How musicians and artists are using crypto tools like NFTs and social tokens to not only ensure ownership of their work but also its longevity

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Throughout his career, Prince was vigilant with his music – and frequently at loggerheads with Warner Music Group. In 1993, when Warner refused to steadily release his massive back catalog, Prince started appearing in public with the word ‘slave’ painted on his face. He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol he later copyrighted as Love Symbol #2 and “drew attention to the issue of ­artists ­controlling their own destiny,” as his then-attorney Gary Stiffelman put it. 

Almost three decades later, the musician Mark de Clive-Lowe is using blockchain technology to do what Prince set out to do before him: control his own destiny. There’s also an opportunity to preserve culture in ways that can’t so easily be burned to the ground – particularly important in the face of events like the hushed-up 2008 fire at Universal Studios, which destroyed more than 100,000 masters from legends like Chuck Berry and John Coltrane.

“I'm really big on this idea that if we don't put culture on-chain, then in 20 years time, blockchain is gonna be just this horrifically boring fintech Lambo bro wasteland of nonsense,” de Clive-Lowe told me. “But it has the potential to be so much broader than that, right? So this idea of a time capsule for future ancestors is fucking wild to me.”

Earlier this year, the LA-based artist purchased the rights to seven of his albums from two labels as part of his $BUYBACK campaign. At the same time, he transformed his own imprint Mashibeats into a community-operated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). 

More info on $BUYBACK

“This is my life's work,” he said. “The reality is that if I put those record contracts into my will, and then I – heaven forbid – pass away, then those go into probate and eventually they go to my son. So now he's getting the third of a percent per stream instead of me. But the goal is to get all the shit on-chain and then I'm bequeathing my seed phrase to my son. And my children's, children's, children's children are still benefiting from my catalog, where John Coltrane's children's children are not… Universal Music Group owns that shit.”

By using social tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), artists like de Clive-Lowe could be facilitating an industry paradigm shift – one where artists own their music, the community steers the ship and everything is preserved on-chain.

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In order to grasp how revolutionary $BUYBACK is, it’s important to understand how record deals typically work. At their worst, they’re akin to indentured servitude, where artists are legally obligated to use their music earnings to pay off label debt. 

While their mechanics vary widely, deals tend to revolve around an exchange of money for rights. Labels generally give artists an advance and marketing support for ownership (or protracted licensing rights) to the master recordings and a percentage of royalties. Labels then maintain ownership and recoup until the advance and other costs (e.g. production costs, etc) are paid back – which rarely happens. 

In de Clive-Lowe’s case, while some of his album masters had reverted back to him, seven were still in the hands of two labels. One of them held licenses with significant years left, and the other had an unrecouped balance that – given current streaming rates – would take about a decade to pay off.

In response, de Clive-Lowe devised the $BUYBACK campaign, crowdfunding 12.3 ETH (about $40,000 at the time) from 56 people to buy back the rights to his masters. “Everything's home now,” he told me. In exchange, supporters received $BUYBACK tokens commensurate with their contributions, becoming founding members of the new Mashibeats DAO and earning voting rights. The project’s ongoing second phase – a collaboration with Sound.xyz that includes eight music NFT drops – is enriching the DAO’s treasury and increasing membership, getting $BUYBACK into more hands.

“Now that I'm 20+ years deep in my career, I see an obligation to give back,” he said. “I don't have to use [my catalog] to leverage anything but myself, but I'm choosing to use it as an asset to build something.” 

While $BUYBACK tokens don’t confer ownership and have no liquidity, they do offer a seat at the table. Anybody who holds $BUYBACK can submit a proposal to engage with de Clive-Lowe’s catalog in various ways. For example, the community recently held a remix contest, choosing which pieces would be minted into NFTs and then printed on vinyl. “I got to put ‘A&R by Mashibeats Community’ [on the vinyl],” he said. “That was wild to me…That's cultural contribution.” 

“If we don’t put culture on-chain, then in 20 years time, blockchain is gonna be just this horrifically boring fintech Lambo bro wasteland of nonsense.”

– de Clive-Lowe

Not everyone was excited about the project, though. When de Clive-Lowe approached his labels, one immediately forced him to sign an NDA, and the other de Clive-Lowe likened to breaking up with someone you've dated for a long time, where the other person "just replies to you with one-word texts." 

But his rationale was sound. "I knew for a fact it would fund other artists they were wanting to release,” he said. “So I was like, ‘Look, you've been waiting for this money for like three years. I will send you the whole lot. You can fund other projects. Get me my shit back and we're good.’"

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For de Clive-Lowe, who is half-Japanese and grew up in New Zealand, heritage and cultural preservation are central themes in his work. “There was no one like me,” he said. He invokes the idea of “ancestral futurism” to convey the importance of cultural transmission.

By embracing the future ancestor mindset, we move the emphasis of creation from pecuniary to preservation. “In web3 music right now the mentality is basically create, mint, shill – rinse and repeat,” he said. “It creates this idea where you don't successfully complete that cycle unless you sell, which I don't subscribe to. To me, minting… putting something on-chain. That is the success point – contributing something of value to the blockchain.”

If that had been Universal’s success point, there may have still been a fire, but everything would have been digitized. And maybe Coltrane’s children would have been managing his masters. When art is owned and controlled by centralized labels who hide the destruction of cultural treasures out of self interest instead of mourning what’s lost, we’ve failed.

But when we borrow de Clive-Lowe’s vision of digital archaeology, we place value on the simple fact that we were here. We celebrate those who proclaim that truth. It’s why every year an estimated 600,000 people go to Prince’s erstwhile home, Paisley Park, and a church in San Francisco began worshiping Coltrane, upon his death, as God incarnate. 

We miss you, Carl

It’s also why Carl Sagan sent a record to space in 1977 which featured artists like Chuck Berry – to let someone out there know that we are here, in no uncertain terms. Sagan’s team reportedly wanted to add The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” too, but the band’s record label, EMI, responded by demanding $50,000 for inclusion. “That was one of those cases of having to see the tragedy of our planet,” said Ann Druyan, the project’s creative director. “Here's a chance to send a piece of music into the distant future and distant time, and to give it this kind of immortality, and they're worried about money.”

We’re better than a Lambo bro wasteland of nonsense. But if we keep allowing money to get in the way, no one will know it and our children’s children won’t think much of their ancestors.