One of my favorite early projects at Consensys was Ujo Music, a platform for musicians to share their music onchain -- before the NFT (ERC-721 standard) was even really a thing, and nearly a half-decade before we even started saying “onchain.” So many of the early experiments at Consensys were just that -- brilliant but a little too early. Three years later, more artists were beginning to explore music NFTs thanks to a new NFT standards that automated royalty payments, like ERC-2981. I breathlessly wrote about how artists like Jacques Greene were suddenly making more money releasing a single track NFT than their entire streaming royalties from platforms like Spotify.

My generation is the last generation to fully reside on the median of this massive fault-line in media.

“Most artists are narcissists.” This was how a friend, a filmmaker, described his recent experience at a salon in NYC. (If you were wondering, salons are very much still a thing in NYC and some have even made a business of it).

✨Some personal news✨

Image Source: Midjourney prompt \[a crypto conference in the style of Hieronymus Bosch]

Let’s start with some ecological grief to describe the current state of the Anthropocene. In the course of 40 years, an area the size of Europe has been deforested; at this rate, the world’s rainforests will be gone in 78 years. A report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimates that dozens of species are going extinct every day, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species going extinct by 2050. 21.5 million people have been displaced by climate change-related disasters since 2010. Every month we eat one Lego brick of plastic, or about 44 lbs. in a lifetime on average.

Hardly a day goes by without a news story about record-breaking droughts and floods, widespread species loss, and destruction of valuable natural resources.

Music is part of my monthly budget. Pre-pandemic this included live music, some vinyls on the side, not to mention subscriptions to the streaming platforms. During the pandemic it’s been Bandcamp Fridays, NFTs, and monthly donations through Patreon to support the venues and communities that are the soul of New York City — that comprise my own soul. Music was a comfort in an otherwise difficult year; it’s a cruel irony that artists have captured so little of the value they create.