it sounds like there's two things you need to do one we need to figure out how to redistribute the pie so that the pi gets distributed to the people that deserve it or putting in the most work and the pie I mean just Revenue in the

music industry and the second is we need to grow the pie we need to make the pie bigger we need probably different business models which might mean different technologies that are going to allow us to do this or somehow we need to cut costs in between all that right so that there is more pie ultimately less like money getting lost throughout the system that's my assumption of what what we need to do here can you give us a eye level overview zoom out a little bit here and walk us through like best case scenario or what you think is going to happen with music actually you can do two things here what you think is going to happen and what you wish would happen maybe it's the same thing maybe it's not I don't know and walk us like the next I don't know five ten years we've got web

3 coming in we've got AI we've got obviously whatever Spotify these other streaming service are doing that are all kind of changing the dynamic of the music industry give us your sort of like high level overview of where you think it's all going yeah I mean I think a lot of it just starts from what the mindset is of artists and what kind of the incentive structures are underneath the infrastructure that we all use you know I think the things that become more passive but a lot of that is has to do with like the ease of the technology and kind of the nudge I'd like to see things go more like from followers to fans if you think about like music it's not only a more passive because of streaming it's because like everything is competing for our attention and it's constantly

available to us any moment I can look at my phone get content go to social media I'm not going to lay on my sofa turn off the lights and listen to a full record like it's just I'll probably last one minute before I pull up my phone when it's always that's music superpower is that it's like an accessory to everything it coexists with so many other things that are out there but I think we're seeing being like a shift back to how can we be more engaged or what are solutions to get people more engaged that are similar to video games I think even like Tick Tock is like a step somewhat in that direction maybe not in the way that I or someone would want but it's music being part of the content that people are creating and

they're sharing and they're participating it they're spreading a meme they're putting their stamp on it and I think that's actually fascinating and you can see Spotify even chasing that a bit you know they the new changes they made to like their homepage app they're trying to make listening on Spotify less something you do with your pocket in your phone and more you do in your hand looking down is that going to work I don't know but I think it shows like a fear of like something like Tick Tock and an understanding of there is a craving for this super fan or for people to have more access or like bitter bet bigger and better content so I think like the passive and it really engage can coexist taking like the video game parallel more

with AI and other tools that are coming out I think it's about how do you get fans to be able to co-create and have the song Almost be like the beginning part of the process that there could they're consumed like oh like consumer creators so music is being put out to them but they're putting back into it they're putting their spin on it they're creating for themselves they're creating for their friend based off of that music are there ways to kind of use that technology to get people to be to participate more deeply we're seeing it with like uh with beatport it's essentially like an electronic music service where like a lot of the customers are like image sure DJs and like where they're actually seeing downloads like Skyrocket there and it's

because really what they're doing is they're buying the music so that they can use it to make their own DJ sets or build on top of it and I think like more and more people being able to participate in music because tools make it easier and easier for them to do so they're going to end up becoming consumers of the biggest and best most influential artists we're never to pay more than much more than what you're paying right now to consume music but you'd be willing to pay a lot more if you're going to buy this new sample pack if you're going to be able to like have the ability to iterate on a song to put your stamp on it to share that so I think that's one possibility that's really interesting I think another is just putting you know different kind of incentive structures to bring people

closer together so that could be the streaming platforms having different tiers having subscribe directly on platforms to artists where you're getting more additional direct content from them but it's also artists having a mindset that the goal isn't streaming numbers or followers the goal and the mindset is to build fans so I'm going to create music not kind of going after the viral Rat Race but that's this long game of bringing people deeper into my world can we have kind of formats and systems that enable them to do that which is why I like web 3 and nfts I think if you have things you can sell

to people that are your core fans that they're paying a lot more money for and you're capturing that full demand it changes the artist's mindset to say I'm going to create for these hundred people these 500 people these thousand people and that's how I'm going to build my career up from there instead of I'm gonna build my music for these millions of people hoping a small percent kind of like it so long-winded way but I think those are some different avenues that could happen that that makes me want to pull on a lot of different threads there the interesting part for me just in that last section here of the 1000 true fans kind of thing is I actually had a question here to ask you because one of the things that every time I talk to someone music industry they're like the

problem is music is becoming too passive which is how you started off saying the same thing right my pushback is always isn't that just what people want don't we just want an ease of getting access to all the music and just listen to whatever are we trying by saying like hey let's get people to buy albums again or let's get people to do this like are we pushing against gravity almost right like maybe that's just not the direction that people want to go to consume music but I think what you bring up is a good point is that I'm sure there are a certain amount of people that will pay anything because they go to Every concert you know what I mean they buy all the merch like these are your 1000 true fans and they will buy other things they will buy albums if albums still

existed right I remember back when I was younger I would go and buy CDs for artists I'd like even though I could get the music on Napster but I was just like Jay-Z that's who I loved when I was kid I was like I'll buy his album you know what I mean I supported was the only albums I would buy just because I loved him you know but then I was like well but now everyone's just listening passively it's so easy right like now I don't even know who I'm listening to I just tell Google or you know Alexa like play music of this style and then just says playing music I'm like I don't even friends are like well who is this I'm like I have no idea right so it's like we've kind of gone on this passive route which I like but I I think you're right

there's probably a certain subset of fans for each artist that are willing to pay more right now they're only have the option to pay what a Spotify 12 bucks a month which doesn't even go to artists but if we find new ways of creating I guess experiences or or I want to say products you're saying we can gen we can grow the pie by adding additional products that these sort of like thousand true fans would actually come out and purchase and it might be more than a thousand percent using that word no I think I think you're saying is right like it has to be easy something that a lot of the solutions that people present especially in web3 but I mean listen I get pitched five new music platforms and products a day right when people don't understand is you can't it just say this is going to make artists

more money and they're going to own their data and they can name their price there's no middlemen it's like great but like if there's no if it's a Marketplace and there's nobody buying on the other end it's irrelevant I'm happy to give somebody 30 and they can keep all my data if they're going to put me in front of millions of people that turn into fans versus somebody who's doing zero so in you have to think about what fans actually want make it easy for them um I think video games like most of this is driven by whales right is what they call them so they're buying an incredible amount of skins and upgrades and things like that we don't have a way of monetizing whales or capturing that demand particularly well in the music industry and if we do it's on this kind

of outskirt it's not in game imagine the video game it's like instead of buying in-app stuff they went to the game they loved it and then they had to like follow the creator of the game and then like that person would like give them more content on social media and if they really liked and they'd follow their email well then eventually they sell them the skin like that's how it works the process is so difficult to get to that upgrade but if we have experiences that you're living in where you can just like upgrade right within it and it's fun and it's easy and it's addictive it's one button it's like I really want to do this additional thing those things are helpful I also think you know there's kind of like the gamesmanship where if you can there's a lot of people which really

important to them like if you get like your year-end Spotify information and shows you're like the top one percent of a listener for somebody people love that they share it it's spotify's best marketing tool if you know we're able to kind of look into the lens of like this is your fandom with an artist you listen to them this much you've been to this many shows you've done this many things there's a certain subset of people where that's going to drive them to go deeper and they're going to want to buy more spend more you can reward them for that having that knowledge between fan and artists there's a band called Avenged Sevenfold there's like a pretty large metal band who's gone all in on this and they're doing an incredible job with that and I think with all these things like it's it'll listen there's a bunch

of people who do not care and I think everyone pretty much is even happy with streaming like even in your example I'm always happy with streaming and how much it provides to me I do end up realizing that it slowly nudged me away from finding artists and bandits like that so like I have less stuff that maybe I want to go drive four hours forward see show and I know every word of every song but if I need music in the next 30 seconds so please whatever situation is happening there is zero chance I won't be able to find it and that that like they've solved that it's so it's it's how can we layer things on top to kind of solve the other issue and make sure the 10 to 20 percent of fans who are going to drive 80 percent of Revenue

let's actually do that I think that's what we're I'm doing right interesting this is great I never thought about this way and you know what's interesting is when you say the whales like in gaming you have the whales that they can buy and the music industry they don't really have that the way that the whales can purchase is but they have to do something physical they have to go to a concert somewhere in the world which actually isn't that profitable for musicians right they've got to pay the venue they've got to pay like all the different there's so many middlemen there and so the only way to sort of monetize outside of these streaming services is these physical things which are not like merch is good but not a crazy profitable business concerts are good but not crazy profitable if it's fully digital like when you said in

video games these are just digital Goods that people buy it's almost 100 profitable music sort of needs that people will pay for them but what is the thing that they're going to get very interesting you nailed that point I think that like there's very few digital ways of doing it and the operating expenses of a lot of those things mean that they're not profitable until you get to a pretty large stage in your career right but it's you know getting to that point it's difficult right let's jump into web 3 a little bit we have I want to go into AI I want to go into web three originally we're gonna do AI first but I think there's a lot to talk about here on the web 3 side in terms of my assumption is when I ask you how we're going to build these products and we're

going to monetize more to these let's call them whales again or like the Thousand trip fans I think probably nfts or web3 is going to be a lot of the infrastructure we need to do this can you sort of walk us through some of the things that either you're seeing or that you think are going to happen of how we can start to find new ways to monetize for musicians anyway is it music nfts is that kind of the big thing that you're seeing or is there something else that I'm missing as well it may or may not be I go back and forth sometimes I'm using nfts or even the technology being necessary to like deliver on the ethos or sometimes it's like we take this philosophy back and at least for now we can use other forms of technology or other like delivery formats when I kind

of first came into this space like I was always a little uncertain about kind of like audio or like song like kind of what you think about is a traditional music nft which is like I buy this because I could maybe flip it or sell it for later if this artist gets bigger I want that to be true I want people to Value music in that way I don't know that that really works I don't know that like the over financialization of Music in that sense is actually what artists want to do and how like the relationship they want to have with their fans what I do think is the tokenization of every interaction that an artist and a fan have with each other knowing that having that and and

being able to build experiences on top of that even to the point where eventually hopefully fans have no idea that's the technology that's doing this but they're getting all these experiences that say Hey when you walk into every new boom new platform new thing you do it understands the if you want the artists you love the artist knows you're the biggest fan and therefore you get the first pre-sale they get rewarded like they can create kind of different blank canvases can you that and sell music T's that are representative of like a one-of-one piece of art or song Etc and maybe you know have those be really profitable I hope so but I don't know that like that's necessarily the format of sale or if it's just to me I'm more bullish on

it being like the portable identity and proof of fandom right right for somebody so when you say music nft do you see this I think the more people get confused is like you don't actually own the rights to the song at least I haven't seen any platforms that are actually doing that it's more the thing you're buying is I mean sure you're buying the song but that song's probably also going to stream on Spotify because you didn't need to buy it but what you're buying is the experience that goes with that song is that how you see music nfts that's how I think they're gonna play out is like I buy whoever that I'm a big fan of and they have a new song There's I don't know you can buy a thousand people can buy the songs nft again I'm not buying the rights to

that song but maybe there's I don't know I get to like join some some event that happens when he releases he or she releases the song or like there's something else I get to do I get a merch that's representative of the song like I'm not sure but they create an experience around that thing and it's only those folders are the ones that get it and so it's great for me I'm giving money right off the bat for that thing because I like the song I like the musician the artist makes a little bit more money and I get some sort of closer connection with me and the artist is that sort of how you see them or is there more to that well I think it's muddy because music nfts encompasses a lot of different stuff you know you have what I think is maybe starting to be

called you know on-chain music where you have music nfts or a song or an album nft they may or may not have more utility layered in then you have like a membership nft then you have something that's with merch or maybe a piece of vinyl there's also royalty nfts Royal Oculus and another block are doing we're actually bought you were actually buying interest in the streaming right to the song more than anything with that shows is like this is a blank cam this is a technology not a product and music nfts is a product name is probably wrong it's like saying internet music and that would represent not just music on the internet but also like merge and ticket like digital tickets for me buy those individual song nfts I have not gotten

to the point where I'm like yes that totally makes sense for like the end consumer unless they are like a patron where I do see value is like you said like how does that bring them deeper into the artist's world so if you bought any of my song nfts now you get access into my community and in that Community I can see all the interactions you've had and based on that it changes your experience there and I can gamify that and make that interest it's interesting or you know as I want the problem sometimes I see with like every successive song that you release being released on chain like I like that but the idea that that's gonna make every song worse more they're gonna go open value it's like well the name picture of

a recording artist so they're going to release more and more music and it's like dilutive to the previous thing so I just think to me I like it I just I don't like it in the sense of you're buying it because you're gonna sell it right I think you're buying it because it's like a further roof of your interaction with this artist and maybe it opens up a portal to some bigger experience right that's exactly how I see it playing as well although there will always be some speculative nature because that's just how this space works but I agree I don't see there being value in buying a music entity just because you're buying it I think it's the experiences or whatever comes with that and then I think from the artist perspective they want to use nfts because

it's like a data point right like you said that allows them to see what else they're doing on chain it's an interoperable standard so it allows them to create an experience both on sound or whatever and then in their I don't know Discord Community or token getting merch or whatever so they can do things across the internet with it and then maybe royalties do you know much about Royal and how this all works like how are they sharing royalties to Holders from Spotify and that I don't understand how that functions yeah so the way it works is they're doing only the songs they've previously been released that's the way they see it around having kind of compliance issues right now it's not an upcoming unknown track you're buying you know so the artists can decide they're going to give away 50 of the future streaming royalty share of a track or

tracks and then they fractionalize that into nfts you buy it and then every period maybe it's a month maybe it's every three months there's not a direct pipeline right now so it's like the artist shares their statements with royal okay assistant get trusted upload process and then they bring distributes it out to everybody every quarter I know that they're making some changes in their platform about how you can have a bigger part of your experience with the artist Royal does it like Artist Artist another block is doing it by finding producers and songwriters who have a small share of massive tracks like Rihanna in the weekend they're selling some of their interest so what's really interesting about these things and like I think it solves a

niche prop I've sold catalogs from artists I work with to essentially a bank right so like okay it'd be great if you have access to more places of liquidity especially if you're a small or and a bank isn't interested in analyzing your song or songs if you could sell it to fans or potential fans maybe there's extra benefit there because they're coming along for the ride they're gonna bring more people in maybe they become a fan through this process if they resell it I make more money so long as we're upholding royalties there's different advantages there also maybe I have like more control over what I want to sell often when you're selling them to like a bank or someone else it's like they just eat everything so there's

some good there I think it also just comes with some like if you're trying to make more money than is fair I think you're selling yourself short as an artist because like these are the people who love you there's nothing more important that relationship so it's just a very delicate thing but I think it's it's a nice tool to have as long as there's enough people buying on the other side and like that you're no one's getting screwed essentially well I was gonna say if the artists aren't even getting enough that was kind of the main problem we talked about and now artists have to share it with their fans too like that makes it even worse right I would never say you're not getting enough so like artists who are doing well on streaming they'll make good money I think it comes in slow slower

because of that it's like a steady annuity that people can reliably assume will make X so listen like if this is going to make 100 Grand in the next 10 years and you're gonna pay me 75 grand right now but like that's not like what most nft Traders are in it for like to make like a soft investment over a decade right like right right okay so there's a lot of different use cases let's just summarize there's a lot of use cases with nfts and blockchain in general and we don't know which one's gonna win out or it's probably gonna be a combination we'll have to see but likely it's going to be something that connects the artists of their fans more closely you know what's

one other one that I think and you sort of mentioned this at the beginning I remember when I was in college and I had found a DJ his name is Tommy who's like someone big now but it's very small I found him on like sound side I think it was and I shared it with all my friends and then all of a sudden he like came to Toronto we went to his concert and then like he became really big I was like damn I wish there was a way that I could have like either made money on that or proven to people that like I was early on you know and I think blockchain does that by collecting ft even if it's just free right it doesn't have to be paid or anything but proof of fandom I think is actually a big deal now not for

everybody and so there's some people listening going I don't care I would never pay for that I think there is a lot of people that would to be like the first of the Thousand to listen to a song and they might pay XML just to prove it like I think you get a lot of people that would do that at in the music world and maybe sometimes it's not even paid or you know who knows that experience is I think that we need more like human taste making and things like that like I can show that I have incredible taste I was early on all these things what does that like open for me like Taylor Swift does some or the next Taylor Swift right like so it's just some partnership at every venue with some like booze and part of the partnership is that if you were one of

the first thousand people to have ever intercollected to like this artist you're gonna get in backstage you're gonna other people are going to want to eat right access you because like you are like an important eventually you can show that like you have cachet I think I think by you controlling that data instead of maybe like some third party well I can go kind of like utilize this data that I have with that artist or you know in all these different places right which you don't have access to English but people make fun of the better verse not fully there but the reality is like kids are living in Roblox and fortnite and I'm a very different life and experience that the people my age that's only going to increase you're going to

spend more and more time in digital places and also people love collecting things in fact we're seeing vital is like you know having it again come back here yeah you know like it's still small relatively and 50 of people who buy it don't even own a record player right here this is my fandom you know so you're spending more time in digital places you love to collect things how do you wear that band t-shirt you still wear to show part of your identity how do you invite people into your house where you show your vinyl collection there's a potential there for once like the places for it to exist are natural and organic where it's like oh wow like that's your record

collection or like those are the artists that you've backed provably in certain spaces may become value I devastated and it's funny I was actually just about to go into metaverse I know we in the uh a brief we didn't talk about this but it brings up a good point when I think of web3 there's sort of three technologies that are part of it there's blockchain which is where you get nfts crypto Etc there is Advanced Computing which is AI machine learning Etc which we're going to touch on that and then there's immersive experiences so that's VR and AR those kind of like Technologies are all sort of coming together we talk about this a lot one of the things I was just thinking of is metaverse is becoming a really big thing and yes it's not in the older crowd yet but like for those who are Gamers they are all like

there's a lot of older people playing fortnite right and they live in these digital worlds but there has been this kind of like over the last few years especially because of covid concerts that are happening inside of digital metaverses I think fortnite had some concerts before I've seen some crypto ones it's not like dead mouse and Paris Hilton and I forget who else were all in like decentraland and and it wasn't terrible experience it was a little bit weird but it wasn't terrible but I imagine that the technology gets better like the Apple Vision Pro headset and you're in a concert wearing those it's actually going to be pretty decent and so I wonder there's a way for you to sell scalable tickets to scalable concerts that will be almost completely profitable you don't need to worry about

all the physical stuff so I guess there's another Avenue and then the other great thing about it is based off of tokens and things that the audience is holding their wallet whether it be nfts music ones whatever or proof of fandom they can get different access within those metaverse worlds so I think there's actually a big play on that too is this something you're thinking through or am I just going like way down off of the event well I think like apple Vision Pro especially gave a lot of like okay where is this going right like the fact that it's Apple Vision makes you realize it's going to be an apple vision air yeah right yeah exactly you know what does it be like 10 years I think a lot of that's like when I'm in my living room and I can just see you know it all

happening right there and you know something I didn't really thought about so you just mentioned it but it's like well what if I'm watching the first 20 minutes of the concert that's for free for everybody I was just scrolling whatever social media and I'm like oh this artist I love is doing a show let me hop in and then 15 minutes in it's like okay like you know going forward you have to have this token in your wallet so watch the rest of it right like yeah there's just so many different ways that those things intersect I think absolutely okay so that's very interesting I didn't plan to talk about that but just it came to mind so very very interesting there as well but I think we're still years from that becoming a thing I just want to say to the listeners like great we get all

excited about the metaverse stuff it's cool kids are in it but I think we are I don't know a good three five years before it becomes somewhat normal so I think we still get a lot of time there okay the last technology I want to talk about because this has kind of been the big thing of 2023 really is AI and uh how AI is impacting music and and I say that in terms of we saw what happened with Drake and the AI Renditions of his music of new songs that were being created using Drake's voice which were actually really good in my opinion and then of course the problem of that like what do we do if everyone's creating music of someone else but I think that's also kind of to go off what you said at the beginning of sort of remixing content and everyone can be a Creator

like it's going to really accelerate that and there's I mean I think Drake's lawyers were trying to shut it down but then you have Grimes who was basically saying hey everyone please do this and we'll have actually share in revenues for those who create songs with me so two kind of opposite ends of the spectrum I guess let's just start AI in general what are you seeing how do you think that this impacts music is it just people can make songs with it and they'll copy other people's voices or is this like is there way more to this there's way more because that's just the most like controversial and like trendy and I think there are things that are going to happen from that it's funny right before we got on a rolling stone article came out a great one I was actually quoted in it's about this the

writer it sold me on our call like he's talked to a lot of Estates of artists who passed and they're the most interested in this technology they can put out new stuff and it just opens up a whole lot of ethical questions but it's really fascinating I think with the vocal deep fakes like we're gonna get a handle on it there's a lot of solutions being built like you mentioned the Grimes one there's others and there's a lot of people in the background trying to create kind of like licensing so like it's opt-in it's licensed there's ways for The Originators to monitor size I think it's going to go beyond vocals I think it's going to go to style I think it's going to go to like songwriting kind of ability I think it's a really great way for the best artist to I look

at it as like the best artist derivative works are your legacy and like you want as many of them as possible right so like if you're the Beatles you're the most cover band of all time or James Brown you're the most sampled artist of all time like that's amazing to your legacy and that makes you continue long even after you're gone and your ideas regenerated this is like the next version of that at like exponential but we need to get a hold of it in a way that's beneficial it doesn't just pervert and take advantage of so I think I I posted something recently by like Trey stay I which is something that in a more closed system where you know it's like I'm working with something in the style of Frank Sinatra you know or Metro Boomin it's using the voice of this

artist that artist has opted in it's licensed they're getting scares if you commercialize it I think maybe a lot of times not even like in a commercial space like think of it as like the new tick tock or somewhere else where like I'm sharing fun things to my friends you know or like just for myself or I think of like Guitar Hero think about that in this era of like playing and participating in new songs so I think there's some really interesting stuff there generally AI whether it's generative or other forms of it is just going to make it a lot easier for people to become creators and to pump out a lot of music it's giving me more songs than before everyone's so scared of the negative effects of that I feel like

we've already almost hit the ceiling of how many songs could come out to like the negative of that like there's already like a hundred thousand songs a day that don't get listened to even once wow does it matter if there's a million more the good ones will rise actually yeah well actually I think what's gonna happen is that the streaming platforms and the Distributors are gonna have to reckon with this and there's gonna actually end up being a little bit more gatekeeping than there's been uh they can't even just have like a whole much data and music it's just not cost effective so I think what you'll end up seeing is like solutions that solve not just the AI problem but already the problem we were having with like BS content I think people are gonna like yearn for like

Humanity in like the artists that are delivering stuff and like originality like we've already been creating for the algorithm for the last 10 years I think it's going to help push you can't be creating for the algorithm compared to an AI so it pushes I think originality and like standing out further I think it's going to push artists who are like Community Building as a skill further where it's going to be the most detrimental is artists that are producing music that's like a nine to five so it's like functional in terms of like its background of a YouTube video or a segue between these two things so like epidemic sounds can just replace that now like in a button or functional music which is taken off

and now ai can recreate meditation sounds but yet it's ranted as James Blake's AI version of it that he didn't even really do that's gonna happen so that's gonna be tough for like smaller artists but at the end of the day like it's just another great tool that you can use or not use and there's going to be artists who use it and like do incredible new things and new genres and they'll succeed and there's going to be artists who are like totally against it so you think of like the 80s there's always Casio music then there was this pushback against like this over synth overproduced then we had grunge like I think there's going to be a similar meaning where it's like we get this wave of AI music whether you know whatever it is and then we're gonna get this wave of like ah man I want like whatever the

antithesis of that I am right one of the things that I thought maybe was going to happen is if an artist let's say it's Drake right if anyone can make music using his voice we already all very accustomed to his voice we like his tone of music that's why he's so successful and now there can be thousands of Drake songs made every single day Drake gets to a point where like he becomes just a district Beauty platform and he doesn't even really need to make music anymore right now it's all about how can you build your own branding get a big following you said community building so Community Building marketing whatever you want to call it but how can you get the attention and then people can create the music for you and you just sort of curate it and then you just say hey I

approve of this song I approve of this song and like you're now the distribution channel to get your music out there I guess the scary part of that is it means the big get even bigger and then it's like how do you even fit in if they're doing that I don't know if that's actually I'll place it but that's the way that I thought of it when I started to see this whole AI stuff with Drake do you any comment on that well it's tough because you're you're right and that like you know who cares about an AI deep fake of somebody who's not already popular right so like on the other hand it's the people who are popular who have the most to lose with doing these things right so they've got to be fearful it's going to hurt their brand yeah so I think there's some that

are going to play with it I think they're really gonna want tighter controls on it like what can be commercialized do they have to approve it maybe it has to stay in a certain ecosystem I think there's get like there's this like music web3 Community I guess is what you call it code oh my God Kirby they create all these different songs and like but everybody could create like different versions of the music based off of you know some Central thing and they can all release it like to Spotify end up like being really successful and I just think like what about like community-led artists and like the voice isn't necessarily like a deep fake but it's like some synthetic thing that everybody's sharing and building iterative stuff off of and we've got a community of like 500 further service to

novices working together and like releasing it and it's like a super organism artist there's I don't know maybe there's some interesting use cases there and that's kind of what Tick Tock is is remixing content right like someone makes this thing and then you take that and you add one more thing and it's like I wouldn't call that yes well it is kind of community-based creations of music because like they're kind of doing that but oh my God Kirby is I forget how you burn that but they're doing the same thing it's got a bunch of them coming together to make it it's actually quite interesting I think AI just makes that even more I guess possible or scalable the one thing I think of the emergence of AI and blockchain is as you were saying like the reputation of big musicians who might not want others creating music is

if everyone's just signing transactions for their content like verifying like hey this was me like all Drake's music moving forward is host sit on the internet and published or minted from drake.eath then that's how you know okay Drake was the one that actually either made it or approved of this one and if it's not mid to the blockchain by Drake then you know it's a fake you know what I mean like that might be the solution to it I don't know if that'll actually happen but that's kind of my prediction all right we've gone on a little bit long here we've got to start to wrap up but I don't want to wrap up just yet because this has been a great conversation Rob and I appreciate all of your answers what I want to know speaking of predictions is is there anything in the coming I don't know year

three years five years whatever that is sort of something you predict is going to happen the music industry whether that's like a big Black Swan event I know those things you can't predict but like something that's going to really change the industry kind of like how streaming did is there anything on your mind that's like this is probably going to happen or this is the direction I'm seeing it's going what I have is I do think there's going to be some pretty massive like essentially synthetic artists right that are going to be massive possibly community-led but we just did that so that's not interesting something that like I've been holding back on saying is I I think within the next few years you might see Amazon buy Spotify which would have a dramatic effects on music not the least of which because and

I have no information on this of course it's just there's no big music platform where music is their business like their Core Business it's just Amazon and apple we use music as loss leader for everything else they do in my opinion if Spotify can't get a hold of their business model in the next few years so we could potentially see something like that if they kind of have some negative Black Swan event I do also think we're going to see some wild like collaborations between the dead and the living Joe Cocker today it just announced like he sold his estate to Irving azov's like management company and they have now bought a few and it includes like all these crazy rights and there's no talk about it with AI but it

just shows me like all of these Estates are often going to be owned by like third parties you just want to exploit it and yeah and then from there and I think are people gonna care about new songs and content from their favorite artists from 40 years ago if they know it's not them listen to it if they do what is that going to mean for new artists today who are not only competing with more songs being released from today but are also like competing with like the new Beatles song Right wow I never thought about that that's crazy that is very intense very interesting okay cool well appreciate that I know that's putting on

the spot so that's a tough thing to answer but that's a that's a really good one I I really like that let's close that we'll move into a speed run before we do that you know where If people really love music they want to learn more about kind of the intersection of Music technology Etc kind of help us out where can we go to either follow you or to learn from you yes so follow me on Twitter abalo Rob I'm there every day and then I write a Weekly Newsletter called where music's going that's quick it's a few minutes it's me ranting for a minute or two and then giving like the way I look at it is like at the top of it is like how to think in where we're going the next is like how to do but then there's a little bit of like the

news so it's like a short brief easy read that's helpful for people who are navigating the space one way or another awesome and we'll put the links to both the Twitter and his newsletter in the show notes so you can you can always find it there all right as we always do let's wrap up with a bit of a speed Round Rob I've got a couple different questions for you and we'll let you answer the first one is what's an nft that you'll never sell yeah so this one easy for me it's a lack Dave token actually this probably gives like a good idea of like the complexity of what a music nft is and why it's valuable that we talked about so black Dave is a rapper huge anime fan and like one of the smartest people I've met in the last couple years in this journey and and

everyone should go follow him on Twitter he's an artist who's released music entities and like incredibly innovative ways like every time he does it it's to the kind of like push the envelope of what's possible with this technology but he released the black Dave token it was like million of them or something I forget how much it was and it was like this open-ended like I have good ideas invest in them and that's like it and it was like so like the whole idea it's just people who already like jive with him and like you're awesome and you bought it what ended up being is like funding his ideas but it's like a chat and that chat is only like 80 of us everybody who thinks the way he does or adjacent to it and it's become like the most valuable kind of thing like that I

always go back to and it just shows you like his music nfts were interesting and Innovative it made me follow him he released this it just got me like deeper down the chains and now like we're in conversation every day and the whole support like anything he does so that's super cool I love that okay what's uh your favorite AI or web3 tool to increase productivity have you used Oasis waste at all I don't think so was it AI it's like voice memo or like voice notes on your phone but like I pretty much like if I'm walking my dog or if I'm in the car or like whatever and you have an idea I'll hit Oasis and you could just ramble into it and then it has like 25 different formats that it'll

take take your ramble and put into text so it'll be like a tick tock script A LinkedIn post and more and it puts it in like the language or like a professional email and it'll like clean it up make sense of it and I actually find it amazing just because it's like you have these ephemeral ideas and it takes it and it like not only does it like it's really good a I actually like to do a thing where they make a song they'll make a song it's so much easier when it's done it pops up and you kind of just like pick the thing you want to like send it to my notion send it to a friend I love it wow cool I'm gonna download that one I love that sweet all right last question this one we always ask to all of our guests it's always a

fun one if you had a billboard that one billion people would see what would you write on it I think challenge the default setting which is for me something I say I try to say to myself not a stittling default mode which could be anything from you know the mood I'm in or like the way I go about thinking about things when I talk to artists especially in this space it's always that it's like let's start back from first principles and challenge the default like does that make sense for you I mean I don't think we do that I love that that's how you create change you know the comfort zone you know that default setting and that's how things change that's to change the world I love that Rob thank you so much this was a fantastic conversation we're

gonna have to get you on here again as technology continues to find its way into music which it's been doing for 30 40 50 years music industry is always getting completely wrecked by technology so it's fun to learn about what's happening and where we think it's going but thanks for all the work you're doing I appreciate for everything that you're writing in the newsletter and what you're doing on Twitter as well helps me learn and so listeners hopefully you'll go check his stuff out if you want to continue to learn as well but Rob thanks so much for joining me on the podcast thanks for having me man awesome all right well you take care talk soon thank you for listening to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and

subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for a free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3. make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and web3 are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one