Music’s future is intertwined with the development of its media context. The metaverse, a concept describing persistent shared virtual spaces, is a currently much debated topic in order to think about the media future we’re creating. This article is about that future.
The development of technology tends to move through hype cycles and reaches a peak of inflated expectations, before disillusion sets in and a phase of productivity kicks off. In music, blockchain went through such a hype cycle once and now its NFT use case is at the start of another cycle.
I assumed the same of another trending topic in music: the metaverse. I was wrong. Or at least, the Google Trends graph didn’t look as I expected: flat and then a spike in 2020. Instead it looked like this:
Google Trends: Worldwide interest over time for ‘metaverse’
I was curious about the spike in interest in 2007. Heydays of virtual world Second Life and Entropia. In particular, I was interested in how people used the word metaverse back then and what ideas they had.
Peaks of inflated expectations are often highly creative phases. There’s an influx of mental energy spent on a new technology or concept and many ideas get tested. Just look at NFTs right now. Over time, some ideas get lost or become implicit and eventually forgotten.
What stood out to me is a 2007 article by futurist Jamais Cascio titled Openness and the Metaverse Singularity. It lays out four potential pathways towards the singularity through various metaverse models based on an axis of simulation vs augmentation and intimate (personal & expression) vs extimate (informational & control).
All of these scenarios occurred simultaneously.
For virtual worlds, you can look at Fortnite and Roblox. Mirror worlds can be interacted with through Google Street View. Augmented reality in this context describes the meta-layer of information about the world around us, e.g. a friend’s review of a coffee place you’re about to enter, but also use cases such as Pokemon Go. Lifelogging describes concepts like the quantified self, but also the footprints you leave behind in Google Maps, smart speakers, and other learning systems that can then help you better in the future.
For each of these media contexts or metaverses, there are music examples:
Virtual worlds: VR concerts, shows inside games, but also virtual avatars and avatars as pop stars (Lil Nas X x Roblox, Travis Scott x Fortnite, The Weeknd x Wave).
Lifelogging: personalized music experiences based on past data (streaming service UX, smart speakers).
I find mirror worlds a little difficult to clearly define as an existing context for music, especially right now during the pandemic, but perhaps livestreams made with 3D cameras fit the bill.
When we talk about ‘the metaverse’ in 2021, we’re discussing a convergence of trends:
Gaming & virtual environments going mainstream.
Development of new virtual economies, possibly underpinned by blockchain technology and tokens.
Artificial intelligence and its ability to understand users in order to create or provide suitable content and context, and create realistic simulations.
The Internet of Things with all its connected devices, like smart speakers and smart phones – which provide a pervasive and persistent virtual layer to our physical world which is always turned on.
Connectivity improvements have meant it’s feasible to jump into virtual worlds from your mobile phone, watch streams, or stream to thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people.
Various improvements in hardware & software have made it possible to create beautiful virtual environments, incl in VR, that are highly interactive and customizable.
In the convergence of these (and other) trends also lie the contexts in which we can explore music’s future as a business & creative medium. As we define and design that future, it’s important we embed the ethical dimensions in that process: things like privacy, representation & inclusion, power concentration & dynamics, ecological footprints.
The more I read and hear about NFTs the more sense it makes to me for artists to get in on the act and find a new way to broaden their revenues (here’s how artists can go about creating and selling an NFT). But what about the buyer’s perspective? Why should they get in on it too? Is it about having a collectible, a one-of-a-kind? Is it just about supporting a specific artist? Or, is it an investment? Moreover, and this is the focus of this article, what’s the potential for artist-fan relations in light of the functionalities and possibilities of the blockchain?
Screenshot of audiovisual NFT by Teebs & Yuma Kishi on Foundation
The buyer’s value
Just one month ago Bas spoke about NFTs in the context of Mike Shinoda‘s first sale. In that article he argued that buyers step into this world because they’re building a world, a metaverse. In that metaverse, we need items that will help us showcase our identities. An NFT is one way of expressing identity and there is value in that. Similarly, in her The state of music NFTs [paywall] article from 14 January, Cherie Hu argues that one way to look at the tokens is as a form of rare digital merch. This, again, relates to confirming your identity, this time as a fan. Continuing along those lines, Hu asserts in a follow up article [paywall] that we shouldn’t even be paying that much attention to the crazy bids driving the hype through auctions but on the potential of selling multiple NFTs at a fixed price point. That’s what will allow artists to tie their fans to them and open up new fan-to-artist interactions.
The buyer’s value, then, is much closer to what happens with certain membership platforms. One example is Hanging Out With Audiphiles, Jamie Lidell‘s podcast, which has a Patreon where he shares the sounds he makes for each episode. His patrons can then make music with those audiofiles. An alternative would be to mint each sound file as an NFT and in that sense give some extra ownership to those ‘superfans’. Even more exciting is when the NFT ownership provides access to more than just, in this example, the sound file. The NFT can then come with special access to the artist (kind of similar to 3Lau‘s recent auction where the highest bidder gets creative direction on a new song by the DJ).
From membership to equity
In a world where what’s called the creator, or passion, economy is growing the distance between artist and fan is shrinking at a similar pace. Livestreaming during the pandemic has provided access to artists in their private spaces and often without lights and make-up. Similarly, services like Cameo and Clubhouse allow the type of interaction between artists and fans that was often unthinkable just a few years ago. With greater access to your favorite artists through a variety of social media and the ability to support those artists directly through membership platforms the logical next step is to consider the artist as something you can have equity in. Jess Sloss from Seed Clubexplained this idea to Colin and Samir:
Viewed simply, this just looks like moving from paying a monthly subscription to support an artist to buying NFTs with the same result. Where this evolves, however, is when FTs come into play. Once an artists gets their own token, they can start playing around with various layers of access. Because this token represents real value – for example on the Ethereum blockchain, but there might be more potential with something like Polkadot – the investment changes. The point of a membership is that you can cancel it at any given time. Conversely, the only way to get rid of the equity you buy into an artist is by selling it. In other words, to shift it to another fan.
From equity to growing revenues together
There’s a bunch of start-ups working in what Rolling Stone dubbed ‘equity crowdfunding‘ back in 2019. The idea, roughly, is that based on future streaming royalties, fans can invest in their favorite artists to help them create new music. By investing in an NFT or, for example, a social token, the fan engages in the potential for revenue growth. Whether this is through a resale factor, which usually holds a percentage for the artist in the smart contract, or through a secondary right attached to the token (see Jacques Greene‘s publishing rights).
Besides the artist and the fan, there’s also a space here for the developer. As Bas argued in his article on NFTs, we should view the whole blockchain experience as a metaverse in itself. As artists and fans find their ways to connect within that metaverse, there’s also a lot to be gained by the developers that pave the roads that allows those connections to grow. Where these three levels find each other, is where we will see the most growth in this world. What’s more, those types of collaboration will hopefully advance mainstream adoption both for fans and artists throughout this year.
In short, NFTs are one logical next step in a world where the interaction and proximity between artist and fan respectively grows and shrinks and moves towards levels resembling collaboration.
Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda just sold a digital piece of art for $30.000 and took to Twitter explaining some of this thoughts in a thread:
“Even if I upload the full version of the contained song to DSPs worldwide (which I can still do), i would never get even close to $10k, after fees by DSPs, label, marketing, etc.”
The ownership of this piece of art is tracked through a non-fungible token on a blockchain. Blockchains are commonly used as distributed ledgers: databases operated by networks of users, like Ethereum. They keep records of any changes to the ledger and can track things like ownership of tokens or cryptocurrency, e.g. Bitcoin.
But so what if a piece of art is recorded into a distributed database? Why the hype?
The current cultural moment is strongly influenced by the pandemic. Artists saw a big drop in income. Streaming revenue isn’t cutting it for most. So the big experimentation began. Artists searched for revenue through things like livestreaming, fan clubs, ticketed virtual meet & greets, online courses, and NFT auctions…
Why are people buying content that can easily be duplicated?
Many a music industry conference panel has bemoaned the fact that people are willing to buy a cup of coffee or bottle of water, but won’t spend that money on a download and instead chose to pirate it (in the days long before Spotify counted 150M paying subscribers). Two decades later and many of the same philosophical debates about the price and value of music continue. Meanwhile, gaming, an industry that faced the same piracy issues as the music industry, pragmatically pioneered ways to get people to pay for completely virtual items.
Gaming gave the ownership of virtual items a valuable context. People who spent many hours a week inside games would find value in virtual real estate or vanity items that translates into real world currency. This is not something recent. In 2013, someone paid $38,000 for an in-game item in Dota2 – an item which doesn’t improve a player’s performance, but just makes them look cooler. In 2010, virtual real estate by the name of Club Neverdie in online game Entropia sold for $635,000.
Now, ten years later, we’re seeing the same dynamic emerge for music. Owning an NFT doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody else can enjoy the work of art associated with the token, much like with physical art that’s exhibited. With the emerging metaverse, some are expecting NFTs to become its property rights.
It works like an auction; the value is determined by the bidders. At the end, one person gets the NFT. Think of it like like owning a 1 of a kind item in a game, or like “owning” an instagram post. It’s a weird thing to own, yes, but: (more)
The idea of the metaverse essentially boils down to a virtual shared space. One prominent example of this concept is Roblox, which is a gaming platform in which people can build their own experiences that are all interconnected through Roblox’ economy (its currency being Robux). Another is Fortnite, which has some of the ingredients already, but hasn’t yet developed a marketplace with low barriers to entry like Roblox has. Despite that, one of the best primers on the topic of the metaverse is the below interview with Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, which owns Fortnite.
It’s the convergence of various pandemic-accelerated trends (VR / XR, virtual economies, crypto) and the expectations of people in these domains that is currently driving NFT art’s success stories ($750,000 CryptoPunk sale, Panther Modern‘s $666 sale, virtual critters for $100,000 a piece). If you want to know what the future holds, look at what the smartest people in the room are doing, because they’ll be the ones building that future.
12 years after the initial release of Bitcoin and the world’s introduction to blockchain, crypto is starting to emerge as an anticipated layer of connectivity for transactions occurring in the metaverse. With a market cap higher than Facebookat the time of writing, Bitcoin has made many early adopters very rich (as have other cryptocurrencies). Besides figuring out how to build an infrastructure in which they can effectively use their blockchain-riches, we’re seeing this money flow into other spaces, like art (and soon Tesla).
Simplified: to understand some of NFTs’ success, you should look at the crypto space as a metaverse without an interface that looks like a video game. The participants of that space are still players: they’re building their own world, their own infrastructure. They care about what they look like in that world, just like how people in virtual worlds care enough about their looks that they’re willing to buy in-game currencies like Robux (to the sum of billions of USD in 2020). Owning art is cool – it gives you standing in your micro-community which is part of larger meta-communities (e.g. a gaming clan is a community inside the community of one server of a game, which is a community inside the global player-base of that game).
And sure, there’s altruism too, because it’s cool to support art. However counting on altruism tends to spawn panel discussions to compare bottles of water to digital art. Focus on non-altruistic value.
Lastly, regarding the game item or IG post comparison: it doesn’t matter if you think a current bidding price is too high for a digital collectible. It matters that one person thinks the the price is worth it. (more)
Forget the usual suspects: venture capital firm BITKRAFT is easily one of the most interesting funds to watch in the entertainment space. Since the start of June, they have participated in 5 funding rounds totalling over $44 million into companies pioneering possible futures for digital media.
With music mostly detached from its “real world” context of live gigs, it has become obvious that music’s virtual context of livestreams, virtual events, and online communities is set to shape tastes, genres and experiences. Professionals from across the industry, from labels to studios to artists, are increasingly involved in virtual aspects of our culture. Two recent examples:
So what do BITKRAFT’s recent investees enable? A look at 3.
Koji
Co-founded by Dmitry Shapiro, who previously founded Veoh and served as CTO of MySpace Music, Koji is a tool that makes it easy to remix posts for social media.
The posts are shareable and interactive, allowing people to remix them using content from various platforms, so Koji sees them more like “mini-apps“:
“If you’ve experienced WeChat Mini Programs, Kojis are the cross-platform, standards-based, modern versions of that.”
What appears to be the strategy, is for other platforms to allow these interactive forms of media inside of them, similar to how most social media platforms now have Giphy integrations to bring GIFs from the Giphy platform into your favourite social network.
So that sets it apart from other remix platforms, like TikTok or audiovisual mashup platform Coub which emphasise the on-platform experience. Unlike TikTok, Coub is not a walled garden, but most of the activity related to the platform seems to be happening in the garden regardless.
What does it mean for music?
Remix culture has gone through multiple iterations and isn’t done yet. Since the start of the digital era, we’ve seen these important steps for music’s remix culture:
Anyone with a computer being able to acquire (through piracy or a purchase) music production software at reasonable costs and distributing their creations through networks and filesharing apps. For example the rapper Benefit becoming an internet underground legend with a $5 mic and a $12 sound card.
As time went on, the above development spawned mash-up culture which moved from filesharing platforms over to the blogosphere.
SoundCloud emerged and made it even easier to follow and exchange with other producers around the world, spawning remix-heavy genre subcultures like Moombahton, ‘EDM Trap’, and ‘Cloudrap’.
Anyone with a mobile phone being able to produce, mix or remix media.
‘Remix’ becoming a default interaction through the dynamics of Snapchat, Instagram Stories, Musically and TikTok as people use face filters, music, and various imagery as overlays to interact with friends and connect to new people.
Koji’s bet seems to be that there’s room for remixable media inside these platforms – think embedding a TikTok post (content) into an Instagram Story (context), but then being able to change elements of the content independently from context.
Short version: we’ll see remixable content appear in countless contexts and will be able to move that content from one context (e.g. Fortnite) to another (e.g. Instagram Stories) without having it attached to the context (e.g. a screenshot of something (content) inside Fortnite (context)).
This will allow for an integrated web where you can interact with media from very day-to-day layers (like photo-based social media) to layers further removed from the physical world (like virtual reality). Like that time Zuckerberg demoed Oculus VR and Priscilla Chan (in ‘the real world’) called him while he was plugged into VR (see the Mixed reality section).
Sticking to the theme of layers: Voicemod allows people to adjust their voice digitally in real-time. In a virtual environment, you can design your avatar however you wish, but unless you’re great at voice acting your voice will sound kind of ‘normal’.
In more every day terms: we’ve all seen Instagram and Snapchat filters that add dog features to friends’ faces — Voicemod makes the voice equivalent of that.
While their technology seems targeted towards demographics in immersive, fully virtual environments like online games or VR-environments, they also cater to YouTubers.
One of the things they’ll do with their investment is double down on mobile, for which they’ve already teamed up with T-Pain who’s well-known for his use of auto-tune.
What does it mean for music?
The first aspect to point out is that voice modification has become increasingly easy and cheap to achieve, even in real-time. The second aspect is that BITKRAFT and Voicemod see a future with a high adoption of voice modification and the avatarisation of voice.
We already have virtual pop stars, so the boundary between virtual and ‘real’ is blurring, especially now that we can simulate elements that up until now were artefacts of “the real world” like our voice. Whereas today’s virtual pop stars didn’t emerge from the virtual landscape, future music personalities could come from this landscape, including their pre-programmed voices. Consider an influencer who’s mostly known for their in-game personality; now what if that influencer becomes popular for their music?
It’s the next generation of digital native.
Playable Worlds
The first thing you need to know about this startup is that it’s founded by Raph Koster, who was the lead designer for Ultima Online (UO). UO was an incredibly influential MMORPG: massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. It was released in 1997 – years before Runescape and World of Warfcraft. And people arestill playing it today, lauding its open world of worlds where gameplay is as much player-made as it is scripted.
The next thing you need to know is that Playable Worlds intend to accelerate the development of a concept called the metaverse. The metaverse is the idea of being able to plug into a virtual environment that connects all kinds of different virtual environments. Minecraft and Roblox are often mentioned as examples due to the ability for people to creatively craft various environments and objects. Fortnite also has characteristics of this, as beyond a gaming environment it now also contains an environment to hang out in and perhaps even enjoy a concert called Party Royale (pictured above).
Playable Worlds‘ first goal is to create a “cloud-native sandbox MMO” game, which sounds reminiscent of aforementioned Ultima Online. Sam Engelbardt, one of the company’s investors, says that“Koster’s vision and demonstrated ability to give players a compelling sandbox for the expression of their digital identities makes him exactly the sort of founder that he likes to back. Englebardt is backing companies that he believes will lay the foundation for the metaverse.”
What does it mean for music?
While Koji and Voicemod are tools that help people immerse inside and across “the metaverse”, Playable Worlds’ team is building out the technology to enable such a metaverse and then building a game with that technology.
Soon, our assumed digital identities will be as important as our given day-to-day identity – which is something that has actually already occurred for many people in the earlier days of the internet with its internet forums, chatrooms, and networks, before using your real name and identity were the status quo.
With that emerging landscape come new types of fan culture and many new possibilities to connect with people who may have a variety of identities across virtual environments. If that sounds niche: that’s how it starts. Ultima Online provided a stepping stone towards the landscape of Twitch, Fortnite, and other virtual experiences which the music industry is committing itself to now, 20 years later.
