I usually find it refreshing (pardon the pun) to hear people describe 'drinking the Kool-Aid' and then stopping to observe from the outside. Hope this text doesn't create any bad feelings amongst your comrades as it can be a useful reality check, if a person is interested in that. It's a challenge to sift through the disproportionate amount of BS in cryptocurrencies to find the few nuggets of actual game-changing ideas and practices, and I hope that reflections like this can help raise the bar for what counts as revolutionary, even better to promote directly and tangibly *serving* people in need.
This is beautifully written, thank you for sharing your experience. Reading this gave me an epiphany about what "web3" promises to do for music, and why (I think) it's going to be such an uphill battle even in the rosiest of scenarios:
IMHO - digital collectibles as a form of music patronage is still a sound concept, but the more i think about it, the more confident I am that even perfect execution won't bring about the promised "revolution," because the last major change to music fandom was the advent of the information age, and even the most optimistic "web3" projections won't meaningfully counter those effects. As a casual music listener, why listen to "ok" or even "really good" music when I can have literally the best music ever produced - of all time - in any genre?
This abundance and ease-of-access to high quality music accretes value & attention to a handful of global superstar musicians & performers who (for better or worse) parlay their success into more fame, at the expense of all the other artists, and is a big reason there isn't a large "middle class" of workaday full time professional artists/performers (or even regional successes who are notable but not a mononym). Spotify/Apple didn't kill "regional traveling bands" and "indie musicians making a living licensing tracks to warner bros"; the internet did. Those good old days were a pre-networked-society phenomenon, and aren't coming back no matter how easy it is to mint and sell digital artwork.
I hope this isn't like, too much of a downer. The upside is we live in an age where the average human with an internet connection can hear essentially every professionally produced recording ever produced, on demand, for free.
I usually find it refreshing (pardon the pun) to hear people describe 'drinking the Kool-Aid' and then stopping to observe from the outside. Hope this text doesn't create any bad feelings amongst your comrades as it can be a useful reality check, if a person is interested in that. It's a challenge to sift through the disproportionate amount of BS in cryptocurrencies to find the few nuggets of actual game-changing ideas and practices, and I hope that reflections like this can help raise the bar for what counts as revolutionary, even better to promote directly and tangibly *serving* people in need.
Beautiful writing and brave observations!
Reef, as usual, your writing is beautiful and personal and insightful. This piece in particular resonated with me so much.
This is beautifully written, thank you for sharing your experience. Reading this gave me an epiphany about what "web3" promises to do for music, and why (I think) it's going to be such an uphill battle even in the rosiest of scenarios:
IMHO - digital collectibles as a form of music patronage is still a sound concept, but the more i think about it, the more confident I am that even perfect execution won't bring about the promised "revolution," because the last major change to music fandom was the advent of the information age, and even the most optimistic "web3" projections won't meaningfully counter those effects. As a casual music listener, why listen to "ok" or even "really good" music when I can have literally the best music ever produced - of all time - in any genre?
This abundance and ease-of-access to high quality music accretes value & attention to a handful of global superstar musicians & performers who (for better or worse) parlay their success into more fame, at the expense of all the other artists, and is a big reason there isn't a large "middle class" of workaday full time professional artists/performers (or even regional successes who are notable but not a mononym). Spotify/Apple didn't kill "regional traveling bands" and "indie musicians making a living licensing tracks to warner bros"; the internet did. Those good old days were a pre-networked-society phenomenon, and aren't coming back no matter how easy it is to mint and sell digital artwork.
I hope this isn't like, too much of a downer. The upside is we live in an age where the average human with an internet connection can hear essentially every professionally produced recording ever produced, on demand, for free.
I’ve observed much the same. The incentives derived from VC funding dynamics makes things complicated. Thanks for shedding light on this.