[Emerging Disruptive Artist] on a mission to [constantly feed the culture] in a [gamified rewarded experience]
As a music creative in 2021, breaking into a tightly locked industry dictated by a handful of “taste makers” seams near impossible. Raising attention is easier than ever but everyone seams to be doing the same thing, which makes it seam like the music industry is needed to evolve and breakout.
I’m Mak, a digital artist in the music and visual art space. Prior to Mak, I had an identity with 2 years of independant music released on all DSPs. My day to day was taken up growing my music career as an artist, developing business perspectives and connecting with my supporters.
Understanding how the music industry moves can be a benefit and a downfall. When you understand the moves to be taken and the type of ladder you have to climb, you have an advantage but what if that is not the type of career you want to govern your music?
I spent a lot of time on this, breaking my brain trying to understand a better framework for independant music artists in 2021. With all these new tools and technologies, I felt artists where not being creative enough outside of their art form and most cases, ended up just complaining about either Spotify royalty shares or live music roadblocks killing their pockets.
While many got caught up in this debate of back and forth nonsense(don’t focus too much on what you can’t change), I took it as an opportunity to look else where for opportunities in music.
Blockchain; We all heard the hype around Beeple, Bored Apes, Crypto Punks, to name a few. Behind these massively controversial art sales there. is this. beautiful technology called blockchain. There is plenty of information available around this topic, so I wont go to deep.
NFTs are not jpgs and this technology is here to stay. I believe every business who doesn’t adapt a blockchain strategy will not exist in 10 years, thats where we are going.
If you’re an artist trying to break the music industry, ask yourself these questions, I did and it changed. the trajectory of my music career. I have never been happier.
Q1. What if you stopped focusing on being the next Drake and shift your goal towards acquiring 1000 true supporters?
Q2. What if you used these new technologies ahead of the curve to get an advance in the new world of digital art?
Q3. What if could retain 100% ownership of your intellectual property and control of distribution to supporters without any of the nonsense that a label will claim off you?
Q4. What if you could own and manage the connection with your fans directly?
Q5. What if you could raise capital from your supporters and didn’t have to take that big advantage from a label to elevate your music to the next level?
With blockchain, smart contracts and web3, there has never been a more exciting time to be an independant artist. My call is, in 3 years big label artists will be left behind as they cannot compete with the speed of an independant artist in this new world.
So why did I decide to leave all my public art behind to start fresh on blockchain?
Easy question to answer. Blockchain offers the tech stack to achieve a solid experience for me as an artist and offers me the tools to translate that experience in new ways to my supporters. It creates a marketplace for early adopters to support and benefit beyond the current music interactive experiences.
I have spent over a decade working in the music industry, seeing its every shade of good and bad. Hiding my identity was a decision I made that aligns with my belief that artists are over glorified in todays world. We are the false prophets who contribute indirectly to create insecurities in our culture.
It should be about the art, the expression, the lyrics, the heart, the commitment, the obsession, not what we wear on a tik-tok video, an instagram post, ye get me.
What are you trying to achieve, Mak?
I am in the process of building a new world where we consume music and art in a a whole new way. Experiences are my thing. I want to make this a 1–1 experience that stakes as proof to offer a bridge of confidence for independant music artists to follow suit and create and build in this way.
Mak, WTF have you been building?
Currently, I am rolling out a new web3 website which will offer a True Supporters Access token of 625 FOC on Polygon blockchain. Early next year I will be releasing my first collection of 10,000 Unique NFTs and a more comprehensive overview of the tokenomics powering it all, followed by Web3 Mobile Play in Q2 and a meta-verse called Rhythm Valley build on the Unreal Engine coming in 2023.
To conclude, I suggest to all music creatives to really dig in and do their homework on this stuff and see where your use case can fit in. This is an opportunity to build something new and exciting, a spot to shine and grow in an undersaturated market.
I’m going to be writing these blurb bleep posts here on medium as I develop and grow my career as a blockchain music artist.
My DMs are open to anyone with any questions about any of the above. My NFT project discord is currently not public so please send me a message if you would like an invite to understand more on what I am doing in this space.
PS. Have a good day and don’t be a dope, if ya find a typo keep it to yourself :)
