WEBVTT - Why Do Artists Need Labels When They Have NFTs? 0:00:02.560 --> 0:00:06.360 I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg News, 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.400 and this is Bloomberg Crypto at Daily Bloomberg. I heard podcast. 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:25.599 It's Tuesday, August nine. Venture capitalists and certain people in 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.200 the music industry are enthusiastic about the potential for artists 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:32.400 to benefit from technology like the blockchain and like n 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.720 f t s, but there isn't universal agreement, especially among 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:41.040 musicians themselves, that any of this is necessarily a good idea. 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:43.760 What are the big trends and what are the big 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.199 areas of disagreement, Bloomberg reports. Lucas Show, who's based in 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:49.720 l A, joins me to continue our coverage of crypto 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.640 and the music industry. Upside with some of these newer 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:56.320 technologies is that you can build communities and maybe give 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:03.200 fans a sense of greater ownership. Lucas, what brings you 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.640 to New York. I'm seeing my family mostly out on 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:10.280 the North Fork, a long island that sounds very pleasant 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:14.039 and frankly, more fun than trying to convince people that 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:16.640 they are misunderstanding and f t s and music, which 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:18.280 is what we're going to try to do here. No 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.200 No Crypto discussion on the North Fork. My relatives they're 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.240 not up on it. Well, you can send them this 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:26.800 episode and change their minds. But you have spent quite 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:28.960 a lot of time in l A and other places 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.480 really getting into the nuts and bols of like the 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.920 business of entertainment, and you've written and reports it on 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.120 various stories around. Well, I would say like there's kind 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:45.080 of a theme of how people are misunderstanding the infrastructure 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.560 of creativity and the network that talent, whether that talent 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.000 is a musician or a Hollywood actor, are tapping into. 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:56.680 And I'd love for the purposes of this episode to 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.280 kind of start there. Right, people are hearing if t 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.000 s are going to solve music full stop. What is 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:07.880 your response to statements like that, Well, there's long simmering 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:12.440 frustration resentment in the creative industries, but especially in music, 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.960 that you have a small number of largely executives, largely 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:22.240 white male executives, who control the industry and they have 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.520 for for most of its existence, extracted a lot of 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.520 wealth from the work of other creative people. So you've 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.720 had famous examples like a prince who referred to his 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.320 kind of record contracts or referred himself as being a 0:02:34.320 --> 0:02:36.560 slave and a record contract and broke off on his own. 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:42.840 On December thirty one, my publishing contract with Warner Chappo expired, 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:48.280 thus emancipating the name I was given before birth Prince 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:53.480 from all long term restrictive documents. I will now go 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:55.760 back to using my name instead of the symbol I 0:02:55.800 --> 0:03:00.360 adopted as a means to free myself from all undesirable relations. 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:07.160 There's always been this desire for the artist to gain 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.480 more power, and I think any way of doing so 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.080 is probably for the net benefit of the creative class. 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:15.720 It would be great if we didn't only have a 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:20.800 few gatekeepers who controlled everything, but decentralizing that power is 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:25.280 much harder than people realize, and in some cases not 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:29.720 good because there are benefits to having kind of infrastructure 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.079 that most people use. And so I think there's a 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:35.360 lot of promise in what cryptocurrencies and n f t 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:37.840 s and the blockchain can do for music, but how 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.440 it will actually be executed is still a little bit 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.480 fuzzy to me. We've seen some pretty big names get 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:47.320 really excited about music, n f t s, music, and blockchain. 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:51.000 I'm thinking here like Snoop Dogg, Steve Aoki, These are 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:55.520 people who have created their own platforms or have argued 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.120 for the importance of music n f t s. And 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.560 then you have venture capitalist jumping on board as well, 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.000 who are willing to pour a lot of money into 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:07.320 these projects. They're willing to, you know, really back something 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:10.440 that we're kind of still figuring out what exactly the 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.280 best use for blockchain is in music. So I want 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:16.000 to ask you more specifically when you say benefits, like, 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:18.000 what are some of those benefits? What do I not 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:21.719 get if I, as a musician decide to release my 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.240 latest album as an n f T on a blockchain. 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:26.400 What am I missing out on? Well, for one, you're 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.000 missing out on most of the audience. Majority of music 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.799 listeners do not own cryptocurrency, do not use blockchain technology. 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:34.320 Most of them probably don't know what an n f 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:37.280 T is if they were pressed to define it. And 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.560 music is about ubiquity, you know, if you're Harry style 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:42.240 is bad, Bunny du a leap. But one of these 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:44.159 artists who has a new a new song out, you 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.320 want it to be everywhere to the whole reason why 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:48.920 they've never been able to quit a place like YouTube 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.159 or now at TikTok places that don't pay them a 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.159 lot of money, but introduce them to millions of fans. 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.599 So the upside with some of these newer technologies is 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.200 that you can build communities and maybe give fans a 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:03.640 sense of creator ownership in what you're doing, or in 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.200 some cases literal ownership. But you are niche casting and 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:09.880 not everyone wants to do that. Does this calculation really 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.320 depend on if you are literally bad money versus if 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.400 you're somebody who's up and coming. Yeah, I mean that. 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:17.919 That's definitely one of the reasons people are interested in 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.280 it because music royalties are incredibly complex, and it is 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.760 one area where the record labels and the music publishers 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:27.800 wield a lot of control and have often signed young 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.320 artists to rather extractive contracts that it takes them years 0:05:31.360 --> 0:05:33.920 and in some cases decades to get out of. And 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.800 so if there's a way for you to maybe use 0:05:36.960 --> 0:05:39.120 n f t s to raise money on your own 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.320 and then use the blockchain as a more transparent or 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:48.000 ledger of money, that in like in theory, sounds great 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:49.920 to these artists who are used to getting strewed over 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.000 by the record labels. Again, I think the challenge there 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:54.919 is how many people are you going to get to 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.200 transact that way? Only the artists at the very very 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:00.000 top of the industry make a lot of money from 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.040 streaming on Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube, and nobody 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.280 else makes money. Here's a clip from a recent episode 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.440 that we did about decentralizing the music industry. It featured 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.159 DJ and CEO of Royal Justin Blow. Justin have this 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:15.800 to say about a common misconception in the music industry. 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.280 I think a lot of people are stuck in the 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.680 illusion that music doesn't make money, um when in reality, 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.240 music generates quite a bit of money, especially on streaming, 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:28.520 which makes about of all recorded music income. It's just 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.120 the people who are capturing that income are our institutions 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.800 and the institutions that have owned rights over years and 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:35.760 years and years and years of time, decades of time. 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:37.560 What if the world was a bit different, What if 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.120 the public could actually own rights in their favorite artist music? 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:46.440 And so, if you are kind of an early adopter 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:48.400 that was able to kind of get a lot of 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.160 attention for what you're doing, you can probably make some money. 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:53.599 The question then becomes how scalable is that. One of 0:06:53.600 --> 0:06:56.680 the things you've also highlighted is people have always paid 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.320 for merch, right, they will go to a call certain 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.440 then save the tickets and they'll buy the T shirt, 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.680 or they'll buy the album cover, the vinyl printing, the 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:08.800 rare vinyl printing. Like, a lot of music and a 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.640 lot of fandom is about stuff, and some n f 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:13.080 t s are really trying to tap into that. So 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.520 when we spoke to Hannah Miller in another episode, she mentioned, 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.120 you know, she talks about the deal that the Chain 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.160 Smokers did with Royal where if you got one of 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:23.200 their n f t s you got access to merch. 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:25.600 It strikes me that this is a more complex way 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:27.440 to have access to merch. But are you hearing any 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.120 musicians say, actually this is benefiting them more than just 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.160 the T shirt sales. Well, the benefit has less to 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.640 do with the basics of the transaction. It is much 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.160 easier if you're if you're an artist, it's much easier 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:41.960 to have your label, your tour promoter, someone you hire 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:44.200 take care of the merch. Right. That's what a lot 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.320 of this debate over what role kind of crypto will 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:49.520 play in the music industry comes down to, is how 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.040 much as an artist do you want to control and 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.239 dictate and if you want to take ownership of that process. 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.720 The odds are that if you execute properly, you will 0:07:57.760 --> 0:07:59.720 make more because there will be fewer middlemen, or those 0:07:59.760 --> 0:08:02.440 middle men will work for you. And you can also 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:04.600 do so in a way with an an n f 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:08.440 T or with regular merch where you're you're interacting more 0:08:08.480 --> 0:08:12.400 directly with your fans. The issue then becomes do you 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:14.320 want to do that? There are a lot of forward 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:17.120 thinking artists who do like that, and you know, musicians 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:19.520 more so than almost any creative or sort of like 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:23.120 a small business, because everything stems from them. But the 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.640 vast majority of artists over time have have ultimately chosen 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.040 to have someone else do it for them right there, 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.520 like I'm going to be in the studio the shirts 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:33.640 or I want to I want to be in the 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.040 studio and then after you know, two months of recording 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:38.559 or whatever it is, I want to go hang out 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:40.440 on a beach for a bit before I tour. I 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:42.760 don't want to have to then spend a week or 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.200 two weeks coming up with the merch plan for my tour. 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.920 One of the other ways that we're seeing music record 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.440 companies artists interact with n f T s is through 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:57.720 intellectual property. So you've reported on an n f T supergroup, 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.280 tell us more about us. There is an executive at 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:05.079 at Universal Music Group, which is the biggest music company 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:09.559 in the world, named Selin Joshua, who is very zealous 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.720 about n f T s. I mean, all these record companies, 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:14.840 you know, they tend to have these digital divisions where 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:17.320 those folks are more forward thinking and looking to push 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:20.040 the envelope, and the people who actually run the companies 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:22.200 are more traditional because they see all the money just 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.199 coming in from streaming or record sales or whatever it is, 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:27.560 and they give their their team a little bit of 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:29.480 money or in some cases a lot of money to 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.320 fool around. And so Selene has both. She bought an 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:34.880 n f T for UMG, and she had this idea 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:42.320 to make a group that consisted of several board ape 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:44.800 n f T s. I assume listeners of this podcast 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.720 know what that is, probably more so than I, and 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:52.280 I think again, her idea was to try to facilitate 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.640 a community around this group. They did their kind of 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:58.839 first mint and raised a bunch of money that way 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.800 and have have built something of of a fan base 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.520 for this group. Before they've put out any music. When 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:06.320 she first told me about this, I was a little 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.400 confused because I'm a luddite when it comes to all this, 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.520 and I was like, okay, so, how like, who are 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.400 the band? Is this like a gorilla's situation? And how 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:16.280 are they going to make music? And what will the 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.840 visual aesthetic be? And so you know, she bristles at 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.439 comparisons to the Gorillas, but I do think it's fairly apt, 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:26.080 and that there will be people that you will literally yeah, 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.400 but there will be there will be people you don't 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:32.040 know behind the scenes making the music. The virtual manifestation 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.240 of this group will be these ape characters that she 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.800 has loaned or had worked out some commercial relationship with 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:43.240 the owner of those nfs. I have several questions, but 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:48.400 first I will start with why. Oh, I mean, if 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.880 you're one of these executives in a digital department and 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.160 trying to find a way to put your company into 0:10:55.240 --> 0:10:58.400 crypto in some real way, I think this is a 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.199 good experiment, I guess if you will, and it's it's 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:03.760 a way to test and improve a lot of different 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:07.160 theories that she and others have around how kind of 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.040 music and cryptocurrencies can play together, and if you form 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.840 it in the guise of of a group. It's certainly 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.800 a way to kind of get attention of fans, and 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:20.040 it's you're putting something together in a way that your 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:24.160 bosses understand, like Lucy and Graine who runs Universal Music Group, 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:26.360 like he understands what a music group is. Yes, I 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.760 would hope it seems fair and other than these being 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:33.760 you know, I P licensed apes. I think it was 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.920 like three board apes and a muse and ape and 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.720 some musicians behind them who will hopefully be making interesting music. 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:44.000 Is there anything blockchain native about it? So is it 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:45.800 that to listen to this you have to be on 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:48.120 one of these decentralized music platforms or is it that 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:50.600 too by the music you're going to be doing it 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:54.360 on a decentralized music platform. They haven't shared a ton 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:58.120 about the plans for that, in part because unless something 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:00.679 has changed in the recent few turn I don't think 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.600 it has. There's no music yet, and they're really slow 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:06.720 playing it because you know, when they first announced this group, 0:12:06.800 --> 0:12:13.800 it was near the zenith of cryptom November and obviously 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:16.480 some of the optimism has faded, and so I think 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:19.400 they're trying to properly navigate how best to position it. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:21.720 They may have waited a little bit on the minting 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:23.640 because it has now gone well, but they had to 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:26.320 time it correctly, and so I think a lot of 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.160 the rollout of this group will depend on what we're 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:32.280 seeing in cryptocurrency markets, and of course on the creative side. 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:43.720 Thank you, Lucas. We'll be right back if you are 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:49.360 in you know, artists discovery or whatever. Those kind of 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.480 specialized functions of things are in the same way that 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:54.559 sometimes like reporters just feel like they have to have 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:56.000 a lot of fans on Twitter in order to get 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.200 a job in media. Are you seeing any kind of 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:01.440 similar metrics for up and coming arts? Are people saying, hey, 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.280 it really helps if you have a crypto community or 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:06.880 aboard eight or is this still like a fairly niche 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.680 as you said earlier, like a niche casting proposition. I 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.040 think it's having a big following on social media is 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:15.679 the baseline. If you were to talk to someone who 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.000 works in artists in repertoire an R which sort of 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:20.160 the scouting and creative side of a lot of these 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.360 record labels, you know they are finding acts based on 0:13:24.000 --> 0:13:27.200 what data they're seeing in Spotify, streams, YouTube, and and 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:28.840 a lot of that's given by a lot of that 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.040 is given by TikTok exactly. So one of the things 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:34.120 that's different, I mean to go back to this idea 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:37.199 of decentralization putting more power in the hands of the artists. 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:39.640 One thing that has given artists more power is they 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.040 do get a following on social media with their music 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.559 often now before they get signed. It used to be 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:47.920 or often that you'd have to get lucky and hope 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:50.000 that some A and R would walk into some club. 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:52.160 You probably moved to a major city because that would 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:54.520 give you a higher probability of that they find you, 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:56.960 they sign you, and at that point you're nobody, and 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.559 so they have the leverage. But now if you're big artist, 0:14:00.600 --> 0:14:03.440 if you're a little nos X who goes viral out 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.240 of nowhere, you can dictate some of the terms because 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.960 everybody wants you, because you have proof that people like you. 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.880 And that has given artists more power to to dictate terms. 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:14.920 I mean, it's probably not the majority of cases, but 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.600 it's it's a good number. I haven't heard a lot 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:23.000 about music companies wanting people who have large followings in 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.000 the crypto community. I'm sure there are some examples of it, 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:27.880 but I think a lot of the big music companies 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:30.640 are also a little wary. A lot of the promise 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:35.360 of these new technologies has the potential to erode their power, 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.280 and so their job is to figure out how they 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:40.960 can kind of co opt it and not lose any 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:43.000 of that authority. I think this is a key point. So, 0:14:43.040 --> 0:14:44.880 just to go back what you said previously, you know, 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.480 TikTok is a deeply centralized platform, right, and so so 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.520 as Twitter is always Instagram. These are things that are 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.560 run by companies that are themselves trying to make plays 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.080 in music, and they have relationships with labels. And part 0:14:57.080 --> 0:14:59.160 of what we've heard folks say is well, in a 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.400 decentralized few, sure you could have fans that would be 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:03.520 listening to one thing over here and something else over here. 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:07.120 The centralization and scale are like opposite to each other, 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:10.480 and it strikes me as something that would be a 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.400 challenge for folks in A and R if they had 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:14.800 to go to fifteen different places to look at stream 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.760 data rather than a handful. Yeah, I have a question 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:20.320 on that note for you, though, Do you think so 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:22.640 you brought up those social media platforms, right, And they 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:27.760 started off by offering people a chance to speak too, 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.960 smaller communities of fans. Right. It didn't seem like the 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.320 big scale play at first, but then as people had 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.680 success and really connected people that way, more and more 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.880 users wanted to come onto Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Exactly. 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:47.040 Do you see a similar pattern of playing out in 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.160 the crypto space where it starts off as this decentralized 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:52.640 notion and then you just end up having three or 0:15:52.680 --> 0:15:55.120 four or five companies that really run that part of 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:57.400 the Internet. We are definitely seeing it in like the 0:15:57.440 --> 0:16:01.560 financial part of crypto, for better or for worse. But 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:03.320 I think the point on the social media side is 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:09.160 one there's like almost no fully functioning proof of concept. 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.120 Here is a desentralized social media platform based on crypto 0:16:12.200 --> 0:16:14.400 that is used by anybody who is not like a 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.480 gigantic crypto nerd. Right now, I always think of, like, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.800 what are people in my group text talking about Nobody's like, Hey, 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:23.880 I was on this one thing and I signed up 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:25.480 with my wallets and it's great and you should all 0:16:25.520 --> 0:16:27.520 get there. Like it has not even hit the point 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:32.240 at which those niche communities are bigger than micro micro niche. 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:35.120 What I do think will be interesting is if you 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.080 do start to sort of realize network effects outside of 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:40.840 the as you mentioned before, the tiny universe of people 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:42.640 who do have a crypto wallets and are comfortable in 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.760 these spaces, then we might be having a very different conversation. 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:47.280 And as I think we know because we've you know, 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.080 we've we've been in and around technology and entertainment. Sometimes 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.200 it's like slowly and then all at once, right, but 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:54.920 right now it is so early and so slow that 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:56.560 there just hasn't been a lot of evidence of it. 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:03.600 To your question, it would be a drag if you're 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.240 an an R to have to follow people along fifteen 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.320 different platforms. The part that I think has the most 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:12.240 potential to make things a little bit cleaner and easier 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:18.199 would be blockchain, because music royalties are so thorny. You know, 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:21.320 you have artists who will wait months or years to 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.320 get paid because everyone's trying to track it down. Now 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.400 that's all potential. Right now, I think it's also muddled, 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:30.800 and you'd have to get everyone on the same technology 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.600 that it could be years before this gets adopted, if 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.600 it ever does. But that's certainly one where there needs 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:39.119 to be a simplification of the payment process, and a 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.080 lot of startups have come around and try to do it, 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:42.879 and I don't think the industry was ready, and so 0:17:42.920 --> 0:17:45.199 then they had to change what they're doing. Right, So, 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:47.000 in an ideal world, you would be able to track 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:50.400 in real time on this public ledger how much money 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.280 you made from like record sales in Japan and the 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.920 concert tour that you did in Austin, and your merch yeah, 0:17:57.040 --> 0:17:59.040 and your share. I mean, songwriting is the one where 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:03.080 it gets really complicated because it gets split like oftentimes 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:06.320 fifteen different ways. And so any time your song has 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:08.760 listened to on any platform in the world, if you 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:11.399 had a ledger that could immediately put that into your wallet, 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:13.600 that would be would be much better than what happens 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:15.879 right now. It's got it. Well, thank you so much 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:17.680 for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for 0:18:17.680 --> 0:18:20.920 having you. Can find more of Lucas's reporting on the 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.080 Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot com and on Twitter. He's 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:31.159 at Lucas Underscore Shore. That's s H a W. On 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.560 the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto. While the link between 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.400 n f T prices and the prices of other tokens 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.160 or coins like Ether and Solana is not always straightforward. 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.200 It's true that non fungible tokens haven't been entirely spared 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.760 from the chill of this crypto winter. To better understand 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:50.800 n f t s and where they stand in crypto's 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:57.600 recent downturn, I'll be joined by Bloomberg Report Pratana Prakash. 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.159 This is Bloomberg Crypto, a daily podcast from Bloomberg and 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:04.160 I Heart Radio. For more shows from I Heart Radio, 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.520 visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:11.119 you get your podcasts. Send us your comments, questions, or 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:14.120 suggestions for the show to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:19.200 or find us on Twitter. We're at Crypto. The supervising 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.439 producer of Bloomberg Crypto is Vicky very Galina. Our senior 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:27.119 producer is Janet Babin. Our producer is Sharon Burriro, associate 0:19:27.160 --> 0:19:30.960 producer is Ty Butler. Desta wonder At is our engineer. 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:37.480 Original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm Stacy Marie Shmal. We'll 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:38.200 be back tomorrow.