Join Edge of NFT as we continue to scour the planet for the best of Web3. This episode is one that comes to you from our time in Austin, TX in early June 2022. Listen in as we get the latest intel and insights and bring them straight back to you. Today’s episode features some builders at MemeNFT, the special NFT marketplace built for traders and by traders. Jonathan DeLucia, Benjamin Schmidt & Daniel Moncada chime in to share their philosophy and why they’re amped about MemeNFT. After that, catch a chat with Tatiana DeMaria. She is an accomplished British/Lebanese songwriter, artist, musician, and producer. She is also the head of web3 at Nacci. Nacci harnesses the power of data storytelling, responsible capital, and unbridled innovation in the service of a radically different future.
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Edge Of Austin 2022, DCentral & Consensus: Tatiana DeMaria (Nacci), Plus Jonathan DeLucia, Benjamin Schmidt & Daniel Moncada (Meme NFT)
I’m a fanboy for a moment. Get to see Daniel again. Epic to be here with you and see you twice in one year. This is pretty amazing. Learn about what you have been up to and reveal a little bit of alpha for those reading at home about an exciting project. I have Daniel, Benjamin, and Jonathan here with me. Let’s start with you, Daniel. You have been a Web3 evangelist. You have been there. Talk to us a little bit about what was that a-ha moment where you got pumped about Web3 blockchain. How did you get into the space?
I like money and have a goal that I want to retire my mom ASAP. I’m with the MemeNFT. I’m the Chief Branding Officer. You asked me how did I get into MemeNFT and why.
Before MemeNFT, which we are going to go into depth about, I’m sure everyone wants to know more about it. What got you pumped about the space? What was that moment where you were like, “NFT, this is interesting?”
It’s new. I looked at it when NFT first came in 2017. When they started emerging, they came back from death. I looked at it almost like when Bitcoin first came out. There are many opportunities to be able to make some money and, hopefully, have some financial freedom. My two buddies, Ben and Jonathan, are all guiding to NFTs and always trying to help each other out. When there’s a call, we try to call each other, “What do you think about this?” We start doing the research. It’s how I got in.
Were you thinking about it from an entertainment industry perspective and some of the challenges with the old guard, if you will?
I think a little bit of both.
You got into it, met these guys, and now you are the Chief Branding Officer of MemeNFT. What got you excited to join this crew? We will learn more about it from Jonathan.
The main reason I love MemeNFT is that they are different. We call it the people’s marketplace because we are open to always taking whatever the community wants to put into the marketplace. The reason why I ended up getting here is that I used to promote projects here and there. I would do my research, read the white paper, go to their Twitter, go to their Discord if it was an NFT project, and try to do my due diligence with the developers, what projects they have been in, and all that good stuff. Still, with all that research that I used to promote, I was never in the rooms with them to see what they were talking about behind the scenes and besides what they were telling the public.
I was not baking. In MemeNFT, I am one of the executives. I see everything that’s happening. I know what’s happening. For example, with the marketplace, we need the alpha. I knew that was going to happen. It’s the most beautiful process that we had to go through. It was a long process but the fact that I was able to oversee everything is more valuable to me than getting paid by promoting.
It’s the knowledge and feeling part of something. It’s knowing what’s under the hood.
Before, I didn’t have a say, so in another project. It was like, “You are going to promote. You are going to do this.”
MemeNFT: MemeNFT takes in the entire community’s input on what they want on this platform. MemeNFT makes sure that they’re adding things of value that traders actually want in a marketplace.
That’s hard as a creator and actor. I’m sure when you have been doing shows and everything, you got to provide input. Those brothers didn’t come about on paper from the writers. What were some of the character development you did? Was there a certain scene or part of the show that you had some meaningful input into?
The one that came out right out of the top of my head was an explosion, Breaking Bad episode 301, No Más. That was my second day on set. We had to do the explosion with the truck. My brother and I were known out there in the world that we had been around the block. We were in prison. We changed our lives and everything. Before that, we were young, dumb, and we made mistakes.
We went to prison, came out, and started changing. My brother started channel getting my head about the scene because Bryan Cranston came, and he gave us the description of what he wanted for us to do in the scene, “It was one explosion, one truck. Please, can you guys not flinch if you can.” Some people flinch. Everybody flinches.
My brother wasn’t along to death and everything but he was not super nice about it. He was like, “Motherfucker.” He started barking at me. He’s trying to get me in the zone. He started telling me, “We do shit every day like walking in the fucking park.” I’m not going to lie. I was a little bothered. He was trying to do that out of love. It was my brother, tough love.
He started drilling and telling me, “Remember the one time that happened when we got attacked. We got hit with machetes and all that. Remember getting the zone. We do this all the time.” When the explosion went off, we kept going. I took the drug out of that cigarette as if I was walking in the park, and there was shit flying all over the place. It was boots on fire, flying like a tire. The thing is, we didn’t know that it was going to happen. We thought that it was going to be an explosion.
We started seeing shit flying. I remember before the scene, my brother told me, “Anything, do not turn around. Something hits you or you catch fire, keep going.” If you are in danger, the fire officers and paramedics are going to come and put the fire out, and maybe you will start rolling on the ground if that happens.
I know you guys got a military background on your team. We have a cofounder that went to West Point. There are a lot of metaphors in what you shared in terms of Web3. The durability takes to build in this space and endurance. These things don’t just happen. I would love to learn a little bit more about the genesis of MemeNFt. Jonathan, which Daniels joined the team. What is this all about? Why do we need another NFT marketplace? There’s got to be a reason. Once you are in with all these marketplaces, you decide to do this. I want to understand what’s behind MemeNFT.
That’s the question that started this whole thing. Why another marketplace? We dubbed ourselves, as Daniel said, “The people’s marketplace by traders for traders.” What that means is we take in the entire community and input on what we are doing on this platform. We make sure that we are adding things of value that people as traders want in a marketplace, whether it be analytics or building a trading platform where you can trade an NFT with somebody else on the platforms. You don’t have to rely on the trust that they are going to send it after you send it. That are a couple of examples.
How’s that different than MemeNFT? I can buy someone’s NFT. What’s the mechanic?
This is like, me and you want to trade an NFT with each other. OpenSea doesn’t do that. This is peer-to-peer trading.
At the same time, it’s like, “I like your Ape, and you like my Ape, done.”
This is where people get rugged all the time. We are developing a portion of our platform where you can put one person who puts up their NFT. One person puts it together. It goes intermediary wallet, double checks, and sends them out to the person. That’s one innovation that we are working on but we are mainly focused on the community.
When I go to these events, we typically don’t have booths. We have a booth at this event but typically, I don’t believe in doing the booth. I would rather walk around with a backpack, a microphone, and a speaker, talk to people and say, “What marketplace do you use now?” Almost 9 times out of 10, I hear the words BrokenSea or they are getting into looks rare or something like that. They are talking about OpenSea in a negative aspect.
With how close and intimate we are in this space and how love you Web3 is, how are we settling for anything less? Why aren’t we using a platform that we want to use? That’s where MemeNFT comes into play. We’ve got plans for gamification, talking about account levels, badges on your account, and a 3D box with clothes you will be able to add to it. We are doing a lot of things at MemeNFT.
The first thing that we are doing is we are proving ourselves to the community. I am personally in Twitter space for ten hours a day talking about MemeNFT and getting other projects to onboard with our platform because I believe in that grassroots marketing that, “I’m the CEO, let me show you what we are about.” I lead them to it, and they can make their own determination.
Customer discovery, listening to your customer, and evolving. Those are important in any business, especially Web3. Do you have a formal process for customer input or is it more informal now? Is there going to be a governance structure around different decisions with the platform?
Now it’s pretty informal but we are building a ticketing system or whatnot for bringing in feedback and onboarding. We mainly use Telegram because our token on our platform is Binance Smart Chain. We are seven chains.
I noticed that. That’s a lot of chains. Let’s go through them.
Ethan, Polygon, Fantom, KuCoin.
KuCoin has its own chain.
It’s always very well but we have it. We are going to be adding Pulse as soon as it comes out.
MemeNFT: The problem with OpenSea is that they’re making so much money and they’re doing nothing with it. They’re not improving on their platform which is a disservice to the people using it.
We have the CEO of Fantom on the show, Michael Kong.
Fantom is one of our launched platforms there.
That’s an emerging technology right there.
It’s a 2% fee across everything. We wanted to save our investors money because I feel one of the misses with OpeSea was they were making so much money and doing nothing to their platform, which is a disservice to the people using it. At least, if you are going to make billions of dollars, we are only now seeing them put money into their platform.
It should have been happening from the beginning. We built a custom-wide protocol contract. Everything was built from scratch, 721 a minting contract. If you are a new artist coming up, you are going to get that gassy fishing contract, loading your collection on our platform. We are the first ones to integrate it into a marketplace.
We also have Benjamin here. How would you describe yourself in relation to MemeNFT? What drew you to the project?
I have been in crypto for several years. During the pandemic, I saw NFTs as something that you could trade and flip like cryptos but there’s the blockchain technology that proof of ownership is huge. I wanted to find a utility within the NFT that was like crypto that I could make money that felt secure.
It had more of a trading experience.
I was like, “Let me find a marketplace that’s coming up that I can input, give information, build with and grow a community. We can make this huge. The people’s marketplace comes along, and it’s a token with scalability because, in OpenSea, if they wanted to upgrade their contract, they got to de-list everything, which is going to cost so much gas. In MemeNFT, they built it on the proxy so they can build and scale it up as they are going. As more blockchains are coming, we can add them on, and no problem. It’s OpenSea on steroids to me.
To be an early investor with a token on it and able to have a say, “This is what traders want.” Can we do this? Can we make it happen and be able to see these guys, their faces, their docs. I’m not dealing with avatars. I’m dealing with real people, real companies, LLC, international, and here in America. They are doing it the right way. They are taking their time to make sure everything is secure like everything in the military needs to be secure, and so does crypto and DeFi. It was a no-brainer for me to ape in.
I know you guys have a lot going on, and you got to get back on stage soon. I would love to know a little bit about what’s coming up on the roadmap? How can folks get involved? How can they participate in the community? What opportunities are there and available for folks that want to collaborate with you guys?
A lot of the stuff I was saying is in our V2 version of the platform, so V1 launched now, and that’s basic like OpenSea via sell and trade. A lot of the features we talk about in the V2 are part of the roadmap.
When’s that coming?
That’s looking like the next several months in 2022 for the V2 portion. There’s still a lot of development that needs to be done on that side.
It takes time to make the sausage.
I didn’t realize it before I came in here. OpenSea took four years to build that platform. That’s a long time. We’ve grown a lot since that platform was created. A lot of the stuff that we are doing is newer in the space, and we can only get better.
What collaborations do you have coming up, and how can folks get involved if they want to collaborate?
We have a launchpad service. We can, from A to Z, launch your project for you. I talked about this on a panel but if you do a launchpad service with us, we require a minimum six months promotional period. If you launch with us, you have to promote your project for at least six months or there could be legal consequences because we are not trying to promote rug pulls. An awesome celebrity partnership we have coming out in 2022. It is a collection from Jamie Kennedy, who is a star of Malibu’s Most Wanted. He was in Scream. We got him locked in under contract. We have our artists doing his artwork and everything. That’s going to be fun.
I’m sure Daniel, with all the folks that you know, you are working on some fun stuff.
I was trying to bridge the gap, try to bring them into the space, and be able to help them. I educate them. I teach them the ways like the way I learned. I learned the hard way. I got rug so many times.
MemeNFT: MemeNFT is giving what traders want because they’re not dealing with avatars. They’re dealing with real people and real companies. They’re doing it the right way securely.
I was admitted on stage. I got rugged. I lost a clone act.
If you haven’t got rugged, you are not even for the crypto. We don’t want the new people to come in and get a bad taste in their mouth and be discouraged like, “It’s freaking crypto and NFT suck. I got rugged. I lost all my money. I would rather leave it in the bank and collect $0.70 per year or something.” We are going to try to help people when they come onboard to educate and teach them the ways that it’s not about cash, money, praise, and grabbing each goal. We got to have six months and be able to put in the work that they need to, not just collect and bounce.
I always tell people it is important. I’m saying this, “I’m a huge advocate for training people the proper way, at least the basic fundamentals when you bring them in.” How many people do you know? They bring a friend in, and that friend relies on them. They don’t even know when to sell. They don’t know what they should be buying. They are not paying attention. They’re relying on you. We got to get away from that. If you bring someone in, it’s like, “You are in this. I’m going to teach you. This is a wallet. This is what you look for. Don’t connect it to random sites.” You have an obligation to that individual to teach them the basics, to prevent them from fraud, and you let them fly on their own.
The hat says it all MemeNFT.com. What’s the Twitter handle?
Is it the same Telegram?
Telegram is the same.
It’s such a pleasure. Congrats on getting this far. It’s a journey. Good luck with everything. Thanks for joining us for a little while.
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I’m excited to be here on day one in Austin, 105 degrees, with Tatiana DeMaria, who got off stage and is hanging out with us for a little while. She’s coming to LA. We will get to hang out some more. I’m super excited to delve into all the cool stuff you have been doing in Web3, music, what you are up to now, and your new role. We could start with a little introduction of yourself and how you got into this war world of Web3. It’s a pretty big deal because you were an early pioneer and have also been in the music space since you were eighteen.
I was fifteen.
Talk to us about your journey.
I started writing music young. I wrote my first album when I was about 15 or 16. I got lucky with that. In England, I was independent but we had a couple of charting singles. For me, it was my passion for writing music and touring it. It’s something I’ve always felt compelled to do. I love music. I have synesthesia, and a few forms, which I figured out later in life was why I was always pulled back to it.
With that said, I’m a touring musician. That has been my main career my whole life. I have been lucky to be able to own my music, own my masters, and build independent businesses. I was lucky to be approached by some labels at different points in my career. I found that what was right for me has been my path so far. Over the years, I’ve built some businesses around music.
That’s a big deal owning your masters at such a young age and realizing that is the path that gives you the greatest empowerment. Talk to us a little bit more about how that came to be because that is unusual.
When I was a kid, my mom was afraid of driving on the motorways. Getting to a band rehearsal was hard. I remember feeling I was dependent on other people to make music. I had to go to rehearsals with my bass player, and drummer or we couldn’t be a band. I decided to write music and was like, “As long as I’m writing the songs, I can be free to do what I want.” I’m writing all the music. I own all the songwriting and the publishing.
I got lucky that I got picked up. I had a wonderful manager, and people liked the songs. I started doing production, and very young, I signed a publishing deal. I found that there was so much red tape. If I wanted to, there were people coming to me with opportunities. I was excited about it but the publishers were like, “No.” There was a lot of freedom taken away. With that said, I fell into it. I managed to get out of that publishing deal because I wasn’t happy.
I owned all my stuff and thought, “I don’t want to go back to that dynamic where people are stopping me from putting my music out there.” In addition, I was lucky. I had a manager very young, and he retired from management for personal reasons, and all is good now, touch wood. I took on management when I was about 17 or 18. I accidentally was running all the business and everything we were doing. It was a tremendous amount of work but at the same time, I valued the freedom so much.
I knew, “Great. I can do this and that tour if I want.” There was no label or publisher to put any red tape around it. I love that freedom. When labels came to us, I was lucky to be in a position where we had two charting singles in the UK. We were getting wonderful tour opportunities. When we were on tour, we were selling enough merch to be making a sustainable income.
At that point, I’m like, “If I signed to a label now, what’s going to happen?” Now I own everything. If I have my album, I go and sell it for $10. That $10 goes back to me and my band members in building the business. If I sign with the label, they will give me $50,000 upfront, $100,000 or whatever, to own the album forever. If I want a tour, I have to buy it back off them for $5 a piece and sell it. Those $10 now get split.
MemeNFT: As a songwriter, you don’t have to be dependent on other people. As long as you’re writing the songs, you can just be free to do whatever you want. Unlike being in a band or being with a publisher.
I was like, “For $50,000, $100,000, $150,000, or $200,000, it doesn’t seem worth it to give up the rights to the album because, on tour, I was making $100,000 in two months alone, selling merch.” Doing the maths, I accidentally ended up in a situation where I was like, “It keeps making sense.” To conclude that thought, for record deals, every great in some ways, at certain stages for musicians to give exposure but for the majority of the time, they are not ideal. I was like, “I don’t want to be in a situation where a label is stopping me from releasing my music or that I’m completely beholden to someone else.”
What was their pitch? What’s their pitch to you, the labels, when you already own the rights to everything? They are trying to do what? What are they selling?
The point I was trying to get to is VC. Labels are much like VC. They will sign ten artists and sign them all on varying basis and stats. The deals are not exciting deals for the artist because they need to have one artist that may pop off. Those proceeds will cover the nine that didn’t pop off, which means the deal has to be all-encompassing, and they have to take so much from that one artist that might pop off to cover everything else.
That one artist says, “You are taking a lot.” They are like, “We are investing a lot. We are taking a lot. We would like a certain amount of control.” Unless you are big or established and have a lot of leverage, there isn’t such thing as a good label deal in the sense that it doesn’t mean that the deal is going to be bad and you won’t have tremendous success. If you look at it on paper, it is a setup where the label will take a lot and have a lot of control. You have to be ready for that or have a certain exposure ready where you can have a bit of leverage to maneuver your career as well.
A lot of people in the music space think that Web3 is revolutionary and changes the relationship between artists and their fans. What was your first exposure to blockchain and Web3? What was your reaction when you saw these potential ingredients with that background that we heard?
In 2012, I was between touring dates and in England. I tried to buy a Bitcoin. It was going to the red telephone books under the train station and sending your money to Japan. You get your keys six weeks later or whatever it was. It was like, “Fuck me. It’s complicated.” A few years later, my brother got into blockchain.
It has been a hum. I’m learning about blockchain and evolving. As I had been building these businesses in music, I was brought into Nachi.io. It’s a tech company. Data for good and data in a tech company. They were building out awesome tech in culture and entertainment. A tech that is fantastic for artists to help market and automate the entrepreneurial side of things. I went and started working in that during the pandemic and right before the pandemic, which was great because we weren’t touring. I was doing soundtracks for movies and working on tech.
This isn’t before NFTs lit up.
It has been interesting being there to watch that. We have been building tech to help that space. As I was in Web3 and started talking and posting about it, more NFTs started to creep up. In January 2021, I was like, “Who wants these NFTs?” No one on my Instagram responded. I was like, “What a fuck. I think it’s smaller than I thought.” In March 2021, I was like, “That’s it. They’ve blown up. Everyone knows NFT. We are here now.”
That’s when we started our show in March 2021.
Musicians have become entrepreneurs in a business that doesn't pay very well. Click To Tweet
It has been an interesting process but it was a natural extension from being an independent musician, focusing on different ways to monetize because streaming pay is little. To build your fan base, you are now spending money on Facebook ads, which again is money out of your pocket. To tour is expensive. To have your van, gas, and people are expensive, and to create merch and sell it.
Musicians have become entrepreneurs in a business that doesn’t pay well. All your time as a musician is spent building your business, managing people, and creating an ordinate amount of content to get millions of fans so that you can make millions of plays, which will pay little. It means you need many plays to make a livable wage.
Musicians are spending a lot of time running a business. They’ve lost the time to create and be in that mindset. That’s a pain point a lot of musicians face that a lot of people who aren’t musicians don’t fully acknowledge. You will go in spaces, and musicians are like, “All I do is try and find ways to post online, to grow my fan base. Otherwise, it’s Twitter ads. There’s a rub.” That rub and my natural evolution are what led me to build my music in Web3.
There’s a big educational piece of this for other artists. How do you engage with artists? How do you bring them into the fold?
I started a crypto TikTok, @TDMCrypto. It’s my initial crypto. It was in earlier 2021, and I was trying to answer questions so that every dinner party didn’t become a blockchain thesis. It ended up blowing up a little bit. I found that when I was posting on my Instagram, and no one was responding. I was like, “I would like to start talking about it and bring people in.”
For the last several years, I have been consulting for artists, companies, and musicians over moving into Web3. A lot of questions artists have been around, number one, “What do I NFT? What the fuck do I start NFTing? Is it my song? Is it a ticket?” Every artist has a different way of engaging their communities. Some NFTs are more right for some artists than others. In consulting in that department, I have been doing for several years. It’s important to find that piece for you. The second thing is, “How many are you creating? What’s the price point? Where are you NFTing it, the kind of crypto side?” The third thing is, “How do you sell it to a crypto native community?”
We have been building a music platform over the last several years that helps solve a lot of those problems. Number one, I’ve got the TikTok platform, where I’m open and posting things. If people want to ask questions, I’m always there. Number two is consulting and helping artists on a one-to-one basis. Number three is building this huge platform called SuperFanatix.com. What we’ve done is we’ve built an all-encompassing platform that makes it a lot easier for the artists to figure out what they want to NFT and how to connect with their community.
We focus on taking care of the entire Web3 ecosystem, not just the asset, the artist in Web3. We also help onboard people, and we’ve made it easy for the consumer. You don’t have to be a crypto native. It’s about finding. If you think about it, your 1,000 true fans. You could have a brand new fan or a diehard fan listening to you on Spotify. They both generate the same royalties to those listening.
When you have these 1,000 true fans who want to connect with you on a deeper level, and you want to connect with them, you realize you don’t need 6 billion fans to have 6 billion plays on Spotify to make enough money to live. Reduce it, focus on these people who love what you are doing, and create interesting access for them. Create interesting pieces of art and interesting events, build your community and focus on the people who love you. At that point, you can sell directly to people and create NFTs.
What you are getting is it’s back to the fan club model. It’s up to you to give value but you are giving value anyway by creating content all day. You are building your brand anyway by creating content and sending all your fans to Spotify or TikTok, where you don’t monetize. Fans who can bet on their beliefs get in early, discover musicians and say, “I want to buy that NFT.” You could sell 50 NFTs at 0.05 Eth and make more than you would, getting a million plays on Spotify. To get a million players on Spotify, if you are a growing artist, you must do so much content with Facebook ads to get enough people to get you there. It could take you several years and a lot of money if your stuff isn’t popping off and going viral.
MemeNFT: SupaFanatix is an all-encompassing platform that makes it easier for artists to figure out what they want to NFT. They focus on taking care of the entire web ecosystem, not just the asset but the artist in Web3.
You have to collaborate with other creators and other influencers. It’s diluting the value that you get at the end of the day. You have been in the trenches as an artist and a consultant. You think you are building out this platform. There is a lot of music NFT platforms growing. You get this ecosystem graphic every once in a while. It’s bigger and bigger every day. What are the distinguishing characteristics of your platform that you guys are building? Why do you think those attributes are important?
Some of them I can’t talk about publicly yet as it’s rolling out soon. I’m excited about them. The other aspect is that, as a musician, there are a lot of platforms, even in Web2. Using Patreon, for example, is focused. A lot of platforms build with the platform in mind. We’ve created a platform where you, as the artist, can come to our platform.
We’ve given you the platform you can monetize and make videos, etc. It’s another platform for an artist to sign-up. It’s another whole endeavor. You have to bring all your fans to it, and it’s a whole thing. When I look at these music platforms, I think there are a lot of great Web4 platforms out there, and musicians are already benefiting and changing their lives. That’s fucking awesome.
As a musician, I haven’t yet found a platform that I feel does the things I want them to do as a musician. It’s not as easy for me as a musician. It doesn’t take care of some of the things I want as a musician. I still feel that barrier to entry where it’s on me. It’s a still as a musician, do this tremendous amount. There’s still a tremendous amount of work, no matter what you do but we’ve found ways to help. We’ve also found ways to make it easier for musicians.
The way you use it is music native. It’s for musicians, as in terms of the things that annoy musicians or don’t annoy musicians. There are a lot of platforms that also do that. That’s not saying that the platforms are tremendously difficult. There are plenty of great platforms that make it easy for musicians. We’ve built with a slightly different perspective in mind and do something slightly different.
Building from a place of feeling that need, feeling that problem, and experiencing it firsthand. Based on our experience, it tends to be a great place to build from because this is painful. Being able to solve that as the person that feels it intimately yields good results in our experience. It is a great place to start.
They got some West Point grads, and we all know what those West Point grads are capable of.
Our founder is a West Point grad. I love that you went to West Point, and I have to connect you two.
When these labels are pitching, you are trying to get you to come over to the dark side. What’s their pitch? How are they convincing people or trying to convince people to come to their side?
Historically, labels and managers took the business and the financial weight off artists. Artists could focus on the creative, which is a different mind space. Everybody knows that when you are doing something creative, you are in the zone and flow. If you constantly have to be in a business mindset, you don’t have the time or even get in the space to create your art and be immersed in it.
In history, labels would be able to fund artists’ careers, and managers would help manage their business. That created the space for the artists to be the artist. That’s historically what’s happened. When you have a label come in with a big amount of money, they also have a lot of leverage within the music industry. They can say, “We will take your song. They will call radio stations and be able to hook up different things and be able to get your stuff played on the radio. They can help you explode and go to the next level.
The problem is over time when artists make less money on the music, and the streaming royalties pay less, for example. If you get a million players on Spotify and you make $3,600. Think about the fact that then you split that two ways with someone else who wrote the song, and you split the master 2 or 3 ways, and the label owns it.
The label sitting may be going, “How many millions of plays do our artists have to get before it’s a viable deal for us?” Managers make 20% of what the artists make. Over time, what’s happened is that labels have stopped taking artists from the ground up because it’s expensive, and there isn’t as much income for them to sustain and build that. Managers have also said, “I don’t want to work with an artist that’s small that my 20% will be non-existent. Artists aren’t getting paid. I’m getting 20% of a small amount. Is it worth my time and energy?”
What that’s left is the artist in the position has to build their entire business and be the entrepreneur, the CEO, the social media manager, the social media creator, the people manager, and the tour booker. You get an agent but the agent is like, “You are not selling enough tickets.” You could have a substantial community and still struggle.
At this point, artists have to get big and on their own before people will come in and say, “It’s worth our involvement and our time because now the money is worth it.” There is an element to a label or a manager taking that business pressure off you, taking that financial pressure off you, and saying, “We are going to fund your tour. Isn’t it great if we can throw all this money at you? You can now tour and go back to being creative.”
As much as that’s a lovely offer, what’s also happened is the income is low. They end up having to take a lot of control over what you do. They can tell you, “We need you to have a TikTok viral moment. We are not putting your record out. You don’t have enough fans.” You create your record and sitting there going, “The label won’t release it.”
There are pros and cons but I think the best position to be in for artist labels, and Spotify still exists. NFTs don’t change that. This entire group of 300,000 independent artists who have communities are on Spotify and are unsigned instead of having to change their entire lives to be fully entrepreneurial and post all this content all day.
If they have 50,000 to 100,000 followers and they have 500 super dedicated fans, they can build an entire life and sustainable income with 500 fans or 1,000 fans. If 1,000 spend $100 on you over the course of a year. They buy a hoodie, a T-shirt, and a concert ticket. You can make $100,000. You have to invest a lot of that because music, touring, and merch production are expensive but in conclusion, the upside to a label or a manager coming in gives a ton to an artist what they want, which is the time and energy to create. Most artists are not entrepreneurial-minded and don’t want to be.
What you conveyed is important. I don’t know that I’ve heard anybody break it down in such a distinct and concise way for an artist or anybody that maybe isn’t an entrepreneur, that hasn’t gone through the ups and downs and bootstrapped a company to success. These are important points. I appreciate you sharing it.
The thing that gets missed with musicians is that think about any full-time entrepreneur. It’s a lot of work. Think about a full-time entrepreneur, and you also have people potentially building the product. When you are a musician, you are the product, you build the product, you market the product, and you are the entrepreneur. It is a lot.
MemeNFT: Labels have stopped taking artists from the ground up because it’s very expensive and there isn’t as much income for them to sustain that and build that.
People who are musicians, when I’m saying this, people empathize and understand. I know that when you are not in music, it can be hard to see sometimes. It’s like, “Whatever. Social media is free. Keep posting.” It’s great and grows that way. It’s a different mindset. It is time-consuming. A lot of musicians are trying, and algorithms are squashing it. They are like, “I can’t grow my following when struggling.”
The best situation to sign to a label is when you have a fan base or following. When you are able to have a deal with a label, where you are able to have enough leverage to negotiate some creative freedom into it and have your own terms, that’s why I often recommend it to the smaller artists. If you can have someone passionate label, they say, “I want to sign you, and I’m going to do amazing.” You signed to the label, and several months later, they lost their job. You are now in a system with a tight contract and stuck in that label system. It can be a wonderful and a detrimental thing.
We oftentimes have artists of all types come to us and want to learn. We can now point them towards this content as a crash course and the differences between Web2 and Web3 as a musician. Thank you so much. We are looking forward to keeping tabs on all the cool stuff you are doing, the secret platform, and what features it has. How can folks track what you are up to and stay in touch on the platform side?
Anything @TatianaDeMaria, my name, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify for music, etc. Also, TikTok, @TDMCrypto, is where I focus a lot more on my crypto content. Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are the best places to hit me up for anything Web3-related. Our platform is called SuperFanatix.com. Feel free to head over there, and put your email in.
There are a few features I’m excited about but it’s a music NFT platform that helps artists and their followings enter this space with a bit more ease. Hopefully, I’m going to eliminate some resistance points but I’m excited to share more about that. It has been such a pleasure chatting with you both, pulling all this out of my ass. Musicians out there, doing your own research, everything in life depends on the individual, whether you are building a business, looking for a label deal, or doing NFTs, it is about looking at your own business, your own setup, and going, “What will work for my community and me?”
Tatiana, we appreciate it. We would love to have you back on the show when you have some more information to share with us and Super Fanatix and all the great things you are doing.
Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure.
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