A thread for discussing the impacts that things like bitcoin, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain based technologies might have on music...

Talk to me when Jack White finds a way to fill it with liquid and glitter so I can buy it on RSD

1) it’s not
2) it has.

Can you be more specific?

I already refuted 100% of your examples

NFTs haven't been used for music before now because they're a scam & a fad that only briefly caught on ~2 months ago in general and the market for them has already crashed

“You say you’re having trouble making money as a little known musician. Well what if you sold your farts in jars?”

this is a pretty wide-ranging and excoriating piece that touches on it

https://www.ctm-festival.de/magazine/social-music

I'm extremely anti-NFT and generally hate discussing anything blockchain-related. But, I do have some sympathy for independent musicians who have good-faith hopes to replace some of the revenue lost from streaming (really thinking of one friend in particular and the arguments we've been having).

I just wish it didn't involve blockchain, but of course that's the only reason anyone's interested in it right now. I agree that it feels like a scam and a fad at the moment, or maybe I hope it is. I guess the utopian vision of it is, what, they work out all the environmental and security issues, and then your hardcore fans will want to buy 'exclusive' digital tchotchkes, and you're not so dependent on big tech platforms and algorithms, except for the part where you need to people to hear your music and become hardcore fans somehow?

plus you actively want to destroy the biosphere

yeah i think the idea of trying to escape the problems of capitalism through terrible techno-libertarian solutions that just make existing parts of capitalism even worse is hopelessly naive

I just know that Kings of Leon were the first established group to offer their new album as an NFT because of course they would.

I’ll take “obnoxious digital trends from the early XXI century that everyone forgot about” for 100, Alex

I guess the Wu-Tang Once Upon A Time In Shaolin stunt was a precursor to this model.

These seem custom-designed for an Amanda Palmer grift.

just finding out the Merzbow car story is only semi-true

https://jawkdna.com/blog/?p=13

The Wu Tang Clan / Martin Shkreli thing is (unfortunately) real though.

These seem custom-designed for an Amanda Palmer grift.

NG linked cautiously to an NFT featuring one of his characters or s/t in the first week of the craze ("Is this cool? I think this is cool"), then went "sorry sorry I'm trying to delete it" after fans screamed at him for a few days.

Then weeks later linked to an OFFICIAL AMERICAN GODS TV SHOW NFT ™, and when ppl yelled at him again, said "oh I'm just pointing out that this thing exists, not endorsing it"

Here's a general explanation and summary of some of what's been happening in the last 6 months or so

https://consequence.net/2021/03/guide-nft-music-industry/

I’ve read several of these articles/explainers, and I still don’t get what it means to “own” an NFT. It’s basically just a file on your computer (which could be deleted, so you have to make sure that doesn’t happen)? And it’s linked somehow to a piece of digital artwork or music, which could be endlessly reproduced, but somehow the NFT makes yours more “special”?

There’s also mention of NFTs being linked to the right to receive copies of physical things – or a limited number of tickets to a streaming event, etc. – but I don’t get what makes this different from the usual way such things are already auctioned/sold on a limited or exclusive basis?

(I have no interest in participating in this trend, but I feel like I should at least be able to understand how it works…)

an NFT isn't stored as a file on your computer, it's stored on a blockchain (typically the ethereum one, it's the second most popular cryptocurrency behind bitcoin) which is a distributed ledger, so it works in the exact same way as other cryptocurrency stuff works. the blockchain records all transactions so you can see who currently 'owns' the NFT and who has owned it in the past and who created it etc. the NFT itself on the blockchain is usually just a link to an image file (or whatever the artwork is) which may not even be reliably hosted or anything and there's been a lot of problems with this already lol (https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/25/22349242/nft-metadata-explained-art-crypto-urls-links-ipfs). so you're really just paying for a digital certificate of ownership that points to a fixed url (with no guarantee that whatever's there will remain hosted). really a ridiculous scam

you're completely right about that NFTs being linked to the right to receive physical copies of things or limited tickets to a streaming event aren't meaningfully different to the way things are already auctioned or sold, they're just using NFTs due to the buzz around them. it's a shitty gimmick for that and nothing more

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/11-indie-musicians-on-how-theyre-navigating-the-nft-wave/

unrelated but everyone here except anohni sounds so stupid. even those saying 'oh once the environmental problems are solved this will be great!' like these sort of terrible tech solutions can save art?

Thanks, that's the clearest explanation of NFTs that I've ever read.

imogen heap has long been attached to the crypto ecosystem, this is just the latest potential cash-in for her

yeah she seems to unfortunately be a true believer who's been messing around with daft blockchain-based ideas for years now

Thanks, ufo. So you’re literally just buying… a link?

yeah basically. just a blockchain token that contains a link to something and you can point to the token to say "i own whatever's at this link" but of course that doesn't actually mean anything on its own really. ultimately a way of creating artificial scarcity for something digital.

the reason they don't say, put a whole jpg on the blockchain directly, is space & cost concerns. embedding data on a widely used blockchain like that is very very expensive & while people did experiment with that in the very early days of bitcoin it's since become totally infeasible (due to rising bitcoin prices etc., maybe some other factors too idk)

I’m sure this is a mega-obtuse observation, but… every URL is technically unique; why not just make it a link to a static URL on a server somewhere, and eliminate the whole blockchain angle? (Obviously you’d have to rely on that server being maintained, but it sounds like the same issue applies here anyway.)

then you don't get the proof of ownership and proof of authenticity (you can see who the creator is so theoretically NFTs not verifiably created by the actual artist shouldn't be worth anything but...) that comes with blockchain stuff, or the ability to directly sell the token in a cryptocurrency transaction

like pretty much all blockchain stuff, it would be possible to recreate the functionality of NFTs without blockchain, just in some sort of centralised manner instead of blockchain's distributed one, but no one would really care because the only reason anyone cares about NFTs is ~blockchain~ hype and people deliberately driving that hype to inflate the prices of bitcoin and ethereum, with artists just being the latest to fall victim to this stuff

https://www.platformer.news/p/loot-is-a-viral-social-network-that

Pictures of randomly generated lists of RPG inventory are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So you don't even need short sellers and hedge funds to have fun on the internet creating short-lived bubbles that everyone knows have zero future. Each time I'm just wondering who has that kind of speculative money and what age they are (they're all 16 right ?). When they say that "items" (representing randomized fantasy gear names) going for 20 or 46K, does that mean there's an individual buyer ? Otherwise, how do you sell your item again if it's a pool of buyers - owning 0.1 fantasy item is not exactly like owning 0.1 bitcoin, is it ? I had fun making a thousand dollars on ETH a couple months ago, but that's another level.

Fake Banky NFT sold through artist's website for £244k

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58399338

only just heard this story on the World Service, if i was in a laughing mood i'd be rolling on the floor

NEWSFLASH: UMG’s next-gen label 10:22PM forms 𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐏, the First-Ever Group Consisting of NFT Characters from Bored Ape Yacht Club.🐒 pic.twitter.com/zMSAq4HI2Z

— Universal Music Group (@UMG) November 11, 2021

wonder if any music is actually going to come from this nonsense

While I can see the potential to have such technology to verify authenticity, it seems this is the f'n craziest 'emperor has no clothes' Pog BS that has come down the binary yellow brick road.

But hey, I am impressed perhaps jealous that people have seemed to turn a fancy software cookie into some real world cash.

Oh my god, Dave pic.twitter.com/qwUCGDMsGZ

— kerry xmas (says your text message) (@spiraltastic) January 1, 2022

https://www.esquireme.com/culture/interviews/akon-my-next-album-is-going-to-be-an-nft-album

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/eleven-wild-guesses-on-how-blockchain

this is entertaining just for how much he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about and how little sense most of them make even if you accept the premise of 'blockchain can do this'

MC Serch is selling bootleg Spotify URLs of Severed Heads as NFTs, which is a sentence you can type in 2022

It looks like someone (HitPiece??) scanned everything over 1000 plays on Spotify and made an NFT of it

Bunch of artists are suitably pissed about it

Inevitable

Introducing Coachella Collectibles NFTs 🎡 Lifetime festival passes, digital collectibles redeemable for physical items & more available Friday at 10am PT at https://t.co/D8v4cD04wc

Explore our debut collections👇 pic.twitter.com/eEPdVvxPhg

— Coachella (@coachella) February 1, 2022

increasingly, my take on this is "kill everyone now"

(see Residents thread revive)

Fucksake

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue-fragments-folder/nft

My take is that it's hard to imagine real people with such little sense. Even the distress of the person who posted the black monkey story, which sounded like a moral tale to tell your children about how being a dumbass leads you to lose everything and die angry, is so disconnected from common sense. (They apparently reconciled and are still getting married, yay love). Your boyfriend bought you an 8K image of a monkey, and what you're concerned about is that he thinks you were mean to him? As opposed to uh, asking him to hand over all financial management for the net 80 years. And you reached for Reddit for a solution? It's a bizarro alternate universe, as if they're all living in the Matrix.

I don’t think those Reddit stories are real.

Jack Dorsey sold his 1st-ever tweet as an NFT last year.

It was bought for $2.9 million, which he converted to Bitcoin & donated to COVID-19 relief in Africa.

But last week, the buyer relisted it for $48 million & the auction ended with a top bid of just $280.

(h/t @CoinDesk) pic.twitter.com/firrdrQJye

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) April 13, 2022

https://i.imgur.com/JWqSJlk_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

no surprise but still lol

The God Save The Queen NFT collection, includes three tiers of rarity 💎 Each tier features a number of artworks & NFT's will be allocated upon minting.

— Sex Pistols Official (@sexpistols) June 9, 2022

never mind the bitcoins, here’s the NFTs

og cyberpunk

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

how was this only 6 months ago? feels like a lifetime

https://www.inputmag.com/culture/hitpiece-nft-music-rory-felton-mc-serch-atl-jacob-relaunch

I admire the gumption. If at first your scam does not succeed, try and try again.

"Early adopters will get access to their very own music lounge where you’ll be able to share... your NFTs in an immersive listening room" - I remember trying Second Life for a weekend about... some years ago?

I'll check my emails. I signed up on 10 February 2007 and cancelled my account on 02 March 2007. It was obviously and totally inadequate. A single-line IRC client with a poorly-written graphical engine on top of it. I admire the site's owners for managing to fool the world's press into advertising it as the next big thing. And some of its money-making schemes were ahead of its time. I admire nothing else about it and I don't care how it's doing now. Someone will probably pipe up that it's popular in Germany and has one hundred and fifty million user accounts (including mine) who regularly use it etc. As a vehicle for creativity - which is how it was advertised - it was dire.

But, yes, this kind of "immersive listening room" is exactly what Second Life was advertised as, and it was rubbish, and this is rubbish as well.

Snoop & Eminem performing at MTV VMAs in @OthersideMeta and using their @BoredApeYC IP pic.twitter.com/BxJRbukeT3

— Puff ❤️ y00ts (@PuffYatty) August 29, 2022

lmao at this nonsense

Man, that is worse than I could have imagined. It's like someone's digital animation thesis from 1998.