Scaling music/Web3 will take a village

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Conversation sustained by @seaninsound, @BlackDave, @Charlotte – csquared, and @Brodconley in #web3

As the music industry rides the rollercoaster of establishing and scaling itself in Web3 (and vice versa), a natural division has emerged around which influencers to trust, and what kinds of business philosophies to follow. Conversations swirling around the energy of VC-leaning thought-leaders versus more indie, grassroots communities on Twitter tend to become heated, and serve as a reminder of a push-and-pull that has always existed in attempting to establish a universal philosophy for conducting the business of music — especially given the blend of marketing, finance, and technology-minded perspectives coming to a head.

While the bird’s-eye view of music-business philosophy tends to focus on maximizing the corporate bottom line (given the dominance of major labels, publishers, agencies, and promoters in their respective sectors), the pursuit of career autonomy prevalent in Web3 allows for a more granular look at the necessary parts for scaling at an individual, artist-centric level.

Of course, that shift in perspective doesn’t come without major challenges. In Web3, it often seems that the artist themselves must build the team to grow the village — or, put another way, make the music, be the label and grow the fanbase. Couple these responsibilities with the speculative underpinnings of much of NFT collecting, and this forces Web3-native musicians to grapple with entirely new frameworks to connect with their audiences, in a way that might feel foreign to or incompatible with traditional notions of fandom.

To introduce this thought, @seaninsound posited:

“I really hate the idea of music fans now being mere ‘collectors’ – it’s all a bit too Pokémon cardisation for my brain. I don’t want a Hounds of Love POG, I want to dance in the woods in the summer rain and hope she’s been fairly remunerated when I have such a moment of joy.”

@BlackDave followed with the sentiment about how finding the “people in web3 who wanna keep the thing I made” can be a challenge with “the transactional exchange experience web3 has in some ways created.”

Here, two different, sometimes conflicting sides of Web3 music collide: The desire to learn and build as autonomously, freely, and independently as possible, and the need to grow and scale a viable business. As the technical, business-related facets of NFTs brush up against the artist’s attempt to grow an engaged fan base around the music itself as the main driver of value, we come full circle to the evergreen importance of dedicated teams to manage these differing incentives and interests across fan/collector segments, and in general to help look after an artist’s brand and community as they scale and focus on their art.

The importance of teams in scaling an artist is a throughline applicable to every era of music, regardless of what technology we are talking about. Even still, a few of our members suggested that large pockets of music/Web3 seem to be missing the memo — only exacerbating the rampant problem of artists feeling like they have to do everything on their own, leading to confusion and burnout:

@BlackDave: “Lowkey a lot of artists are looking for a team in some form. I don’t think many in web3 actually have a team.”

@seaninsound: “It takes a village to release any record and most artists are left to do it themselves.”

In this new landscape, artists emerging in Web3 would be remiss not to consider the fundamental issue of bandwidth and lend credence to the working, not-so-antiquated Web2 systems that allow for scale. Just like in any creator-focused business, to be early and in control of one’s brand and career also requires filling in key operational gaps, from task allocation to navigating legalese and mental health support.

@brodconley notes that regardless of the role, “just staying ahead (but really…behind) on day-to-day is near impossible, let alone trying to continuously learn everything new that is coming down the pipe across every single area.” Rather than take that as defeat, @seaninsound comes back with an important reminder about incentivizing collaboration to get more done:

“It’s why I push back when people talk about liberating copyrights or not putting payments for songwriters as a priority in their business plans. To keep these small villages of experts found we need to capture every penny that’s derived from our successes.”

These concepts are neither revelatory in the grand scheme of the music business, nor too recycled to be relevant for Web3. Conversations like the above are crucial in the context of emerging tech, because they take a highlighter to the more valuable, evergreen line items on the detailed statement for the joint account that is the artist’s long-term brand.

In fact, in contrast to the perhaps more individualistic ethos that tends to pervade mainstream NFT discussions, there is a whole other sub-movement within Web3 that inherently encodes the value of collaboration, team-building, and collective coordination into the smart contracts around creative works. For example, as we recently covered, Songcamp’s latest CHAOS NFT drop credits nearly 80 contributors in their on-chain revenue splits, only around 40 of whom are artists; the rest are marketers, storytellers, economists, smart contract developers, and other contributors whose work is crucial to distributing and packaging the music in a way that is compelling and exciting to fans (and collectors). Shortly, we will also be publishing an in-depth analysis of music NFT splits protocols like Slice and 0xSplits that are helping to build more multiplayer-friendly infrastructure for Web3 projects.

Regardless of the tech in question, it takes a village to drive culture, and the village needed to grow the music/Web3 ecosystem will likely be as numerous and collaborative as it is decentralized.