Metaletters Artists for the Future - Sam Brukhman

good morning everybody thanks for coming in from the snow it's great to see lots of familiar faces here my name is sam brookman i'm the creative director at mediversal mediversal is a holding company that has two main roles um in the nft in the web 3 ecosystem one is to invest in iconic nfts nfts that we believe will stand the test of time and the other side which is the studio side which produces creative content into nft strategies from soup to nuts marketing solidity and nft strategy and and everything in between my role as creative director is to vision and to lead the studio um into unknown territory and as an artist i'm very very excited to be able to present um meta letters to you today meta letters is a really exciting opportunity that we're very much looking forward to and one that i want to illustrate to you through three case studies before we get into the details to that end i'm going to ask you a question and that is what do you and taylor swift have in common they wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this i deserve this is a line from taylor swift's 2020 song the man a hard critique of patriarchy an unashamed spoof of the film wolf of wall street but also a scathing comeback at media proprietor record executive and investor scott samuel scooter braun swift signed her recording contract when she was 15 years old and the deal gave big machine ownership over her master records this means they owned her recordings and her revenue streams and how her music would be used taylor speaks out about her plea to on her work saying uh for years i asked pleaded for a chance to own my work instead i was given an opportunity to earn one back at a time one for every new one i turned in taylor swift's increase in popularity meant her music was becoming more and more valuable and so when her masters were sold between to the tune of between 300 million and 450 taylor took to social media in a very transparent way and told her fans her story sharing that the release was not approved by her some people defended her others defended scooter and whether you were team tailor or team scooter there was one thing that stood out quite clearly and that was despite all the murky details the legalities and the feuding what mattered was that taylor created her music but she did not own it taylor has since re-recorded two of the six of her albums now owned by shamrock more than as a bid for money they are a power move it's a bid to own her own labors of love i feel you taylor i myself am in the music industry my background is actually in classical choral music so i'm a conductor i conduct choirs and orchestras around the world and i actually jumped into web 3 during the spring in march of 2020 as an artist in the music space myself i feel for her my background in music specifically choral and classical has for the longest time been considered an art for pleasure not an art for revenue even when it is profitable record labels and agencies and other other people in between have a tendency to minimize the the potential revenues that small non-profits like the one that i started in 2017 called verdigris ensemble to tens or twenties of percents now let's think about this for a second imagine a choir comprised of sixteen singers and they record an album that cost somewhere to the tune of thirty thousand to fifty thousand dollars over a six month period maybe it makes a little bit of money maybe it makes about ten thousand dollars if that split is an 80 20 split verdigris ensemble or a coral ensemble would get about two thousand dollars two thousand dollars would equal to about 165 dollars per choir member and that wouldn't happen in the first week that would probably happen over a period of six months and this hypothetical that i'm explaining to you right now is hanging its hat on the fact that an album is even produced which is rarely the case until betty's notebook betty's notebook is the first programmable music on the blockchain it was released through async art and it was created by myself and a collection of 23 different artists this piece of music traditionally considered super avant-garde super crazy out there the story is about amelia earhart and and the distress signals of amelia earhart as heard by a young betty clank in 1937. the piece is like 20 minutes of full crazy suspicion and mystery and all sorts of things sold at auction for 375 000 to metapurse in march of 2020. more importantly every one of the 23 artists associated with the album received a sizable percentage of primary and secondary this was one of the few times in the history of my industry of classical and choral music that all involved artists in the midst of a pandemic to say received between three to five times their normal pay all because they believed in risk and taking a stand in owning part of their work together these were people that were not nft native and still did it during the pandemic what is the problem that we're facing well the pandemic was a really dark time it was a really dark time for me all of my gigs as a conductor were canceled and vanished in the in this period of 24 hours what what you and i had in common during the pandemic is the fear and maybe the loneliness and maybe the isolation and in these uncertain times in dark lonely spells people sought comfort from things like netflix hello tiger king among us i don't know if you guys play that game but i played all the time films games books apps music what we collectively turned to was a culture uh as a culture was what we had available to us through creatives so let me ask you another question do you recognize this person it's okay if you say no because i too didn't know her face until i started putting together this presentation but do you recognize this a dystopian mix of pastels blood smears and luminous pink and i'm sure the greater majority of you know that this is squid game maybe you watch this in korean or with english subtitles or with dubbed voices maybe you loved it maybe you hated it but the fact of the matter is is you know it some of you bought into this visual and the way the colors came together you might have even wondered why pink why pastels well kyung sun production design and art direction for squid game would be the person who would know you recognize and buy into her work and her vision but you don't recognize or know her as of january 2022 there were 4.95 billion internet users globally some 62.5 percent of the world's population this is an increase of four percent year on year which equals to approximately 192 million people as a global community our online presence continues to trend upwards we're all absorbing digital stimuli in unprecedented amounts we're aware of this but our what we're not aware of is that oftentimes of the people who created the digital stimuli and who poured themselves into these projects ownership goes often to the wrong parties within the creative process because web 2 as a platform wasn't necessarily always built for artists and by artists web 2 is not a community is not necessarily always community oriented there are surely facets you know reddit and and several other uh platforms for sure but it's not built on the precedent of people collectively sharing experience and compassion and support in a transparent way so what is mediversal doing about this the truth is we can't wave a wand and fix the cascading problems that surround the ownership of creative output and i p but we can and i mean us as collectively a community of creators we can try the starving artist is not a new concept in fact it is a cliche it's not new knowledge to us that some to sometimes or oftentimes artists creatives and and thinkers don't get what they deserve for their creative contributions whether that's financial compensation or attribution etc etc whatever the case may be but what is a new concept is web 3 and web 3 currently is still at its inception it has the opportunity to be an artist's platform for artists by artists and the biggest things that needs to come with building this platform should be community so how do we kick start this what is the first step i'm very proud to be able to share with you meta letters we've come up with a program called meta letters which is an open call to the creative community to submit letters that make up the word mediversal that will ultimately be minted and auctioned every 24 hours every day for the next five years that's a thousand eight hundred and eighteen letters a portion of the profit goes directly back to the creator as royalties that's thirty percent ten percent goes to mediversal to recoup costs and 60 goes to metal letters let's talk about this for a second step one in meta letters an artist comes and creates artwork for a letter step two that letter gets sold step three the person who purchases that letter gets certain benefits those benefits can be number one to be part of a dow and we'll talk about the dow in a minute number two to be to get access to a community uh live and online events of like-minded individuals and three the ability to shape the future of a more equitable web three so what do i mean by that the dao is specifically designed to be able to have the community come together to find more equitable ways to get new artists and new creatives known and and brought awareness to the idea is a shared goal of creators creatives and thinkers becoming a hive might using collective thought knowledge and experience to build a web three that they would want and that they themselves can explore in terms of the limits of their own creations and wherein they can have a say on the parameters that govern their creations so this is um just a quick introduction we've we've had a significant amount of people already apply we have i think over 300 artists in the pipeline that have come come forward and artworks that look like this uh the number one i really like if any of you have an octopus hat i will gladly take it and wear it forever the center here is a t with some some glitchy graphics and we also have an a that that is pretty animated here but the point is is that every letter is a reflection of the community and is completely different from the next meta letters gives creators the ability to have a voice in shaping the metaversal community in turn metaversal becomes a reflection and embodiment of its community meta letters will give creatives and artists a platform it will educate creators on the space and how to monetize their work it'll support creators both financially and through shared learnings it'll provide a level of security to its members it'll be a place to network and connect with other creators and open the doors for collaboration and paving new paths this is a space to create the web 3 which is supported by metaversal but where the real value comes from the community so meta letters is just the start of what will be an ever evolving endeavor in creating a platform of ownership and community in the web 3 space meta letters will tell a story of current culture it is the zeitgeist of our time and your contribution will mark a very particular moment in that story because of the way that web3 and blockchain is structured a contribution to the project is as important and monumental as the purchase from the project both will be moments marked in history and i just want to pause this also to mention that any creators that have submitted a letter will also get a creator pass that will grant them access to the same aspect as the actual purchaser a purchase will grants you access to the dow that we just talked about and future drops for mediversal anything that we pro we create or make or produce as nfts within the various companies and verticals that we exist in will be made available to you first either way what this means is that you will finally get to get a say in what it is that you own in a transparent way that is supported by a community of like-minded creatives and thinkers so there are lots of ways for you to get involved and we'd love to hear from you first thing is i'd love to join the space to have a say in what this will look like you can follow us on instagram twitter linkedin you can reach out to us and tell us what your feedback is about this we're all ears second thing is check out metal letters we're passionate about the community that is starting to invest themselves into this project you can check it out on our website and find out more on our social media you can share your experiences with us because we want to know if you lost ownership in something over something that you worked hard on or labored over reach out to us on social media talk with me after this we're here to hear you out and learn from these past experiences this is a new space we're growing and we're learning and we're figuring out ways to prevent this from happening to people in web 3.

finally come visit us in the maker space on the sixth floor at the castle where you can get actually a t-shirt of all of the artwork that you saw here today and get to know the artists behind it so that brings us back to the original question which is what do you and taylor swift have in common you bur you both were or are more than likely um to at some point experience what artists have experienced in terms of their creativity or if not you then at least someone you love or someone you know and now all of you know me so therefore you you know what this feels like what taylor didn't have was the right kind of support education the correct platforms the security or a network and it cost her her ownership when she was 15 and signed that deal she didn't yet have her community this is the time to build a community of creators looking out for creators and thinkers alike we're here to try and help foster that environment we're not pretending that we can fix all the issues that will crop up around ownership in the web3 space but we're going to try and we're leaning into the idea of community hard we think community is the thing that differentiates us we're here saying we don't know it all but all together we know a lot more we're not shaping web3 we're hoping that you will and we'll be there in the sidelines cheering you cheering on the young taylor swifts in all of you thank you [Applause]