We Are Millions - NFT, Blockchain and music day

okay so hello everybody this is mina again here representing wam organizers and this is a panel on blockchain nfd's music and music industry now if you have any questions comments uh an urgent itch to say something call us on a [ __ ] or compliment us you're more than welcome to do so go to fair data society's discord server please and unleash your thoughts our wam team will be there to bring the questions and comments to our attention and also after the talk we'll move our conversation there so stay tuned okay now let's introduce the speakers you have seen dan archer before just giving a presentation he's a ceo of copyright delta for those who missed the presentation uh former lead of the technical working groups at the open music initiative successfully tasked with aligning 200 plus companies in the u.s music industry to exchange data between them and he's a 20 plus years software developer in ai and data hi then okay we have sitting next to him uh this is go to the next slide please uh my colleague kasper because next to him is not uh whom i wanted to introduce next but is actually jos fayen i think the director of the 50 and then the next slide please okay the director of the 50 year old legacy in the music venue you see it now there the infernary knighthoven they have been leading their digital transformation into ar vr for the blockchain and live streaming since 2020 2017. i'm sorry these numbers confuse me sometimes okay and now we go a couple of slides back yes and introduce eric bainoff who is a senior open source blockchain developer was a ceo of tomigo which later became spotify browse and a former strategy architect at spotify for four years and he's currently a partner at copyright delta welcome eric and i would also like to welcome amke block she's a music industry veteran from hamburg an nft expert a co-founder of unique.art and for bitfury surround she acts as head of music ecosystem development she's a strategic consultant she has word for labels publishers collecting societies and associations she's written professional articles giving talks lectures and curated numerous conferences like popcorn ripervan and eurosonic welcome i'm okay very much for having me we're very happy to have you and i'd like to introduce emil angerwall he's one of the co-founders of kwite which lets fans back artists with money and marketing and share in the success as karai distributes the music to all major streaming services in the world karate has now just initiated uh the blockchain based project and emil is here also to share more on that later on now last but absolutely not least i'm very very happy to welcome von mckenzie vonn has an amazing background in ux product management and five years of software adoption at virgin media he also was the ceo of jacques and will share his valuable experience with us today so now that you are all in we can start and we'll start maybe just with you sharing your experience thus far in the blockchain meets music and music industry i've volunteered to go first otherwise i'm just gonna call somebody out okay maybe i'll tell a bit first uh since i maybe know the least of it um we as the f and r we're we're a pop venue and uh we got interested in uh in bringing pop music and technology together like uh five years ago working on that and what we mainly want to be is a platform to experiment and to try out things uh not only with ar with vr but also with blockchain we've done a lot on uh streaming the last two years since the second day of the second week of covet we've been streaming the first few months daily um and afterwards uh two or three times a week um so we have done like 450 shows and right now we are really looking into how to create a a business model for artists in in times like uh covert that you have right now or in times that covet like pandemics or like the war in ukraine right now is happening and restrictions on tours and whatever will be going on so we would like to create a different model for artists an additional model for artists upon what they're doing right now and that's why we are looking into together with dan mainly into using blockchain technology looking into copyrights looking into how to uh use nfts um and yeah like we're trying to experience that and at this moment we have a group of 17 regional artists musicians that we are um we are taking them by the hand and uh trying to uh offer them the skills to really um find their way in the digital world and to create their a different source of income there i think that's well that's what we're doing yeah and many compliments to yours because this is an old building and and he allows all of us to like experiment with the building so yeah and often you don't understand the tech sorry yeah okay so maybe since we just heard a copyright delta presentation one a jack how was that model similar to what we heard and how wasn't it and where do you see that you know one kind of comes to a stop or a problem on the way of trying to really make a difference that's a good question i mean i don't have the complete picture of uh exactly what copyright delta is beyond the high level stuff i think um our idea with jack when we started in 2015 um was was probably um a bit too far-reaching i think we saw uh copyright um really as being something that could be improved uh using blockchain and i think there were two real ideas there one side was that um blockchains would provide a kind of wholesale digital native replacement for copyright infrastructure um is kind of the the the basis of like um of music assets the things that then hold values the things that enforce contracts um and um but what we tried to build was something that was almost an interface so uh keeping copyright where it was but then extending um the value of copyright and the functionality of music assets with with blockchains in the same way that you could imagine like um a coinbase being a bridge for like um fiat assets or or traditional currencies uh to kind of bridge into into um web3 assets or cryptocurrencies so that was our approach and i think that um it in in my experience the difficulty was um was that we didn't we didn't really predict how uh difficult it would be to to to bridge those two assets i think that they're they're very captured uh as in music assets um especially the ones that are valuable uh the ones that people care a lot about uh really do belong to a small set of people and they have no real interest in upgrading their infrastructure or changing their infrastructure in order to to to make that business work um and and so i feel like the the the difference i guess between us would be that we uh well again from cooperatives would be that we we probably focus a bit more we were definitely very focused on like purely on licensing and um really on just trying to like get those like high value assets that the major label music assets on chain um and we came pretty close um ultimately i think it was the wrong strategy we were just a bit too we were too early um and uh i mean yeah look at where we are today right we've got it's a very different uh blockchain environment in 2022 than it was in 2015 to 2017 um so i'm actually amazed that we were even got as far as we did at the time yes and yeah you're totally right that it it has it's changing at an enormous speed i mean also some initiatives that were alive half a year ago are not are already maybe replaced by by newer probably better models but would you say that like the problem is always bridging to the so-called you know old cornerstones of the industry so is it like you always when you go to a label you end up at the some kind of a hard stop when it comes to trying to to present them a new model for for them to adopt why do they cling so much to to the model that they that we all have right now this is a this is a good question so i think um and again maybe this is a controversial opinion i don't believe that natively um blockchain as a new infrastructure for music provides a significant uplift in terms of like value so if you imagine the music industry running on like existing copyrights um and then you switch the entire thing to blockchain um who would really be the winners and who who'd really be the losers and i i just think that the reason why it was very difficult for us as jack to to get people to switch or even to embrace it was because we couldn't really articulate a very clear value proposition for each individual participant i'd say on net like on i used to say to the team our problem is that we our customer is an industry but the industry doesn't have like an email address and doesn't have like a a place to send invoices like there's there's no specific person who gets a big uplift i think whether the real uplift is is in the very long term is for is for artists themselves and probably fans um just in terms of um artists in terms of their ability to to navigate and interact with entire music supply chain without like without intermediaries which i think is very valuable and for fans in terms of artists being able to give them more things of value that are broader and more interesting um but i think that uh that's just very hard to do on like a small timeline and that's really where um i think we just ran into a wall i think that's changed today though i was changing yeah it is kind of changing i would say i mean because there are certain there are still a lot of uh things that for artists of course this sounds kind of promising but it's it's a big uh change in in the whole approach to to not creating music but where to go with your music how to approach the distribution getting to the fans uh here maybe i would invite emil to to speak up on what their plan and vision is sure so just as an onboarding for that i just want to share that we're currently a distributor so we're putting music on spotify and tick tock and so forth but with a fiat component we allow our backing of music before it's distributed basically and then you get a share of that and the idea is that the fans together with the artist promote the music and you know engage around that so from a blockchain perspective uh what we call the co project is is really about building out that whole fan artist relationship which i think volume touched upon uh being uh you know beneficial uh well blockchain could hopefully help there at least we think so in the sense that uh you know providing uh new assets uh of course the nft uh being scarce and so on but more importantly uh experiences or rewards or or even dividends such as you know royalty sharing and so on uh and this is clearly something that both fans and artists want uh if we are at the point in time where this is technic you know technologically feasible or whether it's uh even uh you know in some jurisdictions legal to do xyz that's uh that's another story for sure but i mean clearly this is where where the main stakeholders you know the artists and the fan uh really want to go uh and you know we have eric on this uh panel uh used to work for spotify he'll probably confirm that you know spotify is actually a big driver for this trend of artists becoming more independent you know we have artists coming to our platform they used to be assigned to the major labels and they just drop out because they have their own community anyway so they can just kind of pick and choose who they want to work with and then they can go at it with their fans and you have the struggling artists on the other end and they also want to go independent because they never saw anything else so you know in sweden for instance we have a huge i'm sure many many places but we have a huge uh uh independent hip-hop artist scene you know and they're just kind of flooding the the top lists uh and you know these people don't care about labels these days or whatever the kind of previous stakeholders so our vision is to facilitate uh that whole engagement and basically gamify that whole relationship using blockchain okay eric what's uh what's your view on this because i see you nodding yeah it's it's a quite wide subject that you're discussing and i'm just gonna say it's nice to see born again and i i think you had a good run with jack and and and i understand that it didn't work out in the end i mean you were reaching quite wide but i wouldn't say that you necessarily did something wrong i think you you made a good attempt to try and create as my interpretation of it was an open platform where different services could connect in on on an infrastructure created for that specific purpose where different uh actors in the music industry could could connect with their information or or whatever you wanted to put on there and so i think that that initiative i think was quite i think it was quite good and i think it was the right thing what i was working on when i was at spotify when i worked in in the open music initiative which isn't isn't around anymore at least not in its in its previous form was what i was trying to push for there you know my was an open global repository for music rights not for not for the actual music files themselves and and just somewhere where the different actors of the industry could could collaborate in an open format and i still think that is the future um the music industry has a number of entrenched actors they still have those and trans directors i mean we have the we have the publishers we have the collecting societies we have the record labels distributors as well uh all of those different actors i mean they exist there for a reason so it's not i wouldn't say that there is something inherently wrong with the way that that the industry is set up i mean it has been built up this way over 100 years or something like that so each of those different actors represents they have a purpose in there the problem i think is that they have become too entrenched and once they have become entrenched they stop seeing they stop stop looking at their role as a part of of a larger system they they started looking at their role how can we preserve this role that we have in this system uh so they they are starting to become sort of self-preserving and i think that that creates an opaqueness in the system that that's not good and i think that some sort of an open repository where you could put your information would make you you would um uh what do you say what it would empower the creators to actually be able to take control over their own their own content um with that said um i mean this was tried at the time when when jack did those things i also worked closely with uh with don and other people there at that point in time i mean it obviously didn't work out due partly to resistance from from the established actors in the system but also due to that there is a governance problem there is nobody that could be sort of a neutral arbitrator of this information and that problem still exists today it's some then i think what that's now a few years down the road i think we need to look at this what from a different perspective why why isn't why didn't it work out and and my general take on that is that the governance it's very difficult to get set a governance model for a neutral system in the music industry and i think that i may i may move the word forward to don on this because i think he's taking a little bit of a different approach now from this point on what would you say don sorry before you do that we have a question on this from a non-music uh native why hasn't a commercial party like uh gracenote or even this cox picked uh this up to provide already like you kind of already answered but okay it's a very good question but like like we talk about i mean for example the rights that are connected to a specific song the the creator rights and the recording rights it's due to that the established i would say that it's due to that the established actors namely mostly the collective societies holds on to that information as being theirs and they want to be the canonical truth of that information and so they are not letting go of that so disco or whatever whichever repository you can find online are not allowed to be that can only canonical truth of source of that information was that an answer to the question i think it was i mean i see it as it like it was okay so now uh yeah okay then but maybe um first the only thing i wanted to mention at open music very fun very nice to see you again and and compliments on what you guys were doing because i still remember new york in 216 when you guys were there the thing with open music was that um that everybody liked was the idea that everybody could control their own data and you can exchange data between you and that's why there was a lot of buy-in in that first year because there were people like okay let's talk because we can share data but we control our data and then there was eric from spotify he said if you need a use case we have an isrc problem linking to the compositions but it didn't solve the part about who controls the consensus mechanism in the middle which i would like to pass on to amka because since 2002 you've been asking for this as a music industry expert so allow me to pass it on to anka yeah thank you very much um i just want to add it and yeah i also think that it's what we see here with uh having a central database is um something which um attackers actually put political powers and no part wants to have that so it has to be a neutral part in there and on the other hand which has been uh the well the dead of all the trials of having some sort of a uh common repository there have been uh i think three big triads but a lot of money sunk in there for central databases uh was just a power play thing so who gives data in and who controls it and is my neighbor or my um the other company seeing my data so it's about data privacy and power play here because for sure i don't want to have my comparison competitors see when my contract with my artist ends up um this is something where technology at that point when the global repertoire database for example was uh tried to be built um the technology was not there then but right now i think that blockchain we have um well the technology there that can solve that problem and what we now have to do is actually coordinate that and oh my in my opinion was a great example of that of handling that sort of governance and now i well i work on that for really like 20 years to have some coordination for a open source well data algorithm that connects existing databases uh and gets some governance position on there on open source and foundation base which is owned by no one or by regulatory body bodies this is what i would envision there and i hope that this is going to come together quite soon as i see more and more initiatives really working on that really on the uh well we see it in the on the american side we see it uh also on the european level who's where the european commission is working on a european copyright framework based on blockchain so i think there is something coming up and we have to work together to get that coordinated may i add something there absolutely i think that was a very good very good description of the problem that we have i just wanted to add that there is a common non-controversial set of information that could be put online at some neutral party and that's the the the information that that there is no there is no con contest contestant usa with regards to that information the isrcs and iswc's and and and well you could you could obviously claim that all information could be disputed somehow but there is a common set of information that isn't as contested as other information uh iswc src's composers of a song all of that is i mean once it has been established it's not something that you need or want to keep private the the information that you want to keep private is the agreement between different parties when do when do my alignment to some party end what's my compensation for this what's the share but on this particular song i mean that that's a good example where where information becomes somewhat controversial on whether it should be open or not um the shares of a song or between different writers of a song if it's 50 50 or it's if it's one percent to one party or 99 to the other that's the type of information that that's i think where you should draw the line on which information which shouldn't be open because for example if some very known person very well known artist or creator like for example madonna puts her name on a song but then it just says that she only has twenty-five percent the one percent of five percent of of that song then it sort of detracts from her reputation that that that she may not want to be public with that type of information that would be the rise of the ghost writers i mean this is also okay this is something that the music industry never talks about i mean the fact that there are many it's not ghost writers i mean the composers but that have performance performing their songs it's a very it's basically the original um uh way of doing it and and i think that finding that that base set of information that isn't controversial to put at a neutral partition uh i think that's sort of the key to to being able to to have that neutral set that people can collaborate over used to connect to each other and yeah i saw a nodding emil uh um well thanks for inviting me again but i'm just listening intently and i have the really boring comment which is oh i agree with everyone who has just spoken i mean clearly people know what they're talking about here uh but i mean it's also just coming back to you know the experiences that we all seem to have had it's interesting because the big problem is this rights problem and it's kind of the first one that everybody's really annoyed with however deep you're into the music scene but maybe based on vaughn's experience or whatever it shouldn't be what we should be so occupied with because it may hinder other innovations on blockchain or whatever that's kind of my take at least you know and and you know that's one of the reasons we're only dealing with master rights because kind of the quality of data is much more clear and blah but do you see one thing so we can avoid some of those minds out there uh right now in order to be able to do something even though i would love for all the things that people have brought up to kind of be solved or improved and and clearly i'm here for instance you seem to be uh positive and seeing a brighter future there based on the uh initiatives you're a part of so good luck on that i think at that level that we really have to i mean we know that we can we can create some sort of a paradigm shift in the industry if we get a clear identification of each copyright which is out there which what the technology was which is there is possible and still and i see where well blockchain is connected very much to disrupting and cut out the middleman i don't see that it's it's cutting out the disrupting bad processes that's what i see there um and then for that actually keeping on the people man we've seen that for the last 25 years with digitization always said democratization cut out the middleman and well there i do not see that much democratization there is some in terms of publishing things but the power of communication is definitely not really democratized and on the other hand you have more players in the market than ever so this is the market gets more and more complex and fractionalized and even more we need for that and clear identification of each copyrighted work which is out there to have it run through those uh different forms of usage which are coming up in in a seamless way in an automatic way otherwise the whole business is just out of the window because it simply doesn't account doesn't get together with those fractional income pieces uh which come out of this kind of usage which is coming up so um i think it's needed and um with what we see with um what the nft hype that we've seen in the last i would say 14 15 months which is as the expression nft a discussion in itself uh what that is actually um but we see that people are open to to take new technology up right now because they are hungry tired and full of pain and this is always a sign of people are willing to take a awkward step into a new technology which still is the place with uh or the case with the web three then there must be some some longing for that um web three definitely is not easy yet um and there are there has been a lot of onboarding and a lot of discussion going on there are so many great new startups getting into the place and creating new business ideas that i'm really positive that in the near future we will see really a new approach to that sort of technology i'm sorry i'm going to need to step out for a little while here i have some sort of a situation um here so i i might be back okay i'll fill in for you then eric and say that uh you know so the kind of isrc or kind of you know core ownership thing which is uh very uh particular to the music industry that's all fine but we think of okay i'll do it in another way you know just quickly first it was the production that was kind of revolutionized you could create music in your you know bedroom with your computer you know that was kind of the music industry that was part of something that changed the whole formula then it was distribution you know maybe i'm not doing this in the right chronological order but you get what i'm going right anybody could put about music on spotify uh then there was marketing uh you know your own you own your own channels the most valuable artist if you're going to be assigned to a label are the ones which already established communities and that can definitely engage their community and they use social media uh you know and the only channel that's currently producing music artists outside of youtube is tick tock i mean the labels you know hits are created on tick tock and that there are very few platforms that can convert into actual you know pop stars these days other than tick tock so so that was a kind of marketing and now our hope is that you know the financing can be a revolution i sorry to you such a old world word in the you know the world of blockchain everything is supposed to revolutionize something but anyway financing can also be democratized so what you know who is actually behind an artist and supporting that you know who is buying the nft who's creating the nft and together with the artist who's uh providing initial funding and thereby getting a share of the revenue down the line who's uh you know providing the value-add in terms of influence and are using their own social channels for instance to market a certain music project or whatever these things are kind of the next step which i believe that blockchain can enable so it's kind of not really related to the isrc problem or you know who owns the original copyright but it's more about who provides the the influence or the money or any power that can create the difference for music that's where at least we're hoping that that some blockchain technology for instance can can uh help and i think that some of the nft examples have proven that whether that can be scaled whether that you know i don't know i'm sure someone here will tell me the answer but i mean we're we're kind of hoping for something interesting there and we're betting on it but really this is what you just said and um before and everybody i mean it just seems like uh web-free technology is such a big promise to everybody involved to be able to solve their particular problems because there are so many actually in the music industry and it's just getting more and more complicated every time a new iteration appears like okay going from the old school labels and distribution too because of you know after napster platforms and a completely different way of communicating and consuming music so a lot of problems have accumulated one thing is for sure this copyright mess and black boxes and unpaid royalties for sure that you know this this model these models are really unsufficient and and um could could bring a lot more of income to everybody involved if this was done properly so now we are looking at web3 possibilities like okay solve this thing on the other hand of course when you get streaming and cutting out the middlemen i would like to get back a bit on that topic because cutting out the middleman seems to be uh one of the uh you know most talked about uh things um when it comes to to nfts and blockchain uh in these last months and uh here of course everybody who is in really interested in this are one on one side uh seem to be the indie artists or the artists that are basically have no connection or hopes to get on a really huge label because huge labels we all know that even even more than ever it is really all about numbers so unless you get through tick tock and your viewers to you to such high numbers you don't get to the labels but by the time you get to such a base on tick tock for instance you know that you actually don't need the label anymore in terms of like providing you the the crowd that listens to you so you can go off and be independent but i would like to ask you what do you think i mean we we just saw recently um charlie xcx posted that she has this digital burnout uh and i hear a lot of artists complaining by the fact that after these you know traditional labels and managers connected to artists model collapsed to a very you know to a certain point um now they are kind of obligated or or they have to keep posting keep appearing be uh you know present in digital media social platforms and it's taking them like more than 80 percent of their time so it does not really allow them to be created based on their creative things it is i mean this is from uh from artists perspective this is one of the the most uh pressing issues with the with the model thus far and now again we look at the web3 yes absolutely i'll go at the back maybe there's there's two things i would like to say from from the experiences i have so far uh one is that i don't think it's a it's really about cutting out a middleman but it's about proving your added value um i think the the larger labels they have always they do they've been doing things that they've been doing and they had the power they were they were earning a lot of money there was no need to change and now they have to prove that they add value to an artist and even to the bigger artist it's very difficult to prove the value because they know what kind of fan base they've got they know what they can do and they even know that they can do a better job than most of the major labels do and if you look into the new the the upcoming artists the do-it-yourself artists they uh they find their own ways so they were talking about these fractionalization of of the the the business chain but i think it's creating new opportunities for artists to find out themselves who adds value to what they're doing and who doesn't so it gives you a better opportunity to find your own way and to shape your own career the other thing is if you look into uh you're telling about uh the pressure that artists maybe feel to be present on socials and whatever um i think there is not one model that's going to fit all the artists so the 17 artists i'm working with right now the reason why i started working with them is because i learned from talking to artists that they know they need to use these new technologies also blockchain but also er vr it's a complete package but they don't know how they're scared and they needed to be to help they need some help with that so that's what we're trying to do right now and what i'm trying to tell right now the artist is okay but maybe for you it's not interested to be it's not of interest to to go really into uh promoting yourself in socials and to be part of the nft hype and because that's when you have to go into the socials um i was talking to uh one of the artists that's involved in the projects and she completely turned into patreon she's got her followers there and she's making her money there and she says well i don't know where i'm going to do any live shows anymore or whether i will release songs on finial or whatever because i'm making my money right now and i'm only going to consider different steps whenever i feel like i'm in control and it adds value to my career so again it's coming back to added value and i think all these technologies to me all the technologies they will be there i mean i'm not a techie so i trust dan and the others that are present over here they will be there don't worry um but you have to get to know how to use them in your favor and that i think that will be the big challenge for the next period yeah but that's the thing i mean for now we're seeing that uh the the the the profiteers of of like selling nfts as collectibles or or like these very obvious approaches to using uh this new tech are the ones that are already on top of the game you know so right now where is this revolutionary or or potential revolution in in bringing a new tech or to to to help solve the problems that the music industry has well i think that uh you're right there's still large parties that are already uh are in the money and are making money but what changed is there's a bigger part of the money going to the artists so that's the first step they are they're all at least the examples that i've seen they all are aware of that artists well they don't they don't want to work with a major label the starting artist they think okay well uh maybe i will come there but then it has to be attractive for me but what you see with all these parties they are looking into models in where the artists get a bigger share of the money that's earned and i think that's a big step forward one please go ahead hey ella i'll lower my hand uh i i think that it's a it's a good um framework to think through uh crypto like where is it revolutionary and i think the problem is uh and i guess we did the same thing at jack because we we said well what's the what other problems in the music industry and in saying that we've already kind of committed a problem which is like the music industry which is we've already decided what the music industry is and i think when we talk about the music industry we're largely talking about the recorded music industry and we're largely talking about the major labels and i think that the the major label model the label model um it it really does solve for one particular type of artist and the way i i like to think about it is like um it's like really they're trying to find a top 10 of artists that can create popular music and of that only maybe one percent of those artists will be successful and that's really where most of the revenue comes from and so any artist that falls outside of that really does they just don't work within that system and i think for a long time we've started to see like the um the long tail of music like a growing diy to see the artists and i really feel like um the reason why crypto isn't revolutionary for the music industry we call the music industry is because it's it's the antithesis of the music industry i think it it it kind of creates it kind of is the core ingredient for this like like multi-plural world like the idea of artists being able to do whatever they want and being able to i guess like yeah have careers where they just go on um on patreon or they just like sell nfts or um they just have more um more options i guess and so what we're probably seeing is i think what uh i sort of described is like a detachment of the kind of artist development part of major labels um with major labels staying really to kind of if you think about in terms of vc it's like more angel investors more seed investors more companies doing all kinds of wacky stuff and major labels really staying in the market to fund those big like global mega superstars which will continue and will always be there um but then really shifting into like series a series b late stage private equity hedge fund stuff um and then just kind of like this this more interesting like long term just becoming the default when we think about creators but the last point i'll make there um i've triggered all these raising hands now which is uh um but uh one one interesting um thing is like um if you think about an artist who let's say sells streams or like you know distributes spotify streams or apple streams to their to their fans and they're like thinking about the rate they get and they're like well the rate sucks well like the rate doesn't suck for those really really big artists it's probably fine um so that doesn't work for them so if they go out and they start selling like um pfp profile picture nfts or they start selling digital collectibles um is is that music revenue like is that the music industry um and i think that's a that for me is is is is the big question i think it falls outside it becomes something slightly different and maybe it becomes part of like the creator economy or something like that so i think i think it's it's revolutionary in that it's a it's a shift away from the existing market it's an it's a shift away from the existing structures and i think that's what makes it interesting and that's where revolution is likely to come from may i just uh pitch in add in here um i need unfortunately to drop out i think this was a very interesting discussion i really enjoyed being on this panel um a bit of an emergency here think vomiting child because it was a vomiting child so so i'm going to need to drop out if anybody who's on on this panel it was very nice to meet you some of you again and other others nice to meet you if anybody wants to get in contact with me and continue talking about these things mina has my contact deal set details and i'm very happy to be able to join this panel thank you very much thank you eric thank you for the best time thank you good luck may i respond to vaughn i think that anker also wanted to respond but i really encourage you guys uh just uh you know get get don't need to raise hands just cut in and discussing okay um well i had there were two things that came to my mind um that was the one you take before was like mental health and creators i mean i think that we have seen over all those years that uh musicians creators artists had to go for their wave for a certain time on themselves and then they looked out for support and then well that's how the music industry was actually created there were some certain forms of help there so you had a label who took care of promotion or at the beginning also financing uh the production whatever so you find some some certain services in the uh that support the artists and uh what what was said before was like uh they yeah um um yo you said that yours um that uh the the service provider i would call him has a proof uh what he's actually doing what value he's adding i think this is something which will have more um [Music] well will get more important in the whole run um i'm actually coming from the independent part and independents always have really been close to the artists um those are the ones who support the artists in the very beginning so when the artist is big enough um that he can show or she can show and well really um be on the road and and perform then an independent label and publisher actually comes into support to make the next steps the definition of the roles i think are difficult and will be difficult more difficult in the future so what's the role of a manager what's the role of a publisher what's the role of a label i think this might be something which will merge a bit because you will have more specified people who perhaps do just the communication part the other ones who do create or co-create digital merchandise and we have merchandise in place already and it's part of the music business for sure because it's the artist the brand and the brand is built by um by the label for example or by the communication so it's a little bit a question how how you put names on it and uh for sure the major labels will stay because they have the biggest funding and do the world marketing you need a lot of funds for that so um the big money is there for the big money artists and uh i think what i what i still wanted to add what i really like with the web 3 and nft however you want to call it market um is that you have new creations we had a very in the last 20 years since digitization we had a very narrow window of what can be released it's a stream that is now uh where where compositions are done to to be fine with the stream to have the the hook line in the first 30 seconds um so this is a very very uh small range of product that you actually can give out right now and this is what i see with the artist that we are looking at or working at with at unicard as an agency who helps artists to find good and sustainable nft strategies it's an explosion of creativity doing something that they didn't do before that does not fit into the normal distribution channel channels which are out there you can the artist can create a product again we didn't have product was just commodity in the streaming services so this is something which i really think is very very uh exciting and uh brings a lot of creativity and for sure this is part of the managements and uh for the labels as well and they are interested but on the other hand it's difficult for them to enter the space because they are still very much involved also in the old traditional legacy industry which brings money in right now so if i can add the uh uh two things about the isrc and the iswc emil and uncle you touch upon us indeed it looks like that the this the recording itself will become leading and the cmos they still believe in it's it's the copyright first the writing but it's the recording which is nice because it's tangible and if we attach that to nfts and that brings to nft as and i've been a bit quiet because i just had my talk already before this but so when we look at nfts in blockchain um von openmusic216 that everybody always talks blockchain needs a killer app so and nft probably is it and right now it's all fluffy pictures but we only go what's the next step in that next step in that so and that's also if you look at the history of technologies like being five years too early doesn't mean that you have to stop with it because in that sense all you got you're thinking already is you're five years ahead of the rest and us it's because of covet in in when yours called and he said hey dan we want to go streaming and then me and the guys we thought okay this might be the digital transformation of music we saw nfts come up let's take a and that was my third point let's take a really pragmatic approach like maybe just like a dutch approach so that's why we ended up with this crazy strange hybrid solution type of approach which is probably focused for the next five years and um but we all have to work together and the nice thing is that there's so much momentum now and also the artists that you're working with they're very open for this and they know they have to be an entrepreneur so i have a good feeling about this like how we can all work together and now is a good time for that and also and pull you back in yeah i i want to respond as well but what you were talking about there is we were now i have to go back we were involved in in making a policy for a music education program here in the netherlands and they were talking about we were talking to them about what will be the artist of the future and the artist of the future is will not only be somebody who is playing an instrument or who is singing but his it will be somebody that is creating a new world and with these new technologies and with nfts like you said you're you're able to make this new world not only but also to make money with this new world so i think that it really will be inspiring to see where they come up with and that's what i'm trying to do also with these 17 young artists that we're working with to inspire them and see what comes out and i'm for sure that there's one single songwriter there she will stay a singer-songwriter and that's her thing that's okay and there's different possibilities for her to to make money with that for example going to patreon the the artist we were talking about had this deal with her with her paid patreons that she said i'm going to bring one new song every month and it will be exclusive on patreon and she's got like 1 000 patreons and they pay her between somewhere like 50 or 200 euros a month so that's a steady income for her that's not the big money what we're talking about but being an artist i mean doing what you want to do and what you love to do it's a steady income from which you can see where wherever where else you want to go so sorry would you say that like patreons and the platforms like maybe email what you're doing with crow rights uh are taking over in part the role of labels in terms of providing uh yes well you have a change point for artists to where because you always need some kind of a uh i don't know not i wouldn't say editing but in in terms of yes just providing the the the grounds from to which an artist can step or go to to start uh you know sharing their music to the world i mean because if you just publish i don't know a song on youtube no but you you stay away from youtube you go to the channels that people pay for i mean yes so this this is what i'm talking about so we have these channels that people pay for on one hand emerging and on another one uh of course these models that uh encourage or like gonna get off of the idea of uh basically fan funding uh the artists it's it's i think there are different models and i think that's the most interesting thing that's going on uh um all the big labels are struggling with what's going on they're really uh well i could say they're fighting for their lives because uh the model that they were working with um it's from from all different sides uh they're hit with uh people who come up with an organization to come up with more clever solutions i mean look at copyrights which was their money maker i mean earning the money for what's going on they're losing their grounds so there are more and more options for artists coming around to choose how to create their own career business-wise but also how to creatively create their career so i think it's an interesting where yeah and these platforms um email what you're doing and other platforms label 2.0 because you have the audience and that's where a lot of sales can happen and we're also talking to a few of these platforms because they can see that shift going on super interesting that's what we're saying too yeah we don't we don't bash labels though but we try to do something better than they are you know because we think that if somebody wants to pay a label to do their services so good for them you know as long as they provide value that was some of the points that you made already eric mentioned back in he joined spotify i think in 2013 when they're still in sweden they had all nice little clusters and and their mantra was always to be the best service provider um by the way he has two little kids so he has to i think he went there so yeah that's what he said okay do you raise your hand yeah sorry for being the operator it was like i think it's about um you just have been talking about the choice the great choice the multiple choice an artist has right now in which channels he wants to go where to communicate what to release best and uh as it is with choice um that's the experience i always had with artists is they are overwhelmed they need some guidance there from people who are actually into those channels and uh that's the role of a manager and finally perhaps a row the role of a label if it's done right if the label doesn't care it just wants to stick with the old channels then it might not give the value which is necessary and then it's out of the window i'm fine with that but i i'm i'm really positive uh that an artist uh always will need some some support some sidekick um some some help but that tremendous work which has to be done um with communicating um to actually keep well to keep uh the time to be creative and uh to do what you he's up for she's up for for composing making great songs making great art and um from a certain level of career on uh any artist they need some support there and you may call it publishing because perhaps it's a songwriter and i disagree with dan in terms of the value of a composition for sure the performance is what which is upfront but the song is what gets actually and we're away from albums so it's um the song that gets the the audience and for sure the performance as well but this is still very much linked um so i think uh that well for for business professionals it is absolutely necessary to to have to look at the new services and then new opportunities and one of the great opportunities that i see especially with nfts in web3 um there's actually more the wallet because you're you've got direct access to a fan for the wallet you you can have an airdrop of any nft what is an nft it's not a pfp it's a giving access to something uh giving an access to some sort of an event to an experience and um we see an opportunity for a direct connection between artists or creator and fan including getting con sort of control of the data and having that direct connection that was not there with all the platforms that we had before and um i think this is the the bottleneck platform that we know right now but with the big socials there and streaming platforms we can i think we can use those platforms in the future to use the data use the reach and um to connect actually to real fans who with some sort of pattern money then gives the daily or the monthly income a steady income and for sure also measure the value that is much more difficult uh to be measured right now so it's actually giving more control to the artist and then um helping the artist to well to have another form of uh refinancing his life because he has more well he can really show what's going on those park systems that we have right now are then uh not that a park anymore it's still complicated but i think it can turn better can i can i share a was it what is possibly a controversial statement but uh uh there is um a peculiarity when it comes to the music industry and that is we don't really have there's no threshold for somebody to be an artist as opposed and so whenever i if i raise my hand you know i i i pick up an instrument and i just you know hit it and i call myself an artist i'm totally entitled to do that but with in within the music industry it kinda comes with it uh an expectation of me being able to make money particularly from spotify for instance you know so if i put my music on spotify i'm sort of kind of you know then i should look at the money at the end of the month and there should be something there whereas in let's say football you know there's it's just you know loads and loads of loads of people play football across the globe but you know you you wouldn't be measuring you know if you had a only a tiny fraction gets to make money out of their you know them playing football and and the the idea that you know but just because you're playing football you would be able to kind of live off it and so on and so forth that is not the uh we don't have that same kind of you know that we measure it differently uh uh and and the thing is here that when it comes to these uh you know the new artist which um some of you uh brought up you know what is there's all these talents and and and obviously we've seen it happen many many times already you know we've seen the influencers we've seen the twitch streamers we've seen the youtube stars whatever i mean these things just come out uh not of nowhere but you know what i mean these things happen to vaughn's point you know you kind of have that the long tail is or possibly you as well i'm not sure but uh you know this mix of of different skills and different creativity and you know you're kind of finding your own path but it typically involves more than what just putting out the music or whatever even you know kind of even if you play concerts and so on uh so there's just these the the the renascence qualities that you need or whatever if i'm using that term correctly i'm just trying to sound like an academic in this crowd but anyway uh uh you know the the the different skills that you need to combine in order to kind of make it dent is is is pretty wide and it is and you need to find them yourself and so on and uh it's just that yeah so when it comes to music it's it's often i not this conversation but the conversation kind of tends to be about am i making enough money from streaming and so on but no i think that the opportunities in this kind of mixed environment you know the multi yeah would you care to comment on that one absolutely uh yeah i mean i'm i'm i i couldn't agree more that uh the definition of musician is is so broad that um saying artists don't make enough money is is impossible problem statement to tackle um and i'm saying that every artist should have a sustainable like you know um sustainable income from music again impossible and kind of do the full experiment of like yeah i'm gonna like um record my cat i don't even have a cat my imaginary cat um and upload it to spotify if i do that every day for a week i can technically call myself like a releasing artist or recording artist i can help you put that out if you do that i'll help you put it on spotify okay and i want i want to keep all my royalties out um sure i'll put it on blockchain though again i guess that feels like it's the uh it does make the argument quite quite weak and i think it makes it quite difficult for for anyone music to tackle so i do agree with that point i think it's a it's a really good i was someone who just said that to me at the very beginning when we started jack like by the way that's not a problem that you can tackle it's like it's in just intractable um so yeah okay if you don't mind we have some questions maybe now it's time to to tackle some of them okay uh first off uh okay what if defense oh okay that's that's good for you what if the fans want transparency an artist would like to listen to them by publishing on a public platform which provides full insights in their earnings is that even possible now well it is on our platform when it comes to the the the the master and the income over a certain period of time and so on so yes it's possible i know it's possible in some cases but then it's a business relationship which is meant to be open from the beginning like any kickstarter campaign or whatever and even if you go into patreon you can look at the number of patreons and well you don't necessarily know what tier they're on but you can kind of make out what the money flowing in is even though you're not really even you know even if you're not a patron you'll you can kind of make some sort of assumption around the money that is being made and so on so there are people can probably make better examples but i mean there's definitely a possibility to do this how far it will go in the near future i don't know but definitely further yeah and we believe in the there's like a mix there's always some parts that don't want to share everything like the splits and and how much you make although as you said indeed if you look at spotify amount of streams then you do a metric on that and you know how much it is but there's always people then down the value chain who maybe might be the rights owners who bought it the assets so um personally i can see both working the uh on the dow sides there will always be people totally okay with that and there will always be people that are not not okay with that and they might be actually different type of blockchain systems as long as they interoperate with each other yeah and i cannot i i quickly respond i think that the problem there is i don't think any single actor can make that happen it's like it the existing system is private it's private information you can try and build public information systems where everything is public like some of the dials are now being built um the problem is unless there's a significant amount of value for artists to release in that system they're very unlikely to become the default i don't think it drives market behavior in and of itself so i think it's more like if we have transparent systems like daos for instance where everything is public those things become the dominant model for loads of artists and that like over time becomes the dominant feature of the market but it but i don't think it itself is is valuable even if it's maybe nice for fans or i don't think it adds much value to the transaction and i mean it's like audience we're all familiar with them i'm sure uh but uh the way um i mean they well they come from the you know electronic music scene most or primarily uh and and you know and edm is is pretty uh you know when it comes to nft projects and so on the djs are kind of leading the way in that or the producers are leading the way in that space for probably some obvious reasons i don't know but i mean you could probably see in such a niche a more openness to do this and so on so you can you can see these happening these things happening in in certain genres or certain in a certain community uh before anybody else and and everybody's kind of okay with it the second thing is um uh about audios i was about to say something there uh yeah it's interesting because ro neil there one of the uh founders uh he thinks of of uh audios many look at audios and think that that's uh instead of spotify but on blockchain but it's really the way they see it is more uh you know a discovery service kind of like uh you know obviously they've copied soundcloud in you know the whole vibe from the beginning and and soundcloud uh used to be a place where people would you know they wouldn't necessarily have finished work they put that music which they were working on and got feedback and you know and it was this so so so audio thinks about the platform for short formats or or other you know more like you know in between youtube and tick tock and sound cloud or something and i'm not in any way saying that that's the end game here i'm just saying it's interesting again that the art form may also be affected where for on one part it's not necessarily so necessary to know all the copyright uh situations sec because it's basically shared uh without any uh thoughts on that and secondly uh uh it would be handled differently and the parties on that platform or in that space would be fine with sharing information on a very granular and and transparent way i don't know if this will play out this way but it could that's what i'm saying and uh that's my only point can i quickly run a like a quick like step by step i've thought through this model quite a few times i think that nfts themselves uh are moving towards like on entree splits um just because of expediency you split everything up everybody gets paid great um normally those contracts are fairly simple at least they are for things like blog post nfts or whatever so that's great so now you have this really simple scalable system for like basically the entire administrative faculties of the music industry and it's just like done on chain for nfts and so and then to the to the point of the question is you have this idea of like fans probably lots of music fans especially maybe younger fans probably like the idea of transparency and so they start to kind of like boycott spotify and subscription music and they start to just like buy nfts and listen to like youtube and soundcloud and places where they don't have to subscribe and all of a sudden you start seeing this slow shift of money really being going to artists through nfts and like you know ads and things like that where the copyright is still there the private information around copyright is still there but it's just entirely off chain and actually nft splits become like the dominant form of splitting music in the like in the public realm even if they don't necessarily reflect copyright off chain and that's quite interesting we do get to this like public information about how money split but it still has nothing to do with copyright i think i think the the main uh every time i try and think through like how copyright interfaces with crypto and nfts i always never see the merging i always see copyright staying distinct and staying like in its box over there um and uh in the same way that like bitcoin has a whole system of like ownership on chain but like property rights are still there if i come and steal your private key it's still property and the property still governs how that works i still think that's how it's going to work in in i don't think copyright's going to move on chain for instance sorry if i can jump into this add to this it's exactly that's copyright law that's the strange thing if we make a drawing all together here we have the copyright to it and it's always that that fakeness to it so yeah and it's illegal systems but that's why you need to have multiple systems multiple layers working together and they can all be decentralized at a different layer i absolutely agree with you on that we have peter wilson asking okay generative edm and then it relates to inputs in the registry of the creative rights anybody dares to tackle that one yeah i did see that question also indeed if we say in a metaverse if you have an ai system that creates electronic dance and if you have 10 composers um i don't have the answer for that but that's the so during the the presentation just before that it also came up so i do have a tenure record in ai and then neural networks and all that it's and they will get go to the next step it's like will ai have consciousness no sorry will i have what type of rights will ai systems have i think i think right now we're still focusing on people creating the art um the let's tackle that one at the same time indeed we should start looking to it because if if the few developers of us if we ban a build an ai system that makes music who's the rightful owner right now there is a huge rise in this uh ai and uh yeah but uh some songs i think you know but i think maybe that is is is you should be kept for another debate because we would depart quite a lot sorry you can absolutely comment on this email no i just wanted to be more controversial and say that copyright is not the end game we've just been we've just been instructed that that's the end game you don't need copyright to enjoy music or create music or do something amazing for humanity or you know so we there there is a tool you know as you know there are ways to have uh uh creative commons and all that stuff so so so create comments but i mean of course if everybody the point is that the stakeholders should agree on it that's the idea of course yeah but we all know that copyright is actually uh created like 150 years ago uh to help the record labels extended to 90 when they thought they were losing the money from now i go back to the origin of the right itself of an authoring right and a copyright which comes from that time to protect the artist to give him something at hand against greater corp corporations because only with that right in hand he has something has a say to to have that um have the right for for going after his rights otherwise he will well in the in the u.

s you have a total buyout and and the european um area you don't have and i think it's a great ride and something that really protects ideas creativity and artists i would really hope that this is not going to well i see that as an idea and an artist and creativity protection and for sure we have uh various interpretations of how it can be protected in its usage this will be discussed for sure with the ongoing at the development of technologies and the use forms but i still think that this is something which actually i will one of our it may be one of our usps in in our area if we keep a good and very heavy um author author's rights and creativity rights in which in english is copyright and copyright means just the copy uh but i mean the protection of the idea the artist and creative commons is just it's an american form of an interpretation of copyright so yeah um that's and there will be many forms of interpretations uh in the future again but i hope that we will never see an ending of this kind of legal protection of artists and creativity and um transl especially technology that we have in place right now is with blockchain it's an instrument of getting receipts and getting some sort of proofs of existence but nothing more it's not about having a copyright in in that technology or in in buying an nft does not mean i i buy a right of something so this is something which i think is amazingly often confused right now um with for sure great ideas uh being included in for future business models or forms of new [Music] ways to to set up a creative business but the nfts that we see right now for example also with audios or with um uh um uh i've just forgotten the name those fractional ownership platforms which are out there um like royal it's a great idea but the nft doesn't keep that nobody can really go after it right now so this is in in the very early stage of a development of a technology that really can support that in an automated way i think we've just circled right back into the sphere of nfts as collectibles because this is i guess basically what we're coming to if you of course they don't hold you don't hold the copyright to to the music if you buy an nft but then it's it's basically selling nft as a collectible to the most ardent fans go ahead yeah i don't think that's necessarily true right because you can program an nft to represent copyright you can stand there and you can enforce that as the person who issued the nft becomes very difficult to enforce but that's effectively what royal are trying to do right they're saying if you hold this thing deliver royalties to you and again like i think they're doing all kinds of things to try and like make that be binding i would say that nfcs themselves are right but they're just digitally native right so if you if i have an nft like okay if you sold me an nft i have the exclusive right by holding my private key to call the transfer function i can transfer it to any wallet available that's a right okay it is a right and it's enforced by the blockchain of course by government and this means that you do have this like completely like uh and that's why i said that jack was trying to be an interface because you have this kind of like like barrier between like like legal assets that are enforced by like contract law and enforced by like intellectual property law and so on that grant people are monopoly over like um the ability to extract revenue from the creation of that idea and really is enforced by like the threat of violence from governments at some point right like you won't violate someone's copyright because you know that someone's gonna find you or whatever you don't have that one chain and so i think that um that for me means there is this like real like friction point between um [Music] like yeah like in companies like royal where they're trying to like co-mingle the two things and say they're one thing i think they're separate things and i think that um uh there's this great graph that always used to be presented in um it's a charts right it used to be presented in like 2018 or something and it said like um if you try to optimize for a and for b you just end up at c which is like you're hitting neither of them and and that's really what i feel will happen i think there's countless ideas that can be explored in the realm of nfts profile pictures are such a even though i'm not really a fan um there is such a great example of the opportunity for nfts um because they're digitally native their profile pictures they have absolutely zero relevance in the real world um to a degree because we have faces um but you do need something that you kind of put on when you enter into into a social community also online we have these like ability to basically be ephemeral with our identities we can be in multiple places at once so we can put on all kinds of faces profile pictures allow us to signal they allow us to like have community all these things and they're completely completely digitally native if you look at something sound we're trying to do sound or xyz they had uh they were they were doing comment nfts and i loved that because i thought wow imagine you have this like like inalienable right to comment on anything whenever you see that song so anywhere someone implements a sound protocol you protocol you could see that there's a song and you as one of the holders of 25 nfts can comment that is something you can literally put into a page right it's completely digital it's something that you can't do in real life you can't go around i guess you can go around to like music venues and comment on on the sounds you're hearing but you can online and so i feel like yeah we definitely need more experimentation and i think what we probably need to do less of is like trying to force copyright on chain be like let's just get this thing here i think that that's we have a fairly robust system for managing copyright i think it's not perfect but blockchain doesn't really improve it it extends it in some interesting ways but nothing that really drives demand for consumers or really improves the situation for fat for artists and that for me is like the tension that we have in music and crypto at the moment and really why i think we haven't had this real like takeoff that other industries have seen um music nfc still seem to be quite flat there's really no secondary market yet um so yeah i think i think it's like um it's still early days i think for music and nfts yeah i would absolutely agree on that uh okay we're kind of coming to a point where we need to kind of wrap it up i think that we just opened uh two interesting debates to go if you have the stamina we can take a short or a long great place i hope to see at least some of you back on on this court uh let's say in like half an hour hour uh to to consider another future possibilities i'm citing here matt ryhus looking into how nfts and nfc adjacent technologies might be used to maybe cultivate music collectives that might communally own for example a physical concert space or recording studio and all the possibilities that the dao opens up uh uh on the on the fields of um fans meeting artists or sharing music or all the possibilities that are we're seeing with this you mentioned sound xyz and then we also have like uh i don't know i think it's called endless which is for for uh you can just wrap your your live sessions and bam there they are as nfts for anybody to use them as samples or as whatever they want to uh so it's all the use and use case for for the further owners are already cleared so uh okay i just popped up uh on purpose some more questions and questions also that we see on social channels so that uh i kind of lure you there for some more conversation on that uh final round thoughts anybody or would you leave it at that and maybe see you all on discord um i would say thank you yeah that's what i wanted it's 7 30 yeah we were just saying like our brains are fried so we're gonna drink beers and eat bitter balls downstairs well okay i'll i'll be drinking beer and checking this court so if i see any of you there please poke me i'm there as mina marca let hope to see you there thank you thanks goodbye bye thank you bye bye guys you