Discord Digest #034: Our HitPiece teardown

The below was originally published in our weekly Discord digest, which is designed to aggregate the most important conversations and resources being shared in our Discord server. If you’re not in our server yet, please take just five seconds to authorize the Memberful Discord bot, which should automatically give you access. Throughout this digest, we have indicated members’ Discord handles with an @, and specific channels with a hashtag (#). If you want to find particular members, just log onto the Water & Music server and type their name into the search bar.

This topic was first raised by @Garrett (@_garretthughes) in the #web3 channel.

Last night, it felt like the entirety of the music/tech Twittersphere was swept up in a flurry of outrage prompted by the launch of HitPiece, a controversial new NFT marketplace that aims to make “every song in the world an NFT.”

Outrageously, it seems that HitPiece planned to achieve that goal through the most aggressive means possible: Scraping Spotify’s API and listing song information in a manner that made it appear as though artists were auctioning off their music, even though seemingly very few artists had actually consented to their music being listed and framed in this way.

Unsurprisingly, this move provoked ire from the wider music industry — most vocally from influential figures within the indie music community:

While @Garrett (@_garretthughes) must be credited for raising alarm bells on the Water & Music server in mid-December 2021, many of us spent yesterday observing and analyzing the chaotic series of events that unfolded during HitPiece’s doomed beta test.

While our community was notably divided on exactly what kind of dumpster fire HitPiece is — whether it’s an outright scam, woefully misguided or even some kind of performance art — it’s worth noting that the HitPiece debacle crystallizes several key issues that crop up time and time again within the music NFT ecosystem. Let’s go through them one-by-one…

I. Poor cultural fit

First off, the entire thesis behind HitPiece seems culturally incompatible with a truly artist-first approach to the music industry.

While the idea of gathering and curating information on behalf another party (with or without their permission) isn’t exactly a new business model, the fact that artists weren’t involved in any stage of this project suggests that the HitPiece team fundamentally misunderstands the level of thoughtfulness and care that goes into managing an artistic career. Many (if not most) artists see their careers as a form of pure self-expression, rather than as a profit center, and are suspicious of engaging in anything which may be read as profiteering by their fanbase. Add to this the fact that NFTs have a huge PR problem, and are a highly controversial subject for many fans and artists alike, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Google built a business scraping the internet and building products on top with no one’s permission, I can see how it’s appealing to tech ppl who aren’t ingrained in culture (disclaimer I don’t know their backgrounds). the fact the artists were the last in the chain to be involved is pretty telling. – @Declan McGlynn

This project goes against the ethos of many Web3 cultural projects, too. While many crypto projects center the power of collectivism and direct-to-fan relationships, HitPiece proves that without a “social contract” between fan and artist, many of the liberatory possibilities of decentralized technologies appear like hollow ransomware.

A further irony, this “experiment” was a relatively decent proof of part of the NFTs thesis. In that if the value of NFTs is derived from the social contract between artist and fan, then trying to blitzstart that without the consent of artists will fall on its face, instantly. – @danfowler

II. Stunt marketing

We’ve written previously about how the music NFT ecosystem has been consistently subject to scammy stunt marketing. Many crypto projects are more likely to be associated with hype-laden headlines, shady influencer marketing and abortive celebrity partnerships than the kind of strategies associated with long-term, sustainable growth.

HitPiece is no exception. Many of us suspected that rather than simply being a woeful ignorance of the DMCA, the decision to scrape Spotify’s API was a deliberate growth-hacking tactic from the company — using outrage marketing to drive hordes of furious users to the platform, while strong-arming artists into using their product by pre-registering their pages for them.

Per this Twitter thread from @enemieslist:

III. Chaotic communications

We’ve already written about how many music NFT projects fail to communicate the value of Web3 to music fans. It’s fair to say that communication issues were a key problem throughout HitPiece’s rollout.

For starters, many artists believed that their tracks were being actively auctioned through HitPiece’s platform — despite the fact that HitPiece’s platform didn’t even have payment functionality yet.

In addition, HitPiece’s strategy for dealing with the waves of outrage from artists was to ask every artist individually to DM them, rather than communicating publicly about the platform — which isn’t necessarily the most credible of crisis management techniques.

Just went on the hit piece Twitter and all their replies are to DM us for information. If they were above board, they would just post publicly wouldn’t they?! – @seaninsound

When HitPiece’s public statement did come, it left much to be desired — in fact, @cheriehu suspects HitPiece used an AI copywriter to write their digital content:

Ultimately, HitPiece pulled their website and opted for the tried-and-tested strategy of the notes app apology:

While there’s no denying that everyone loves a car crash, it’s worth acknowledging how frustrating these ill-intentioned stunts are to everyone who is trying to build within the Web3 music ecosystem in a more sincere, legitimate way. It remains to be seen whether the public perception of music NFTs can shake off this depressing interlude — but HitPiece should serve as a stark reminder of the many ways music NFT projects can go wrong, and the existential need for projects to win the trust of artists and fans alike.