Welcome to The Beat, Decential’s bi-monthly breakdown of the music-web3 byway. 

Like most things in web3, the music space moves at breakneck speeds, issuing regular bouts of hope, cringe and FOMO. That combination of qualities blur the essence of the movement – on the enduring solutions to legacy industry problems and the people building them. Let’s focus on the essence; the rest, as Alex Ross wrote, is noise.

So it’s been a wild couple weeks

What a turbulent moment. ETHDenver happened and from what I hear it was a success. Meanwhile the New York Attorney General declared Ethereum should be considered a security – a proclamation that sent shockwaves through the entire crypto ecosystem. ChatGPT-4 arrived and people are already doing crazy shit with it. Silicon Valley Bank failed, then SIgnature Bank was taken over, challenging the foundations of our institutional trust. 

credit Rhys Lindmark Rhys’ Pieces

SXSW is also just happened last week, and apparently they’re “paying artists $250 (if you’re a band, that is; it’s $100 if you’re a solo artist), minus $55 for the festival application fee, and minus the entire $250 if you decide you’d prefer a complimentary SXSW wristband instead,” writes Matty Karas for MusicREDEF. 2,000 artists have signed a petition for fair pay.

On top of that, the temperature in the music non-fungible tokens (NFTs) room is suddenly lukewarm, with pioneers like Vérité and Domino reflecting on its shortcomings (though no one’s throwing in the towel). Music web3 thought leader Ben Kaspar compiled a list of varying sentiments across the web3 music space, highlighting amongst them an excellent essay by Marc Moglen on the Friends With Benefits (FWB) blog.

In the piece, Moglen grounds us in some classic tales of music industry misery – like 80 percent of artists on Spotify have less than 50 monthly listeners – and web3 hope – like what if 50 monthly listeners meant more than earning $.003 per stream and you could actually get those people into a venue to listen to your music?

Moglen then outlined the proliferation of web3 tools that seek to help artists realize that vision. What’s emerged, he writes, is a whole galaxy of platforms, which sounds great but makes it difficult to choose a path forward – it’s additional friction atop the notorious onboarding curve that already accompanies web3. Even after you figure out “what is an NFT?” and “how do I get a wallet?” you have to answer “where’s the best place to mint my song?” and “how should I price it?” and “then what do I do?”

His research revealed that artists who have found success here have to do a lot of round-the-clock work to sustain connection with their collectors – a group of web3-specific fans that may, generally speaking, care more about the speculative growth of the asset than the music itself.  

In kind, Kaspar polled his Twitter community – a group of people who likely have at least a passing interest in music and web3 – and asked, for those who don’t have a music NFT, what’s the reason? 

The results are telling, with a significant chunk embracing Moglen’s point of there being too many options. I personally fall into the “haven’t found my music” camp. And the most revealing tell is the majority opinion. The expectation of ROI (return on investment) is misguided, from my perspective. Did you ever buy a CD because you thought it would be worth more someday? The further we stray from “music is utility,” the further we get from truly healing this industry. 

In that vein, resident helmsman Cooper Turley rebranded his weekly Music NFTs newsletter to a series called Invest in Music, which includes a podcast and is in partnership with NFT Now. The project’s catchphrase is “where fans become collectors.” 

I think Turley’s intentions are good – and I think the opportunities for curation across web3 music are going to be especially fun to build – but again, placing too much of an emphasis on the future value of music endangers its inherent value as a piece of art. It encourages hyper-capitalistic behavior that risks driving an insidious stake between artist and fan, where the latter is conditioned to treat music as a financial instrument. In the words of bobby hundreds: “For NFTs to last, artists can’t be controlled by resellers and reselling.”

Now to be clear, I’m all for building utility atop the music. The power of on-chain identity as a community building mechanism is powerful, and some of the experiments that artists like Black Dave are conducting to engage and reward their fans in meaningful, and at times financial, ways are really exciting. I’m not a utility hater. But music is enough. Full stop. Do you like the music? Buy it. Join the crew. Now let’s build from there.

We’re all (gonna make it)

“Should we talk about how wagmi is not feeling very gmi recently?” tweeted Steph Guerrero – a web3 music leader and the chief marketing officer for the licensing platform Legato – referencing how the popular crypto adage “we’re all gonna make it” is missing its hindmost optimism. “We've been preaching building in bear to prepare for the bull, but even the drip tap is slowly stopping. I feel the pain of everyone. I feel it very much myself.”

Guerrero’s no bs honesty – and her fervent commitment to web3 music – has long been a welcome voice in this wild west, and her comment feels like a trustworthy gauge for this moment. Things are slow. There’s not much momentum. And in these junctures, there’s an itch to blame someone, as Guerrero notes in her thread. But like with the others mentioned above, Guerrero’s frustration is laced with hope, resilience and love for the community. And in that lies the true strength of web3.

“In the past couple of years, web3 has tended to be put forward as a major disruptive force,” writes Maarten Walraven for MusicX. “And yet, now – in the middle of the bear market – the true innovation comes forward: web3 has further allowed us to connect people together.”

As an example Walraven cites Songcamp, the collective that continues to push the space forward in wildly creative ways. They just ran a one ETH minicamp contest on their weekly “heartbeat” call. And they also announced a partnership with the music NFT platform Catalog, which includes a back-to-back, two-night music experience at two of the best (and my personal favorite) Brooklyn venues: Public Records and National Sawdust.

The announcement arrived via Quality Drop, a new release from Metalabel, an operating system for groups of creators to release work, collaborate and support one another. It’s the second drop the organization has facilitated in as many weeks. The first, a series of works in partnership with Gitcoin and Vitalik Buterin, raised $800,000 for public goods in seven days.

The point is, good things have happened and continue to happen. Because of web3, organizations like Songcamp and Metalabel exist, creating precedent for a more collaborative way to operate in this world, encouraging us to think and build collectively. So keep connecting.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere, Spotify kind of leaned in a more connective direction, releasing a new set of features that “is part TikTok, part Instagram, and part YouTube,” writes David Pierce for The Verge. Rob Abelow breaks down each new bit in great, succinct soundbytes in his newly launched Where Music’s Going newsletter. And Karas, who outlined the rollout in MusicREDEF, adds: “The only thing limiting what, er, ridiculousness might lay ahead, as we continue scrolling vertically through Spotify’s ever-expanding feed, is the company’s imagination.” 

Spotify also expanded their controversial Discovery Mode, which offers better placement for even lower payout rates and is our modern day payola – the concept of accepting payment to promote someone’s music without proper legal disclosures. “It’s exceedingly clear that Spotify is far more interested in its own survival than that of the artists who provide its content offerings,” writes Shawn Reynaldo for First Floor. Same as it ever was.

But, is there room for optimism here? One of streaming platforms’ many faults is their normalization of passive listening – the mood playlist, ‘hit play and get on with your day’ behavior that has abstracted the listening experience from key context like an artist’s name and story. For Music Ally, Stuart Dredge observed that the success metrics – i.e. how can we keep you in our app – of Spotify’s vertical feed rely on different outcomes than TikTok. 

“[TikTok] wants to keep you watching, swiping through video after video. The feed IS the experience, and it’s geared towards keeping your eyeballs on it for as long as possible,” he writes. “Spotify wants you to listen to the music and podcasts that it’s recommending. It wants you to tap through to listen in full, and it wants you to engage.” If people have to lean into the music – even just a bit more – that’s an improvement. And whatever the case, it’s worth watching.

Coda

Sadly, the world said goodbye to jazz legend Wayne Shorter. From Art Blakey to Miles Davis to Joni Mitchell to Steely Dan to Milton Nascimento – the guy sewed threads between many types of music and roles, from bandleader to composer to saxophone player extraordinaire. 

“Music opens portals and doorways into unknown sectors that it takes courage to leap into,” he once said, which feels relevant amidst all of the above.

And another Shorter quote that I like even more: “There are colors we can’t see, but they’re connected to the ones we can.”

So go listen to music. Take a walk outside and imagine all the colors of the coming spring.