The Weekly Note: Edition 001
February 7th, 2023
Welcome!
The Note is Oohlala’s weekly digest of global music news; covering the latest in community, industry and technology. If you enjoyed this week's newsletter, please subscribe, comment, and promote it your friends!
Welcome to edition 001:
Sound Investment Movement
“A Global Approach to Music Rights”
Open Editions & Social Graphs
Mainstream news and more..
Let’s get into it, plus don't forget to collect this edition.
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Community
Sound Investment Movement
Music NFT curator and prolific collector brokeinvstr.eth continues his advocacy, emphasizing the importance of facilitating more valuable interactions between artist and collectors. A huge proponent of the niche digital asset, his “Sound Investment" movement is an experiment in valuing efforts and contributions in Web3 x Music.
They’re currently exploring ways how members of the Sound Investment community can support Music NFT advocates. At the time of this writing, brokeinvstr.eth has raised approximately .5 eth, the total supply being 10,000, through an auction powered by Bonfire XYZ.
How will funds be managed?
“I have come to realize that the most valuable aspect of collecting NFTs is the relationships it has allowed me to form. With that in mind, my goal is to reinvest any funds I raise back into the community, with the aim of fostering even more artist-collector connections, raising awareness about our movement, and inspiring others to actively engage with it.”
📢 Check out brokeinvstr.eth’s “Sound Investment” auction.
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Playlist of The Week
We’re highlighting brokeinvstr.eth’s shares “Fresh Mints” series, as he’s proven to be one of the biggest contributors to the movement overall. We love seeing the grassroots movement grow and want to continue supporting artists and collectors alike as the space positions itself for another boom.
“Discovery and curation are key as we move forward with the Music NFTs movement. They highlight quality, drive sales and build artist-collector relationships.”
— brokeinvstr.eth
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Collection to Watch: PIXELATED
PIXELATED is an NFT project created by web 3.0 singer-songwriter @SammyArriaga with pixel artist @darknutrient , a PFP/Music NFT collection of 4,000 editions and 12 unique tracks. It currently has a total trading volume of 120 ETH on OpenSea and is currently in the top 5 in the OpenSea music category.
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Experiments in on-chain Universal Basic Income
Sweetman.eth continues his UBI experiment, which features weekly spaces where the shipor himself discusses the vision at length, builds an on-chain list for participants to benefit from any upside from the NFT sales, and encourages Latin American artists to bring their creations on-chain.
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Emerging on-chain communities
Collectors who keep a careful eye on macro crypto conditions understand the potential of cryptocurrencies to empower and bring an entirely new generation of creators on-chain. Emerging markets like Latin America are already dominating the Global Crypto Adoption Index (Chainalysis, 2022).
That’s why it’s no surprise that the next wave of on-chain creators (and potential for new liquidity) are starting to gather in spaces online. Look no further to FuturX’s latest, W&M collaborative report on Music NFTs in Latin America. Check out the LatAM Music NFT report now.
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More from our friends
The Future Surf Radio Community (founded by artist Cam Murdoch) are celebrating their one year anniversary on March 15th. Stay up to date by following Future Surf’s newsletter and go listen to their interview with Africa FM.
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Grants
On-chain earnings infrastructure & creator tool, R3VL, are getting ready to announce their Creator Grants program later this week. In partnership with Decent, the grants opportunity is calling all creators to collaborate on a piece of music, artwork, video, etc. For more, make sure to follow their social to stay in the know.
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Industry
Water & Music: “A Global Approach to Music Rights”
Music industry research and intelligence network, Water & Music launch the third installment of their academy series, this time highlighting a “global approach to music rights”. The course aims to ground global music copyright complexities in modern music/tech case studies, demonstrating the pervasiveness of the problem and why music-industry professionals should care. They’ll dive into sessions led by music rights experts from markets such as China, India, Latin America and Africa.
This course is for:
Artists and their teams who are exploring international opportunities.
Builders who are solving problems they’ve identified in music, but who may not be fully aware of all the global implications or ramifications of their product beyond their home market.
Professionals (inside or outside of music) who work with music rights, and are interested in expanding their knowledge base on the topic from a global lens.
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The 65th Annual Grammy Awards
The global awards ceremony took place at the Crypto.com arena in Los Angeles, a night celebrating all the global music stars under one roof. Beyoncé took home the Grammy for “Best Dance/Electronic Album” making her the most awarded artist in the history of The Academy. Other notable winners include Harry Styles for “Album of The Year”, Dr. Dre for “The Dr. Dre Global Impact Award”, and Sam Smith & Kim Petras for “Best Pop Duo”.
The awards also celebrated Hip Hop’s 50th year anniversary as an art form, which was expressed as a cumulative performance of Hip Hop acts through the years; ranging from Public Enemy to Lil Baby. Jay Z also delivered (almost perfectly) his 4 minute verse on his collaborative work on DJ Khaled’s grammy nominated track “God Did”.
The Award show honored several members of the global music community who passed last year; including Takeoff from Migos, Tom Verlain of Television, Gal Costa and more.
For a more in-depth recap, check out hitsdailydouble and check out the full list of winners here.
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Universal to develop “more artist and fan-friendly” streaming model.
TIDAL and UMG announced plans to research how, by “harnessing fan engagement”, music services and platforms can “generate greater commercial value for every type of artist”.
The announcement comes shortly after Lucian Grainge sent out a beginning of the year memo to Universal Music Group, emphasizing the need for a change in streaming models; mostly a reaction to the over saturation of the music market with now over 100,000 songs being uploaded to DSPs daily.
“We need a model that supports all artists.. an innovative, ‘artist-centric’ model that values all subscribers and rewards the music they love. A model that will be a win for artists, fans, and labels alike, and, at the same time, also enhances the value proposition of the platforms themselves, accelerating subscriber growth, and better monetizing fandom.”
— Lucian Grainge
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Warner Music Group releases Rhythm City based on Roblox.
Warner Music has developed Rhythm City, a metaverse space based on Roblox, with Gamefam, a metaverse game developer. Rhythm City combines game elements and music, allowing users to choose from a variety of roles such as producer, DJ, and dancer. You can also compete with other users by taking part in mini music challenges and take part in several events curated by Warner Music Group, including virtual performances by Warner Music Group artists.
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Web 3.0 record label Hume crossing the metaphorical bridge
Web 3.0 record label Hume has acquired Blockstones , an interactive NFT project created by Grammy Award-winning producer Gino Borri. Hume co-founder Jay Stolar says that the key to scaling Web 3.0 is demonstrating new use cases for NFT ownership and music creation. Its roster of virtual artists have signed to CAA — one of the world’s biggest talent agencies.
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Nifty Music on Floor Drops
Nifty Music co-founder NiftySax announced a new drop strategy, aptly called “Floor Drops”. The auction prices NFTs at 0.01 ETH, which encourages greater participation from the community due to the lower cost of entry and places an emphasis on allowing the secondary market to determine the true value.
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Technology:
How does Manifold, an NFT issuance platform, make money?
Announcing a future change to the fee structure in the NFT Platform Manifold, which provides creators with proprietary Smart Contracts, preserves on-chain provenance, and enables trading on other NFT marketplaces.
As a result, buyers who minted and purchased NFTs through the Manifold Claims Pages or Burn Redeem application paid a fixed fee to Manifold.
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Open Editions & Social Graphs
It's time to talk about open editions and productized social graphs. We're talking about something that's going to revolutionize the way artists monetize their work and connect with their audience.
With open editions, there's more liquidity, which means more sustainable revenue for artists at scale.. Open editions are limited by time and per-wallet mint limits, offering opportunities for artists to mint their own portraits for a specified duration, either for free or for a fee.
Open editions, combined with a productized social graph, have the potential to revolutionize the relationship between creators, their audience, and their work. Currently, creators are unable to track the overlap in engagement across various social media platforms, limiting their ability to build and nurture their audience.
Lens Protocol provides open data structures, enabling transparency in all social media analytics, allowing creators to understand their most loyal fans in real time. This empowers consumers to become active participants in their own social consumption and interact with brands in a more meaningful way.
By giving creators and users ownership and control of their content without the constraints of gatekeepers, they can leverage this newfound power to pursue new opportunities across fandom, community, connectivity, curation, data, and monetization.
More reading on Open Editions and Social Graphs:
Unlocking Proof of Humanity with Non-Financial NFTs (Decent XYZ, 2023)
UGC 2.0: The Rise of User Generated Collects (Lens Protocol, 2023)
Revisiting “Post-Royalties”; Open Editions, and New Digital Rights (Liminal Space, 2023)
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Around The World
Marcus Alburez Myers is a Guatemalan entrepreneur working to address today's pressing challenges. He is currently a Founder-in-Residence at Europe's leading accelerator, Entrepreneur First, where he is drawing on the power of web3 to empower marginalized communities.
In their Ethereum Fellow Update, Marcus recounts their journey to the village of Puntarenas, a self-sufficient community that now has access to basic dignified services like education, healthcare, water and energy. Despite being a country with a high GDP in Central America, Guatemala faces extreme inequality, poverty and lack of basic services in rural and indigenous regions.
To address these issues, Marcus is working on an initiative called Lamina POP, which uses a patented construction technology to build cheap and architecturally sound homes, in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, the University of Cambridge, and Stanford.
However, the biggest obstacle to their efforts is the lack of financial infrastructure and education in these communities, where most financial transactions occur in the informal economy, leaving people vulnerable to predatory lenders.
Marcus is conducting extensive research on the potential and challenges of using cryptocurrency for financial inclusion in Latin America. The report will be presented at ETHDenver and will be accompanied by a video series that examines Ethereum's role in Latin America through interviews with prominent crypto builders and local communities in Guatemala. The report marks the beginning of a larger exploration into the impact of technology on the global south and invites others who share a passion for cryptocurrency's transformative potential to join in this journey.
Stay up to date and support financial inclusivity in Latin America by advocating for Marcus’ project via their Mirror collection.