As a musician also interested in crypto, I often get questions about what artists are "looking" for in the NFT and Music NFT ecosystems. (Lots of startups and projects in those areas have been popping up in Web3 projects lately.) I pointed out a few things in one article here, but there is actually a simpler answer - artists don't want to deal with administrative work. They want the time to work on their craft.
Web1 and Web2's philosophy towards artists trying to “make it” in the digital spaces both were basically “DIY” -- which is still largely the ethos we see today, even with more recent projects that are coming out. Tired of the labels taking a massive cut from your creative work? Do It Yourself! Producing, hiring/recruitment, agencies, royalties/distributions, marketing, legal -- do it all! All by yourself!
While there are good intensions behind a lot of the NFT projects out there (and many platforms that came before -- most of which are now gone or in zombie mode), simply giving artists the "tools" to "help themselves" isn't enough. And the reason isn’t complicated -- expecting one person to be responsible for all the intricate details of making a sustainable living doing creative work is simply unrealistic. The focus should be on building teams of creatives handling different roles of the process, not pushing all of the responsibility of everything onto one person. Not only is it asking too much of an individual to do literally everything, but this model also tends to attract megalomaniacs and control-freaks who are actually appealed by the idea of total control. (And this is what we see “rising to the top” of the race-to-the-bottom content model we have right now, that has largely defined the aesthetics of Web2.)
In mature content ecosystems, however, “total founder control” is not really how it works -- or should work, anyway. A common complaint you hear by professional artists about doing work on the internet is that they spend so much time on marketing/admin stuff (80-90%) that they have no time to work on their actual craft. Even among those who supposedly “make it” on the web, it’s rare to see anyone get to the top of the charts without sacrificing the quality of their work in significant ways. It’s less about talent or effort, but the amount of time the artist themselves are able to spend on their craft.
When this happens, people often assume that the artist has “sold out” and is quickly forgotten as the audiences are herded onto the next popular keyword that happens to be “hot” at the time. You do see this pattern in Hollywood too, so some would argue that this is the “nature” of how the creative industry works, but it never occurs to them that the system itself pushing the industry towards those outcomes to begin with. If Web3 is supposed to be the future, shouldn’t we strive to aim for something better?
To be fair, there’s a reason why Hollywood still continues to attract creatives even in the information age, despite its inefficiencies, rampant scandals/corruption, and very high failure rate -- they have the actual institutional support that artists are looking for. This includes: talent agencies, management companies, distribution networks, bookings (for gigs/events), royalties systems (performance rights organizations), artist development, legal funds/protections, unions, etc. etc. If it means having more time to work on their craft, then most artists will happily share a % of their work in exchange for the peace of mind that these services can bring.
None of which the crypto ecosystem has any of right now if we’re being honest about it, really. A lot of Web3 proponents talk about disrupting the old industry, but often without doing proper research on what made the old guard successful -- many have thrown the baby out with the bath water and unfortunately have completely missed the point of why the blockchain was created to begin. For Web3 to be successful it’s not necessary for anyone to come up with entirely new worlds -- all it really needs to do is make a scalable version of what existed prior, using smart contracts to automate the portions of the model that Hollywood failed to keep up with in recent years.
The chaos, loss of quality, and lack of coherency we see in the mainstream media these days is obvious and not subtle -- a sign that the machine isn’t working like it used to. Prior to the internet there were maybe a few A-tier acts here and there with limited broadcasting channels -- most of which was manageable by a few people processing the paperwork manually, by hand. But today we have millions of individuals watching millions of individuals in a very decentralized way; but without the infrastructure itself having become decentralized. (And tragically, artists are the ones that end up getting the short end of the stick with these deals, pretty much every time.) Hollywood had many opportunities to scale their existing systems to make it more “compatible” with the digital age, but has largely failed to do so -- which is where Web3 comes in, at least in theory.
We know that the demand for this type of back-end infrastructure is already there, because multi-channel networks is what a lot of digital content creators turn to when they get overwhelmed with administrative tasks after they gain a small amount of success. While the tech-utopians stick to their script of DIY, the market itself is already addressing a dire need for creatives -- this is the ladder that Web 3 needs to (re-)build, if it really wants to be of any real help to the many artists out there who have largely been left stranded by both the old and the new. And what do most of them want? More time to work on their craft.
In short, all Web3 platforms has to do is make a blockchain-powered version of an MCN and it will automatically become successful because the demand for it is already there. Easier said than done, of course -- because this isn’t a technical problem, it’s a people problem. In the “winner take all” economy of Web2, negotiation, compromises, and the idea of building trust wasn’t exactly emphasized; but in Web3, it will be the only thing that will actually make it sustainable. Isn’t this the “Byzantine Generals Problem” that the blockchain claimed it has solved? Why aren’t we seeing more of it in action, yet? Old habits die hard, I suppose.
To be fair, there are many people in Web3 who know what needs to get done who are working in good faith to try to solve these problems -- building a network of trustworthy partnerships isn’t easy and is likely to take a very long time before it gets streamlined, realistically speaking. But folks like myself invest and support NFTs, DeFi orgs, DAOs, etc. because we still see the potential in the technology making the world a more hospitable place for all of the creatives out there.
I do wish, however, that the mainstream discourse on these issues were more nuanced than it is now because I rarely see anyone talking about these details in the media or social media. Hollywood doesn’t want to talk about it because it would mean being transparent about how they actually operate, the tech industry doesn’t want to talk about it because it’ll mean admitting that they actually have no idea what they’re doing.
Artists have been fed a lot of false promises, BS, and money-making schemes throughout the entire existence of the web and are understandably skeptical of things come out of digital as a whole -- but if Web3 ends up building something that actually caters to the real needs of the creative class, I do believe that they will come flocking in numbers never before seen. But the details need to get right first -- and it needs to be more than just the empty promises of fame and fortune, promises that only works on the clueless and the naïve. When historians look back at this era and see what sorts of things were were producing, this is what they’re going to see. Is that what we really want?
--
One disturbing trend I’ve noticed since becoming an “internet native” is that the vast majority of narratives we see in the media tends to be existential, escapist, dystopian…if not outright apocalyptic. You’d think that a digital-native medium like video games would celebrate developing and emerging tech, but in the vast majority of cases, this is not true, either. (The last period of techno-optimism was in the 60s, probably.) So we’re living in a period now where we have technology basically everywhere, but are told not to trust it, to fear it, and to see it as part of our own ongoing demise. No matter how you cut it, I think most people would probably agree with me that this is not a healthy way for society to function.
If we’re to turn this attitude around, a lot of things have to be done on the backend to ensure that fair and equitable practices are the norm, not the exception. Only then, I think we’ll see start to see more stories of genuine optimism and joy start to emerge. But that’s the work that Web3 folks need to do, imo. I hope they’re up for the challenge.