Community Member Q&A: Michail Stangl, Head of Culture at Zora

Hi everyone!

We’re excited to share the third edition of our community member Q&As, where we highlight Water & Music members with diverse backgrounds, career paths and perspectives on where the music and tech worlds are going.

Our guest this week is Michail Stangl — a Berlin-based DJ, curator and Head of Culture at Zora, a marketplace and protocol for curating and exchanging NFTs. Prior to joining Zora and falling down the Web3 rabbit hole, Michail had spent most of his career to date working in live music — first as a DJ and promoter within Berlin’s vibrant underground scene, then as one of the directors and lead programmers of Boiler Room. You may have also heard Michail speak on CO:QUO’s panel about NFTs with Cherie Hu and many other artists/builders in music and tech, which we wrote a recap about here.

We caught up with Michail to discuss his journey into music, why so many music workers have made the leap from live events to emerging-tech startups over the pandemic and his hopes and visions for the role Web3 technologies could play in our future.

W&M: When did you first fall in love with music?

Michail Stangl: I can actually pinpoint that moment. I grew up in the Soviet Union, which makes me old, but not that old. I came to Germany in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart. Part of my family was already living in West Germany, and we didn’t really have much Western culture or influences or anything, behind the Iron Curtain. To be honest, the only Western musicians that most Russians knew by ‘91 were Whitney Houston, Boney M, and an obscure French singer named Joe Dassin, who you will not know, but some French people will know, and every Russian older than twenty will know. Some political functionary really liked his music, so they allowed him to be one of the very first musicians to tour the Soviet Union.

Anyhow, we came to Germany. And my sister, who was already living with my mom in Germany, gave me a cassette tape of music so I would shut up when we were in the car. And on that tape was power metal, Nirvana, Sisters of Mercy, early techno like pop techno (like U96, which was a pop techno project in Germany). At that time, it was fairly hypnotic. I had no context for any of the music, none of those sounds had ever existed for me. When you’re eight years old, and you get such an infusion of ideas and sonic possibilities, for me that created a lifelong fascination with new and emerging sounds.

That’s been a part of my curatorial practice ever since, since the moment something has a name and can be pinpointed, I’m already moving onto the next thing. That cassette tape also predated most of my music taste, like goth, metal, weird electronic music.

The majority of your professional life so far has relied on live shows. What was the shutdown in early 2020 like for you?

I spent the first couple of months rolled up in the fetal position, rocking back and forth. I had decided at the beginning of the year to pivot away from my work with Boiler Room, and had my first world tour booked as a DJ.

In electronic music, there’s basically a compartmentalization of skills, namely DJing, producing and organizing. You can only master two of those things. I had decided I was really good at DJing and really good at organizing. So I spent my career focusing on organizing, since there are so many creative people out who need platforms and support, and someone to stand up for them and organize stuff. So I focused on that, and DJing was mainly my hobby. Then I turned 37 and thought, “It’s going to be ridiculous if I’m in my forties and playing bass music for people half my age.” So I thought, let’s try it out, once in my life. So I booked my big world tour, and my first tour date would have been March 14, 2020. You can imagine how that career shift turned out!

It was devastating, like it was for everyone. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves that the situation was exactly the same level of shitty for everyone. Due to my sociodemographic group, I had a softer fall than most people — the fact that I’m in Berlin, the fact that I can hustle my way to odd freelance jobs, the fact that I have something of a platform. I was able to just do random shit for half a year, but other people didn’t have that opportunity.

It seems like lots of music-industry professionals who formerly worked in live events have found their way to working in innovation- and tech-related initiatives. Do you think it’s as simple as jobs drying up in the former sector, and people taking whatever they can get, or do you think there are other reasons why people who have worked in live music have moved into this area?

I think often you work with what you get, as jobs in the creative industries are so rare. Many jobs in the creative industries essentially rely on self-abuse, more or less. And let’s be real, none of us do what we do because we thought we were going to make a ton of money.

Obviously, some people work in major labels, but for many of us, we’ve made the decision to invest in community culture and grassroots culture. There’s no line between working in music and being a cultural activist, and that requires a certain amount of conviction and willingness for self-abuse.

In Berlin, many DJs and creative workers ended up working in vaccination centers. Vaccination centers were looking for people who are good at organization, handling people and dealing with a constant event. If you go to a vaccination center today, you’ll probably meet a Berghain DJ.

But then the other aspect, of course, is that COVID is a huge disruption. And I don’t mean “disruption” in the overused and kind of questionable startup way, but basically, it really grinded everything to a halt. And one of the outcomes of that was that a lot of people had the time to realize that a return to normality isn’t possible, because the circumstances under which we were operating were never normal in the first place. The systems in music, the power relations and the way music is monetized were often built on principles of abuse. So I do think people pivoted into more innovative, forward-thinking roles, partially out of necessity, but partially because they saw the chance to get involved at the infrastructural, foundational level of many systems in music, and try to improve the ecosystems that we’re all forced to engage in.

Based on your experiences working in live music, do you think that online/livestreamed events could ever become a viable alternative to in-person live music?

It’s tricky — the rights situation makes live broadcasting so hard to monetize and scale. There’s a reason why the only platform that allows for legal [music] livestreaming is Mixcloud. But they don’t even have permission to offer VOD, and they’ve said it’s unlikely to ever happen.

If you’re performing original material, there’s a big opportunity for you there. But even then, there are certain nuances — if you don’t own your publishing you’ll have to deal with your label, and so on. I’ve seen so many performers who couldn’t activate half the things they wanted to during COVID, because of the rights situation. It creates a catch-chase between livestreamers and the rights holders. Until there’s a really fundamental reform of both the technological systems and the adjacent legal systems, livestreaming won’t grow into a sustainable third revenue stream for musicians.

But one thing that COVID has reminded people of is that there are kids who live online, and online events for them are the main way they participate in culture. We’ll see more genres which begin online and slowly migrate into real-life spaces. I went to the Berlin Club Quarantine, and Club Matryoshka’s Minecraft stream, and honestly, I had nearly as much fun as I could have had at a real-life show. I think these streams will stick around, and grow more complex. I think there will be more interaction and engagement features for fans and artists, because right now these tools are very rudimentary. There have been so many new businesses that have emerged to create these tools, so I’m very hopeful that this will lower the entry barrier and create more rich experiences for everyone.

When did you first fall down the Web3 rabbit hole?

As a curator, I’m always fascinated by new technologies that create new social and political realities. You know, ultimately, any kind of technology might inform new artistic practices, new contexts and new social configurations. That was the big promise of blockchain.

When you talk about the internet, you talk about data, and if you talk about data, you need to talk about the hierarchy of data — how you access it, and who owns it. And if you talk about hierarchies, you need to talk about power relationships. One thing we know about Web2 is that it resulted in a complete loss of agency for digital citizens, for society at large. I find technology that rearranges how we engage with data to be incredibly fascinating. But whenever you looked closer, the only thing you really saw was a bunch of white dudes in gaming chairs jerking off over Disney dollars.

I deeply disagree with the idea of decentralization being all about the sovereignty of the individual — like I’m my own island, no one can mess with me, not the bank, not the state, not my ex-wife — these are social realities which don’t represent or work for the majority of our society. When I saw the ZORA manifesto, I understood two very important things. First of all, that Web3 is a technological frontier which will go on to define how we engage online — as audiences, as creatives and as a society at large. And that it is participatory and potentially democratic and inclusive. And that Web3 is completely opposed to Web2, where every system profited the bottom line of those who built it. If you wanted to build something like Spotify or Instagram, you need the bandwidth, the engineering acumen, the money. A lot of those barriers have been dropped, which means that there’s a chance of a lot of people can participate in the design of [Web3] systems. That is a very good thing. Zora is very passionate and sincere about bringing more people to the conversation. The more people we bring to the process of design, the more likely we are to build blueprints that are sustainable and inclusive.

I also recognize the challenges. The asset class will appropriate your tools quicker than you can build them. The technologist will appropriate the radical language of change to sell their books or business model. I’m so passionate about Web3 because I’m so critical of it — I can see where it is failing. I can see ideas that weren’t scrutinized, that should have been scrutinized. It’s incredibly important that we scrutinize ourselves while continuing to build.

What’s a typical day at Zora like for you?

To be honest, because it’s a young company, when you sign up for one job, you end up doing ten. Which I love — when I worked at Boiler Room, I had to do everything, from rolling cables to planning huge media campaigns. There were ten jobs to do all the time.

My job is mainly trying to make sense of the protocol, speaking to artists and communities about their practices and content and working out how their art can be enhanced or expressed through technology. I also work out potential new use cases, and how I can help people make sense of blockchain technology in the context of what they do.

It’s a very intense job, especially because the team is spread between LA and Sydney. I’m right in the middle, which means my sleep schedule is all over the place. But it’s beautiful, we cover everywhere from Lima to Tokyo.

At least 50% of my work is externally facing. It’s a tough job, because people are hostile to these technologies, and I understand why. My job is to try and communicate that other futures are possible, and we can work together to try and build the technology into something positive. I really do think these efforts should be more consolidated, industry-wide. At the moment, if you poke your head out, you’ll be criticized. But I have a very thick skin, partially due to being online and being a semi-public figure for almost a decade.

Are there any artists (or projects) whom you think are doing particularly exciting or forward-thinking things at the moment?

Naming individual artists is really hard, because there’s so much exciting and incredible talent coming up. I’m fascinated by the creativity and resilience of young people right now. Right now, I find projects that are attempting new configurations of social utopias, and rethinking how we create value as a community. Songcamp is a really great example of this. There are also projects like HERSTORY DAO that completely rethink what ownership and agency for female artists and black artists look like. And I’m very happy to be part of The Mint Fund. There are so many little projects popping up, but there’s still not enough of them. But I see them, and I see that other futures are possible. ✯