Quick web2 background:
2019 was one of my best years as a musician. I released a series of music over the year, went viral in Paraguay, hit over 10 million streams on Spotify, got some bad ass sync placements. I was also invited to headline a venue at SXSW 2020. To close out the year I took part in a docu-series by SoundCloud where they connected diverse artists and challenged us to create a song in just a few hours after meeting each other for the first time. During the filming of the doc I was also releasing one song a week.
Licensing offers started to come in, I received solid placements on editorial playlists and got a ton of interest from distros and other labels to assist in their biz dev and growth plans. Even with all of the opportunities , throughout the entire year I never lost sight of the end goal. I continued to grow my career, as a self-sufficient, truly independent creator in search of cultivating something bigger than myself. I started to hit a ceiling where my work ethic was challenged because in my genre there’s only a few ways to achieve success;
- Capital (and lots of it)
- Sell your rights.
- Sell your rights. (starting to sound like an excuse right?)
Crowdfund + Social Token:
Traditional crowdfunding is non existent in my genre. (Tbh I couldn’t find a single crowdfund for a Reggaeton artist.) In addition, platforms like Bandcamp are not part of the release strategy and other ancillary revenues pretty much work for the top 1% of artists.
It goes back to my point above on capital formation or selling your rights. Reggaeton has found incredible market share with global acceptance over the last few years. Aspiring creators everywhere are looking to become the next big act, however, independence and ownership are not a part of the narrative in the way that signing to a label, finding an angel investor, or securing one big collaboration to “make it” are.
“Labels are essentially VCs with creative departments that take care of the initial costs necessary to “fund” a career using that “old money!” Or earnings from back catalog (legacy acts)”
Ok, now on to some good stuff.
While managing web2 music endeavors I set my sights on capital formation in a way that could bring value to supporters and backers using crypto tooling. At the time I wasn't too sure who would participate. I was also convinced I was on an industry blacklist and no label was going to fund me, while I preached independence to my small but loyal following, so what exactly did I have to lose? Here are a few platforms/methods I considered.
- Tokit
- Polymath
- Securitize
- Harbor
- SAFT (lol)
Consider this, exclusive recording agreements are so extractive I was willing to give up to 50% of equity, royalties or anything else necessary to make it happen. No startup would agree to some sort of 80/20 type deal, they might as well consolidate and sell.
This is why I naturally gravitated towards a platform like Rally to launch my social token and explore how I can build my first digital fan club in a manner that exchanged value rather than simply extracting it. In my crowdfund I described how I want to break the language and genre barrier in web3 and reach a broader audience. What drove that idea is that while most participants may not directly relate to my music, they can relate to my vision as an indie artist.
The crowdfund and strategy for this album was living in my head over the last two years but I put pen to paper in 2020. I had no idea I would do this through NFTs, or a social token. At the time (2018) it was just raising money on the blockchain. To start off 2021 I pitched Infinite to another platform and I was essentially turned down. This also demonstrates the importance of open and permission-less platforms such as Mirror where I made this all happen.
thank you for reading!
Learn more about the crowdfund here:
crowdfund://0x3B312DaD2e43A37f91eB3f73Cc71c3bba516D685?features=overview