In PART 1, we took you on a brief tour through musical history to explore how creativity always seems to find a way thanks to advances in format — often in spite of industry fuckery. In PART 2, we zoomed in on the front lines — the artists themselves — in order to examine how platforms like Spotify and TikTok are both helping and hurting them in their quest to find their audience.

Now, in the final PART, we take a look at the evolving fan - artist relationship — and try to divine where it could all be heading. 🔮

Through every industry shift, there’s one format that hasn’t lost any of its potency: the LIVE experience.

Before the record player was invented, playing live was the only option for musicians to make some coin, and despite all the technological advances since, the reality is that revenue from touring and being on the road can still be upwards of 80% -- sometimes 90% -- of a musician’s annual income. Meaning, it’s in the realm of live experience that most working musicians truly eke out a livelihood.

The live experience as we know it took a massive hit during the global pandemic, but it forced everyone to get creative – which has led to the complete reinvention of the live music experience as we know it:

The biggest musical performance of the last 5 years didn’t take place on a physical stage. Travis Scott’s performance in Fortnite was seen by 45.8M people with an additional 183M views afterwards on YouTube. In addition to the concert, Fortnite also released outfits, emotes, gear and merch for purchase, which all helped the rapper net a tidy estimated sum of $20M. To put these figures in context: the entire 4-month Astroworld tour generated $53.5M in total revenue – Scott earned roughly 37% of that in just 9 minutes. 🤯

Compare that to the attendance at Coachella in 2022: 750,000 people over 6 days — and it’s easy to see why musicians who are not yet headliners are starting to rethink how to bring the power of live music to audiences around the world through these new venues.

One other “venue” that was a life-saver for musicians during the pandemic: Twitch. Even as we’re getting back out in the world, the platform’s power as a tool in the arsenal of up & coming artists trying to earn money and cultivate a fan tribe is a great case study for how the mechanics of gaming might be applied authentically in order to forge deeper, more meaningful connections with fans. 

For the uninitiated, Twitch offers a glimpse into how the live experience might evolve from a passive listening experience to a more active – and interactive – one for fans and artists alike.

Livestreaming platforms are a dime a dozen these days, but what makes Twitch stand out, particularly for music, is how it fosters connections between performers and their audience, and allows those connections to be efficiently monetized. It reinvents the “tip jar” in a way that feels authentic and not exploitative if done right – reframing every interaction as a way for fans to express their loyalty through patronage. Song requests, shoutouts, and inside jokes that become memes and “emotes” eventually all become a part of the recurring show. All of this positive energy creates a direct feedback loop and – over time – the sense of a tightly-knit, mutually-supportive community.

For those who’ve cracked the code of how to make the platform work for them, it’s been a gamechanger. Artists like T-Pain and Kenny Beats have made community interaction a huge part of their brand on the platform – collaborating with fans, casually hanging, and – perhaps most importantly, creating a safe space for those interested in the production of music to swap tips, tricks, and find one another.

In 2019 and 2020, Heafy, one of the most active musicians on the platform earned on average $11,000/ month with his band Trivium, while his Twitch channel generated nearly as much (just under $10,000) from an audience that was about 1/10th the size. The band Aeseaes, specializing in acoustic covers, earned 70% of their income in 2019 and 2020 from Twitch compared to just 6% from other platforms like Bandcamp.

Twitch channels can also serve as a ‘local hangout’, almost like that one club in town that has a rotation of musicians (both established and new) constantly cycling through to play for a steady audience. For example, the independent label Monstercat has built the second most-subscribed to music channel on the platform — with over 800,000 followers. The indie label frequently hosts up & coming electronic musicians, live ‘mix competitions’ and interviews — maintaining the intimate feel of a local club, but with global reach.

Unlike failed platforms past that attempted to capitalize on the direct artist-to-fan relationship (RIP: MySpace), the repurposing of Twitch is representative of change that’s been a long-time coming. Artists are now able to build on existing service models — adding a new lane that goes “over the top” of traditional streaming while monetizing their own channels at the same time.

Below, we’ll chart 3 ways they’re doing so as it relates to WORLD-BUILDING, COMMUNITY, and OWNERSHIP.

1/ WORLD-BUILDING: Artists are re-contextualizing how fans can participate and engage in the worlds they create.

There’s no substitute for live experience (both IRL or virtual) , but it requires attendees. In today’s oversaturated media landscape, a loyal audience is more important than ever, and building that foundation requires deliberate curation and attention. There have been many well-publicized attempts to rethink the distribution model and grow community outside of the accepted industry playbook using these new channels — but in recent memory, no one has been more successful at it than Taylor Swift.

How do you know if you’ve curated a loyal audience? If they give themselves a name (Swifties). Even better? If they independently go after Ticketmaster and serve as the impetus for anti-trust investigations ✊.

The ‘Swifties’ are not a new phenomenon by any means, but Taylor Swift’s latest community-building efforts are masterclass. The October drop of Midnights, rewrote the playbook on fan engagement and is weaving together something that sure looks like a metaverse for her audience.

“Over the past several weeks, Swift has presided over a meticulous online rollout: Ahead of the album’s drop, she launched ‘Midnights Mayhem With Me,’ a TikTok video series wherein she released the 13 track names one by one via bingo. This week, she went as far as to release a full launch schedule for fans via Instagram that detailed exactly what would happen at which times and where online—including a “special very chaotic surprise” at 3 a.m. ET last night.

— Caroline Mimbs Nyce, The Atlantic.

The entire release was a marketing masterstroke — to say the least:

Swifties took down Spotify due to that “3 a.m surprise” — an extended cut of 7 bonus tracks, deployed at the precise moment when she knew her fans would be up and buzzing about the new album. Which made the following headline less shocking, but still 🤯: “Taylor Swift makes history as the first artist to occupy the entire top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the same week.”

We probably don’t need to tell you what happens next. Not long after that, 14M of her fans clamored for only 2.4M available tickets to the accompanying live tour of Midnights in an absolute shit-show of a pre-sale that effectively initiated anti-trust investigations into Ticketmaster.

Swifties are more connected to their idol (and each other) than ever before. Every release dominates the cultural airwaves in a way very few cultural properties can these days — boosted by the entirely new ways to engage she’s built in to the schedule in order to get her name in the mouths of millions. (See: that brilliant 3AM “chaotic surprise.”)

It’s this reinvention of old strategies (the classic midnight release) combined with new tactics that capitalize on existing fan behaviors across all the many platforms that made Midnights the *moment* that it became. If IRL ticket demand is any indicator, a TSwift metaverse would put up big numbers.

2/ COMMUNITY: Artists are community members too, and they’re using their platforms to signal-boost causes + people they care about.

No artist is an island. As much as labels have wanted to package and push them as 2-dimensional objects and idols, musicians too are members of the global community, and many want to use their platform to more meaningfully interact with those their music touches.

In the physical world, Damien Marley’s prison “grow-op” Ocean Grown is one example of how an artist can translate clout into actionable change. 

“The town was in debt. We purchased the prison for $4 million and change. And at that time, the city couldn't even afford a fireworks show or to fix up the park. Educating a community that was conservative was not easy. It was hard to convey that our cannabis wouldn’t hit their streets and drive crime. What we grow gets into trucks and leaves the town; the facility has no signage. And all this tax revenue is here for the town now. The first year we provided 100 jobs.”

— Dan Dalton, partner at FTR, co-founder and long-time manager and friend of the Marleys.

Meanwhile, Dua Lipa’s podcast At Your Service and newsletter series Service95 was launched in 2022 to highlight the people and places she’s discovered on her world travels that she feels deserves a wider platform – which she can provide. 

Lipa has often spoken about her love of lists — and it’s this easily-digestible format that’s she’s adopted for the newsletter — which features short “listicles” penned both by her and invited guests. So far, she’s outlined her favorite spots in Mexico City and tricks for overcoming insomnia, while her guests have dished about everything from their favorite things to do on a day off in Paris to longer-form thinkpieces highlighting pressing social and political issues: including a feature on Chintan Pandya, the award-winning chef behind Dhamaka — who’s bringing “unapologetically authentic Indian” flavors to NYC, as well as giving LGBTQIA+ activist Brandon Wolf a platform to process his community’s collective outrage following the Pulse nightclub shooting. More recently, Iranian Writer Kamin Mohammadi got the spotlight to explain the enormity of the recent women-led protests in Tehran. Each piece is interesting, well-written, and well-argued — successfully balancing calls to action with opportunities to learn from qualified authors.

On platforms like Discord, we are just beginning to see the very early stages of a new type of release – the gamified concept album – with releases like the Apple Guild, a month-long alternate reality game released by A.G. Cook of PC Music. No stranger to digital community-building, the producer incorporated a Battle of the Bands for die-hard fans that culminated in a virtual music festival in which the winners played alongside acts like Charli XCX and Clairo.

“Appleville and Apple Guild really became the most memorable parts of the Apple campaign for me. My music obviously references other music and collaboration in general, but on a deeper level, I want my work to showcase some of the joy and freedom that music-making can contain. Appleville was about taking artists that I love from different locations and different genres and putting them on a platform where those location and genre differences wouldn’t exist. For me, it had an atmosphere where anything could happen and did sort of remind me of the unpredictability of IRL live shows.

Apple Guild started as a fun, quite light idea, but evolved into a sweet ecosystem that felt more like a Guild than any kind of straightforward social media. My own highlight was probably the Battle of the Bands, where we randomly assigned people into bands, with band names and a song they had to cover to win the battle. Not only did people do amazing stuff but I think it really spawned a bunch of new musical partnerships – and this notion that there can be endless collectives within a collective.”

— A.G. Cook.

Meanwhile, in one of Discord’s largest and most active musical servers (132K+ members) started (once again) by hip-hop producer Kenny Beats— aspiring musicians swap production tips and work through creative problems with each other.

Case studies abound, but artists are really just starting to experiment and explore the potential of Web3 as it relates to their personal interests and the passions of communities they touch. Rather than disappearing in between album releases, the modern musician duets with fans on TikTok, offers peeks into their day-to-day with relatable tweets, IG posts, and livestreams, and generally just tries to initiate an ongoing conversation – with fans, patrons, and the cultural zeitgeist at large.

The 1000 True Fans Theory, Revisited

Way back in 2008, founding editor of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly drafted the 1000 True Fans theory – which, 14 years later – feels truer than ever:

“To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce.

These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the ‘best-of’ DVD version of your free YouTube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month. If you have roughly a thousand of true fans like this (also known as super fans), you can make a living — if you are content to make a living but not a fortune.”

— Kevin Kelly.

In this new era: merch sales, Bandcamp buys, and Patreon subscriptions from a handful of die-hards are often more valuable in the grand scheme of things than thousands of plays from casuals.

We are living in an era where there are artists with millions of streams on Spotify who cannot draw 50 people to their local shows. Platforms like Twitch, Discord, and COLORSxSTUDIOS are creating a space for that community of day-one fans to congregate, collaborate, and co-create. And all of this is just the beginning.

3/ OWNERSHIP: Blockchain could allow artists to produce, adapt, and optimize strategies on the fly.

In just over 100 years, the ways in which we create, consume, and distribute music has changed dramatically, and we’ve arrived at the threshold of yet another seismic shift with the arrival of Web3 and AI. In the short term, we’re seeing the tide turn towards decentralization as Web3 empowers artists with tools to shift the balance of power away from labels and better connect with fans.

NFTs, POAPs, and smart contracts have the potential to eliminate the “black box” platforms like Spotify and YouTube have created when it comes to analytics. Smart contracts could allow for trackable real-time royalties — a level of transparency and accountability that is severely lacking anytime Spotify releases one of its self-congratulatory here’s-how-we’re helping-artists reports. 

And that shift in ownership that comes from a direct-line between artists and fans can’t be overstated. As we’ve mentioned, the tip jar is becoming a thing of the past. Artists could use NFTs to crowdfund albums and music videos, creating a coalition of day-one fans in the process. Digital tokens could allow for fractional ownership of new tracks – inspiring fans to express their passion in entirely new ways. Labels themselves may one day become DAOs – empowering all “employees” and “talent” with a true stake in the company. Voting rights ensure everyone will be taken care of and that the spoils of success will be equitably shared.

One notable partnership in particular: Probably a Label — a spin-off of Jeremy Fall’s Probably Nothing. Probably a Label is collaborating with Warner Music Group to onboard those uninitiated with Web3 — on both the artist and listener side.

“[The mission is] not to redefine how people listen to music but to elevate the experience in which people consume it, as well as collaborate directly with artists in a manner that helps develop their creative language.”

The label launched 5,555 passes in late October, which sold out in 7 minutes — a great sign in these uncertain times that the meeting of “established credibility” and “fresh thinking” is something that people are willing to buy into.

But if we’ve learned anything in the last 100 years, it’s that truly disruptive technology is always right around the corner. As AI image-generation tools like DALL-E and Midjourney take the visual arts industries by storm, it is not hard to imagine these same tools being leveraged by artists for world-building — generating album artwork and music videos based on a simple prompt. No production company needed. This would further reduce barriers for artists on the hook to feed the content machine. See MidJourney’s interpretation of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Know” below:

And while these popular AI tools are currently focused on visualization, audio is not far behind. Tools like Jukebox, Harmonai, and Dance Diffusion are applying the same machine-learning technology to essentially reinvent the synthesizer on steroids — creating covers of established styles and retuning instruments, hooks, and beat drops.

“That’s something that artists are already doing in the studio in a much more informal and sloppy way. You sit down to write a song and you’re like, I want a Fall bass line and a B-52’s melody, and I want it to sound like it came from London in 1977. Similar tools are already in the works (and may soon be widely available in the same way DALL-E is) that allow artists to rapidly create and iterate on musical ideas starting with just a simple prompt… Something like: ‘Energetic, crescendo featuring an electric guitar power chords, a fast base groove, all in the style of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.’”

— Zach Evans, head of development at Dance Diffusion.

We’re just seeing the first flickers of potential as these technologies start to make waves. Today’s music industry would be unrecognizable to someone that grew up 50 years ago. 10 years from now, the industry may be unrecognizable to us.

We may be writing New Mixtape: [ Track 4 ] sooner rather than later.

Here’s that TLDR for those who’ve stuck with us — if you like the journey we’ve just taken you on and would like to see more in the coming year, do us a solid and share + subscribe:

In PART 1, we took you on a brief tour through musical history to explore how creativity always seems to find a way —thanks in large part to advances in format. Today, we zoom in on the people on the front lines — the artists themselves, and how they’re using technology to take back the power.

Here’s Prince to set the scene:

For the first time, artists can have complete say over their PRESENTATION (image/ persona), PRODUCTION (access to tools, owning their masters), and DISTRIBUTION (community-building).

Prince had to change his name in order to emancipate himself from Warner Bros., but his very publicly-documented struggles paved the way for every artist that followed —igniting mainstream discourse around ownership and exploitation in the industry. 

Meanwhile, Beyonce has been showing everyone how it’s done since the early 2000s. In many ways, she is the living embodiment of how the Internet has empowered artists to advocate for themselves:

THE DESTINY’S CHILD ERA // UNDISPUTED FRONTWOMAN

Although her rise is often looked back on today as an early 2000s Cinderella story, Beyonce and co. had their share of false starts —including a fumbled appearance on Star Search and a constantly revolving roster of members — which led to jokes about the audition process for the group being like the reality show Survivor. Regardless of the rumors of drama behind the scenes, Beyonce’s star was on the rise. She wasn’t about to be contained by a label-made pre-fab Girl Group.

SOLO ACT // RECLAMATION OF HER POWER

The turning point came in 2011, when she dismissed the services of her manager after 21 years. That might not sound that impressive now, but her manager at the time was…her dad. At this point, she was never not working:

“She had two major movie roles: a supporting part in 2006’s Dreamgirls, with mixed reviews (New York magazine brutally dismissed her as “not an actress”), and another in 2008’s Cadillac Records, this time to raves. (“As for Beyoncé—oh my goodness,” said Slate.) She went on multiple world tours, on which the reviews were never mixed but still managed to be a little condescending (“A revue spectacular enough in its colossal divadom to put off proclamations of — it’s all right, we’ve all felt it — Beyoncé fatigue.”) She sang as the Obamas danced their first dance as president and first lady in 2009 (“Beyoncé is fast becoming a saint”). With 2008’s “Single Ladies,” she delivered what Kanye West would memorably declare “one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!”

— Constance Grady, Vox, How Beyoncé turned herself into a pop god

You could see her trying things out — establishing herself first as the diva of all divas in the mold of Tina Turner and Mariah — to something that transcends genre (sometimes even music) altogether.

FINAL FORM // POP GODDESS + TRAILBLAZING ICON

Since then, she’s established iron-clad control not only over: when/how she releases her music (see: Lemonade, Renaissance), how her image is shaped/ maintained (see: the “unflattering Beyonce meme” from the 2013 SuperBowl), to the worlds she creates around every tour and every announcement she puts out — whether it’s the Louvre or her face projected thousands of feet high onto a literal monolith.

Renaissance, Rolling Stone contends, is proof that Beyoncé is “the only sovereign of pop to have truly evolved artistically while also expanding an enormous commercial empire.” In other words, no one can match her artistic, commercial, and cultural evolution. In that sense, the woman is a trailblazing icon. An artist who understands that her art and image should always be in dialogue with the speed of cultural shift.

Power to the People

Beyond Beyoncé, there is a long history of artists that embraced the ‘web3’ ethos well before the recent popularization of the term. No dream chaser wants to be owned by a label that curates their brand, artistic output, and community engagement. 

Until recently, it took ‘superstar’ leverage to circumvent the system. Signing with a label was one of a very short list of options available to musicians to turn a passion into a sustainable career because of the resources a label could provide. An up & comer couldn’t release an album and ask fans to ‘pay-what-you-wish’ like Radiohead did with In Rainbows. They would starve. Taylor Swift is re-recording her masters because she is unable to buy the rights to the music she created – but she is able to take the time to do so because she has the Swifties to back her every move.

Before the Internet, these avenues were simply not available to artists that hadn’t yet achieved mega-commercial success, but Swift has been vocal that they should be. Her struggle in particular has inspired at least one up & comer in Olivia Rodrigo – who made sure to negotiate full control of her masters in her deal with Interscope.

New technologies to reach fans and build community are gradually turning the tide. Decentralized discovery and distribution has democratized how an artist can break out, blow up, and connect with their audience. The barriers to entry aren’t necessarily lower – it’s just there that are many, many more loopholes now to breaking in. Clout used to lie with the labels, but now if you are savvy with your online presence, you can find the audience (and funding you need) to keep producing and performing on your own terms – thanks to platforms like Soundcloud, Patreon, Discord, and Twitch.

And while an artist may still choose to sign with a label – having achieved virality via social platforms provides significant leverage in those initial conversations. Just ask Lil Nas X, who refers to himself as an “Internet baby:”

His ‘pre-label’ single “Old Town Road” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after he:

Soon after, Lil Nas X would have his pick of labels clamoring to work with him in the midst of an “intense bidding war,” and he has made sure to maintain creative control over his work ever since – casting himself as the social commentator, provocateur, and sometimes even role model we all need in these dark times. 

Of course, TikTok, having witnessed Lil Nas X’s rise to fame and listened to the changing sentiment around artists’ battle for emancipation from traditional models, has decided to “lean in” to its newfound ability to propel unsigned musicians to fame with the launch of SoundOn: an “all-in-one” platform for music marketing and distribution designed to “empower new and undiscovered artists.” A direct challenge to the traditional label route that promises a whopping 100% in music royalties in the first year, 90% from then on, and artist control of their masters.

Ole Oberman, formerly of Warner Bros. and now head of global music at TikTok, likened user-generated videos to the mixtapes people made back in the day—“the ultimate form of fandom.”

“[TikTok] is as a combination of elements of Top Forty radio, music television, and streaming: ‘There has never been anything that can get a song hooked in your head the way TikTok does it.’” 

— “So You Want to Be a TikTok Star,” John Seabrook, New Yorker.

In 2020 alone, more than 70 new artists broke out on TikTok-signed contracts with record labels.

“In a pre-TikTok world, it was hard to draw a crowd, and artists used that process to hone their craft. Now you can start with a crowd in your phone and pray that craft catches up.”

— Billy Mann, a Grammy-nominated producer, songwriter, and record executive.

Increasingly, a new generation of artists are realizing that ‘making it’ without a label is both realistic and preferable. Soundcloud has propelled game-changing artists like Post Malone, Kehlani, and Kygo to comparable levels of fame – allowing them to hit millions of listens before a label ever got involved.

The fact is, “the label” used to be the only game in town. Now, there are new avenues to widespread distribution. Anyone with a smartphone and an Internet connection can post to TikTok, Soundcloud, or Twitter.

Pandora’s Box is open and there’s no shutting it —meaning, labels are now having to adjust their playbooks accordingly. *Cue the recent uproar over “fake viral moments” artists like Halsey are now contractually obligated to produce.

@halseyI’m tired

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At the same time, some artists would argue that we’ve really traded one puppetmaster for another: the Almighty Algorithm.

Yes, power has shifted to the artist and labels are scrambling to claw some of it back – but should you choose to go it alone without the backing of a corporation, the day-to-day grind of maintaining your persona is also on you. And, make no mistake, self-promotion has become a full-time job. Thanks to the many more middlemen the algorithm introduced into the mix: 

Rather than just a label, the station, and the booking agent, you’ve now got all of the below intermediaries sticking their hand out for a cut:

1/ PLATFORMS: for promo/ discovery (TikTok, IG) & for distribution (Spotify, Apple), specialized indie distribution platforms (DistroKid, Stem, TuneCore)

2/ GATEKEEPERS: Talent Scouts, Labels, Agents, Billboard, the Grammys, etc.

3/ TASTEMAKERS/ MEDIA/ CRITICS: Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, WorldStar

4/ VENUES: Festivals, booking agents, Twitch/ Fortnite, etc.

Where We’re At: the Kaleidoscopic Fragmenting of the Industry

There’s plenty of reasons to be optimistic if you look at the state of the industry today: 

+ more artists can make a living

+ more music is being made

+ fans can zero in on specifically what they like (leading to more sub-genres/cultures — ie. “country trap”)

BUT it’s also become a numbers game.

In the mainstream, we’ve moved from a single-led economy (4 min was the standard for 7” vinyl) to an album-led economy (LPs/CDs), to a streaming/ playlist-led economy (Spotify) to now a viral 15-sec hook-based economy (TikTok). 

Chioke (Stretch) McCoy, a veteran manager of top hip-hop acts, maintains that TikTok may be great for music discovery, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a net positive for musicians. Many labels are now weaponizing TikTok data and viewing artists as if they are as disposable as their songs.

“[Mike Caren, a former president of A. & R. at Warner Music] mentions a TikTok artist who had recently had a viral moment. “If he had signed a deal last week, he would have gotten a couple of million dollars,” he said. “If it takes him a couple weeks to close his deal, and the data keeps going up, it could get more expensive for us.”And if his data goes down? “Some would back off. It’s possible no one might sign him.”

— “So You Want to Be a TikTok Star,” John Seabrook, New Yorker.

Relying on data is nothing new, of course. Industry gatekeepers have always used data to try to gauge how deeply a song or an artist connects with fans. Radio programmers have long relied on “call-out research” — playing a song’s hook for a focus group, to help predict whether it will be a hit. TikTok does something similar — it’s just automated it — delivering more honest, real-time feedback than any focus group. The difference is, the algorithm is now eliminating contenders based on a single track’s performance — a particularly unforgiving form of 👍 or 👎 design-by-comittee.

And on the discovery side of things, human curation is being phased out by AI – which reduces “success” to followers, streams, and plays. Spotify’s RapCaviar started out as one hip-hop head’s expertly-curated playlist but has since become yet another promotional tool in the hands of labels and the Spotify editorial team. WarnerMusic has signed an algorithm to a record deal and is tapping into AI to scout new talent. 

In other words, the Factory Line is becoming a Mathematical Formula.

When machines are dictating both what’s being created and how it’s being distributed based on some arbitrary formula produced from a dataset of what’s worked before, what room is left for creativity and experimentation? 

It should come as no surprise that one-hit wonders have become the establishment’s golden goose. When every track is reduced to streamable, shareable, sample-able “content” – meaning gets lost in the shuffle. The true cost of convenience is depth –  the context of the artist’s original intent. The influences, inspirations, and cultural currents that shaped the sound. The story behind the music and the world the artist is trying to build with each release, tour, or album. 

Rather than relying on one path to stardom set out by the established powers-that-be, artists can now produce, experiment, and be “discovered” on their own terms. All it takes is time, dedication, and fluency with the Internet…but we’ll get deeper into what that Internet fluency might look like next time.

Here’s the TLDR for those who’ve stuck with us, we’ll be back — same time, same place tomorrow to wrap things up:

We’ve all heard the saying, “Where words fail, music speaks” – well, now, there’s a study to prove it. In 2020, a team at Harvard gathered over a century’s worth of music from across 315 different cultures and played them for test subjects without translation. Irresistible club anthem, torch song, or lullaby – everyone could guess a song’s purpose without understanding the lyrics.

You could say music is the source code for human emotion – carrying with it a set of rulesets and patterns in cadence, tempo, and tone which are universally understood. More than any other art form, music strikes a nerve that transcends language, race, politics, class. Nothing else hits quite like it. Simply moving a chord a half-step below a perfect fifth can take you from Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah to Black Sabbath’s “devil’s interval” – a sound so dissonant it was forbidden in churches in the Middle Ages because it was believed to induce sinful thoughts. 🤘 }:)

Since the dawn of time, music has been the easiest way to forge a connection. Between strangers. Between congregation, choir, and higher power. Between us and that buried part of ourselves we can’t otherwise articulate. (If you’ve ever caught yourself singing along to End of the Road after a breakup or found yourself busting a move to Dancing on My Own with a crowd of strangers on a subway platform, you know what I’m talking about.)  Whether it’s heartbreak or pure joy, music allows us to tap into emotions we don’t otherwise quite know how to voice. 

It’s why the relationship between artists and fans has always been so sacred, and why TECHNOLOGY has always served as a catalyst for change within the tangled web of ARTIST, FAN, and PATRON relationships that make up the music industry.

To say that technology has always had a love-hate relationship with the music industry is like saying Jimi Hendrix was a “pretty good” guitarist. Pre-wax-cylinder (ie. before we cracked the code on how to record and distribute music), there were basically 3 ways for a musician to put food on the table. You could:

Regardless of which path you take, there’s always some broker on the other end of the deal helping you make a connect. Artists have always been at the mercy of middlemen. Whether it’s the booking agent at Woodstock, the Spotify editorial team, or King Ludwig of Bavaria. (That’s right, you have this guy👇 to thank for that scene in Apocalypse Now:)

Technology has always been an equalizing force to the exploitation. A tool — or at times — a literal instrument for emancipation. But as we’ve moved from recording and distributing to promoting and self-promoting, platforms that were originally created to bring artists and fans together have attracted ever more middlemen trying to elbow in on the action. 

Format has always dictated innovation and experimentation – leading to some huge cultural breakthroughs in the process. If we take a good hard look at how we got to where we are, one thing becomes abundantly clear: ART, BUSINESS, and TECHNOLOGY are hopelessly intertwined. 

For the sake of simplifying centuries of musical history into a single timeline, we’ll use advances in FORMAT as milestones for the ebbs and flows in power that followed:

PREHISTORIC ERA // INSTRUMENTS = ONE THE 1ST TECHNOLOGIES

Music is in our evolutionary DNA. If we’re going to be real pedantic nerds about it: technically, the first instrument was the human voice, but the emergence of bone flutes and stone instruments in the Paleolithic era really signified the discovery of rhythm among our ancient ancestors. And, the first early flickers of human creativity. (The written word wouldn’t be invented for another 52K years.)

1900s // LIMITATIONS THAT SHAPED TODAY’S FORMAT

Until the turn of the 20th century, live music was the only way. If you wanted to catch Beethoven’s latest banger, you had better have a ticket. The development of the phonograph (1877), eventually referred to as the record player, changed everything. Music lovers could now enjoy their tunes at home! But records could only play a couple minutes at a time before you had to flip from the ‘A side’ to the ‘B side’.

The standard length for the average song was set at 3-5 minutes for over a hundred years, and collections of songs that guide listeners through an arrangement of ideas, emotions, or narrative (AKA albums) were also roughly the same length established by the first record players — even though physical file size had stopped being an issue.

That is only now beginning to change — with Spotify and TikTok setting a new industry standard for shorter, more ear-wormy hooks. Spotify counts a mere 30 seconds of listening as a full play that triggers a royalty check. A song has a bigger chance of going viral on TikTok if it’s got that irresistible beat-drop. (Cue: the White Lotus club-banger remix that recently became a meme unto itself.)

Producer DJ Kuya Magik (11M followers) sums it up best:

“If you go to a club and you watch people dance, they only dance to the 15 seconds of a song that’s famous on TikTok. For the rest of it, they just sit there.”

1920s // RADIO’S FAUSTIAN BARGAIN

For the first time, an artist could be discovered by millions with just the turn of a dial. Radio offered more reach than ever before, democratized the “experience” of live music, and led to the first generation of idols — but of course all of that came at a cost — in the form of a business model with new (sneaky, hidden) incentives. Radio stations sought to attract and grow specific audiences for their advertisers and “curated” (sanitized) content accordingly. More often than not, musicians looking to “make it” were forced to compromise creativity for coin.

1930s // LABELS SEIZE CONTROL

As media monopolies began to form (CBS, Warner Bros, etc), the only other path into the industry was independent labels. The labels had the capital and the equipment to record, make duplicates, and promote new talent. In fact, labels began to invest in new talent much like modern-day VCs do now — dictating the terms & conditions of royalties and licensing agreements. The artist received an advance (often deducted from the initial investment the label made). And royalty checks only came in after you, the artist, worked off that “investment.” The net result was a shift in how artists worked the system: albums became a way to get your music (and your name) out there, but tours and shows were where artists could really capitalize on the love of their fans.

1960s-1980s // I WANT MY MTV

Album art might help make a sale at retail, but until television came around, many fans only ever heard their favorite artists. In 1964, the Beatles performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show — marking the beginning of the British Invasion — but TV’s real impact didn’t really hit until 1981, with the introduction of MTV. Artists could now build their brands well beyond the stage. For the first time, they could exist within whatever fantastical worlds they could imagine. Ironically, sound was now only part of the total package — the right image or persona could propel a musician to superstardom.

1990s // DEMOCRATIZATION OF ACCESS: THE INTERNET

The Internet blew the doors off the floodgates of accessibility in much the same way radio had. Laying the track for direct pathways between musicians + fans for the first time. The progenitors of Bandcamp, Kickstarter, and Patreon allowed musicians to share music directly with fans. Production software like GarageBand meant you were no longer required to seek out those with access to recording equipment. 

For a while, it was the Wild West. Napster, Limewire, and torrenting platforms allowed fans to easily pirate thousands of songs with the click of a button (and without paying a cent). While these platforms were quickly stomped out, they highlighted a desire for access that could not be denied. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no getting it back in. 

2000s // THE GREAT FLATTENING: PORTABILITY > FIDELITY

The steady march of technological progress defined the 20th century well beyond music. It’s how we got from radio to records, Walkman to the iPod, and then ultimately, the iTunes store. Suddenly, rather than replace a single disc in your massive home-stereo, you could shuffle between thousands of songs on your way to work…on a device 1/1000th the size. 

"It allowed independent musicians access to legions of listeners without having to rely on record labels, distributors and retail stores. Music production has now truly been democratized, and this little compression algorithm was largely responsible."

— Scot Solida, The 21 most important products and innovations in music technology history, Musicradar

Personal music libraries grew exponentially and became easier to manage. Individual songs could easily be purchased from a digital storefront like iTunes, and a fan could listen to music whenever they wanted and have more ‘favorites’ than ever before. 

2010s // REALITY TV + SOCIAL MEDIA: CHASING THAT 15 MIN OF FAME

American Idol and the early aughts obsession with reality programming planted the seed for the decades of clout-chasing to come. We’ve moved from contestants competing for a record deal (and the accompanying 15 min of fame that offered) to 15 sec TikTok clips and being the “Internet’s main character” for a day.

ALSO 2010s // STREAMING RADIO

Nothing can ever be too cheap or too convenient — the consumer still wanted more —and capitalism delivered. Pandora and Soundcloud was followed by Spotify, Tidal, and a multitude of streaming services now offering access to vast libraries for a reasonable monthly fee.

Just like that, another business model was born: one which promised access to everything and ownership of…nothing. Subscriber growth became the only metric that mattered to these platforms. The “album” kind of became an outdated concept. On iTunes, you at least received a deal for “buying in bulk” rather than cherry-picking one-off tracks.

2020s // TIKTOK RE-STACKS THE DECK

Until very recently, the deck was stacked against artists when it came to negotiating for themselves. The traditional model involved an advance in exchange for full ownership of your masters (+ about 85% of royalties thereafter). The musician only received their 15% if the label recouped their investment. In essence, the “advance” functions as a predatory loan —one that may take a very long time for you to work off. 

TikTok has created a loophole in the system. Having access to the backend analytics has obliterated the “black box” strategy of keeping the cost of promo/ marketing/ distribution deliberately opaque. Now, artists willing to hustle can create a viral hit, make it onto the Spotify playlist, and build their own dedicated following – so when labels do come calling (and they will) – they can enter into negotiations with the leverage to ask for what they deserve.

These days, deals for artists breaking out through the TikTok → Spotify pipeline are shifting in the artists’ favor. More and more, labels are offering 50-50 and the rights to license a record for the next 12-15 years. It’s up to the artists to decide whether or not to sign.

Tune in for PART 2 of the INVESTIGATION — where we’ll dive into the artist’s perspective on the current state of the industry: same place, same time tomorrow.

Issue 004

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It’s 2022 and “gaslighting” is the word of the year. Is that a work of art or a banana duct-taped to the wall? Dead stock or deadstock?

Value has always been in the eye of the beholder, but never more so in a day and age when the merits of what constitutes culture is constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated through collective consensus. It’s all in the name: Generative Adversarial Network. The culture in conversation with itself.

Issue 003

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The evolutionary ability to derive meaning from chaos is the reason our species rose to the top of the food chain. Now, we are on the verge of another Cultural Big Bang thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence. More and more of us can have a dialogue with the machine than ever before. Half-baked ideas can find form with simply the right incantation.

Is it chaos magic or the snake eating its own tail? How will taste, craft, and the creative process itself adapt to this new reality?

Find out in ISSUE 003: I AM GENERATOR/ I AM DISCRIMINATOR.

Issue 02 Shallow Research Deep Learning

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We all learn by copying — even the most revered artists—but we now live in a day and age when inspiration has become algorithmically accelerated.

Is the concept of originality overrated in a world where the adidas Samba “inspired” the PUMA Whirlwind, which in turn “inspired” the Margiela Replica — and this season’s drip is related by 3% to both Minecraft and Renaissance lampshade dresses?

Find out in ISSUE 002: SHALLOW RESEARCH/ DEEP LEARNING.

Issue 01 Introducing Deep Objects

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Released in conjunction with the launch of DEEPOBJECTS.ai — F T R’s decentralized design studio — this investigative series aims to explore the ways in which technology and subculture are not just intertwined but symbiotic.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll explore some of the themes faced by creatives and collectors alike as machine-learning, NFTs, and web3 give more and more of us a seat at the table in determining what gets produced, how it’s produced, and how much it’s worth. Whether you’re a sneakerhead, a cratedigger, a cinephile, or a design nerd, it’s an interesting time to be alive — and we’re beyond excited to give you all a peek into our thought process as we all try to navigate this brave new world.

ISSUE 01 is available for download today. We hope you’ll join us for the ride and join in on the conversation.