Recently, Alex and I were asked for our take on the state of Web3 in music as part of a trend report from Hype Research.On a macro level, there are many factors that make it hard to predict the future: We have wars in Israel and in the Ukraine; there is looming inevitability around a recession, which is a byproduct of a chopping economic climate; interest rates are sky high and staying there; people are being laid off; and there remains political unrest in the US, which continues to feel overtly divided. We believe there is nonetheless great hope for the power of technology and culture.One of the best podcast episodes all year was the Tetragrammaton with Ian Rogers and Rick Rubin. If you care about the intersection of music, technology, and culture, this is a worthwhile listen. When Ian was working with the Beastie Boys, he knew Hip-Hop was destined to be a global phenomenon, but never would he have predicted that the Canadian kid in the wheelchair from Degrassi would be the biggest rapper in the world. When he subsequently worked in Silicon Valley with Yahoo! Music and Topspin, he knew digital music was going to be a big thing for the music business, but never would he have thought a Swedish company that incubated out of Europe would become the driving force of music globally. Now that he works in blockchain as Chief Brand Officer at Legder, he’s certain that the ideals of Web3 are going to be realized, it’s just a matter of when. Still, he’s quick to cop to having no idea how and what will make this next era of transactions truly connect.From our perspective, music is the preeminent trendsetter in digital and culture, and musicians are its sherpas, so you can bet that music will be central to Web3’s growth and use. Brands are the purveyors of art and culture and can thus help amplify that growth and storytelling.The economic climate may be dicey (we are in a fringe bear market), but the genie is out of the bottle and Web3 isn’t going anywhere; it just needs more use cases, stories, and hits! When we come out of this downturn, great new companies will be born. Following the ’08 crash, paradigm-shifting businesses like Uber, Venmo, Airbnb, Pinterest, Spotify, and Slack took advantage of the burgeoning technologies of the time. A similar tsunami could crest in 2024. Timing is everything when it comes to innovation.Web3 wasn’t ready for primetime when it broke onto the scene, but we expect new use cases with more intermediary steps: digital collectibles (paired with physical aka phygital), fan club and loyalty communities, digital ticketing, publishing solutions, XR (AR & VR), AI, and digital worlds to name a few.This won’t necessarily all be on blockchain. Ahead of that development, it’s all about proof of concept for the general public, which still needs greater understanding of the benefits of Web3. It’s time to build! Themes like creator-to-community, digital rights ownership, and special utility for superfans really resonate with us and our enterprise clients, all of which are being done with provenance tracking, smart data capture, curation, taste, and transparency of payment made more seamless “on-chain.”The truth of the matter is, no one knows what the breakout use cases and complimentary projects will be. It’s very hard to predict these things, as evidenced by Ian Rogers’ experience. But we know music has a vibrant Web3 community with a lot of room to grow. This movement is going to happen and the artists and brands that are willing to put in the effort and experiment now will be rewarded handsomely on the other end. As the space reconfigures from here, there will be a lot of upside.Here’s the full report on Music & Web3.
BEATS
How Merch Will Bring Millions Of Music Fans OnchainThis week Ziggy Ziggy is exploring how music merch could quietly bring millions of people onchain after “digital x physical” startup IKY raised $16.8 million (Ziggy Ziggy Music).
Bacardi and Producer Boi-1da Embrace Generative AI for Latest ‘Music Liberates Music’ ProjectBacardi has officially teed up the November release of The Concept A.I.bum, an EP that will attempt to demonstrate “how A.I. can be positively leveraged to provide emerging talent unprecedented opportunities” (Digital Music News)
Kid Cudi Announces New Brand WZRD CWBY, Launching in Collaboration With NIGO The multi-hyphenate has revealed that the brand is launching in collaboration with prolific Japanese designer and HUMAN MADE founder NIGO (Hypebeast).
Taylor Swift Helped Boost NFL Ratings, But Her Power Extends Far Beyond The LeagueBeats + Bytes quoted as a reference in Yahoo Finance (Yahoo Finance).
Fun Fact: Steve Aoki Has 25 Different Active Brand Sponsorships — Even Beating Out Snoop DoggProducer and DJ Steve Aoki has the most brand deals of any artist, even more than Snoop Dogg, according to new data from SponsorUnited (Digital Music News).
Does Culture Become A Commodity, Or Do Commodities Become Culture?This rises to more than four fifths of people aged 25-44. Music listening is also incredibly personal – roughly a third of people listen to playlists they curate themselves when exercising, hanging out with friends, working or studying, or just when they are out and about (Midias Research).
Nike .SWOOSH Launch TINAJ (This is Not a JPEG), First Physical ReleaseIt’s been a year since the FTX implosion, and as you can imagine, it has been a painful one for the Web3 space (Sporting Crypto).
Amazon Is Quietly Shuttering Its Live Audio App AmpAmp, the live radio app launched by Amazon just last year, will soon be no more. Bloomberg reports that Steve Boom, the vice president of Amazon Music, sent a memo announcing the shutdown (The Verge).
DJ Khaled, Lil Baby, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert’s Mini-Mes Find Young Love in New VideoIt’s a Kidz Bop party in DJ Khaled‘s new video. On Wednesday, Nickelodeon premiered the visual for “Supposed to Be Loved” featuring Lil Baby, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert, which sees children versions of the rappers acting out the silly music video (Rolling Stone).
Carl Cox’s Virtual Odyssey: The Unveiling Of Intermundium In Sensorium Galaxycheduled for an epic launch on Friday, October 27 at 7 p.m. GMT, this world premiere of a 30-minute digital extravaganza is not just another virtual concert (NFT Culture).
Meta Paying Tom Brady, Paris Hilton Millions To Use Likeness For AI ChatbotsMeta is paying millions of dollars to high-powered celebrities — including retired NFL great Tom Brady, rapper Snoop Dogg, former reality TV star Paris Hilton and TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio — to use their likeness for fictional AI chatbots, according to a report (NY Post).
Beats by Dre: The Business Behind the Audio OdysseyBeats by Dre has been around for more than 15 years. Today, the brand is looking to continue to improve its product and reach an even wider audience (Boardroom).
The Spotify Top 20 Is A Snapshot Of A Much Bigger Story About Independents, Majors, And Artist OwnershipSPOT’s latest Daily Top 20 Global Songs chart (as of October 9) is a striking snapshot of a global industry whereby hit artists (and ‘non-major’ music companies outside the ‘Big Three’) are holding on to ownership of recording copyrights more often than you might expect (Music Business Worldwide).
BYTES
“Just stay at it. It’ll turn. In the dice game, we used to have to be able to say, “Can you stand the rain?” A guy is throwing point after point after point and you would have to stand in there and stand the rain and eventually they turn and things go the other way” (Rich Paul)
“Forever thankful for Moncler gracing me with the opportunity to utilize my creative direction to celebrate Pharrell’s most recent “Art of Terrain” collection. I felt honored to bring so many melanated masterpieces to Milan Fashion Week to help create this historical moMINT” (Tobe Nwigwe).
Text-to-speech goes by a few names. Some refer to it as TTS, read aloud, or even speech synthesis; for the more engineered name. Today, it simply means using artificial intelligence to read words aloud be.
Album of the year? Feels like it to us.
This week's newsletter was carefully curated by the Nue Agency staff and our editor Rachel Meisner If you think we missed something this week or have any suggestions/comments for next week's newsletter, let us know!