Decentralizing Fan Support
Alice Scarlet Death
I absolutely want my content to be freely available. However, I would also like to be able to engage in the precise amount of capitalism that I need to in order to produce the content I endeavor to create.
I have been known to upload my own music on private torrent sites and peer-to-peer applications over the years, and have been a big proponent of decentralizing my music as an attempt to get my music in as many hands as possible for as long as possible. When I first started sharing music online we didn’t have Bandcamp or Spotify back then.
What we did have was websites, SoulSeek, IRC, and bit torrent. I figured if enough people downloaded my music, it would just ‘exist’ somewhere out there long after I was gone.
I started my first netlabel in early 2004 because I wanted people to listen to my music and my friends’ music. If I was successful they’d be successful too, I thought. Originally I stored our music directly onto my website, but as social media became more ubiquitous I learned I didn’t really need to be storing them on my own website anymore.
After a break in the mid-2010s, I started making music again in 2017. This was also the time around when I created the Noise Music Discord Server. Great, I thought, this will be just like soulseek or my old forum and we can collaborate and share and build each other up. We started doing community noise compilations only for me to find out that, yes, it was basically the same thing. Except we’re still kind of too reliant on big corporations to host our music and pay us.
Discord is only one app. My websites can only be maintained for so long. Archive is great, but its problem is also its centralization.
Decentralized Storage
I needed something more sustainable. So I made Bit Torrent magnet links and also pinned most of my written work, musical projects, and recent music videos to IPFS (Interplanetary Filesystem)
Now that I have these two methods of storing my creative work in a decentralized manner, I need a way to permanently redistribute the links to those files.
Tokenized Access
You may have heard of cryptocurrency. When I started, there was only Bitcoin. A huge bank crash happened in my country a few years prior, so the idea of keeping a decentralized list of transactions agnostic of failing banks was appealing. Naturally, when all the banks fail the first thing in your head is “What about my money?”
For a while, being a unit of trade was its only utility. Then other blockchain applications surfaced that allowed for something called smart contracts. These are basically transactions that will only be sent when certain conditions are met. So instead of me sending you $5 every day manually, I could write a smart contract using code that would dictate to just give you $5 every day.
Ethereum is one of the most notable decentralized blockchains. It allows for users to send and receive the token as a payment method just like Bitcoin, but I am also allowed to create my own tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
These tokens are just lines of code though, nothing more. Only as useful as the utility its creator affords it. So I can use this program to put custom code on the block chain. I pay with their currency to do this, but now there is a line of code that specifically has my wallet address and the metadata for my token is physically stored on their list of transactions.
This metadata is where I share the magnet and IPFS links to my creative work. That is stored directly on the Ethereum network, not the files themselves.
When I mint this token, I initiate a transaction that doesn’t actually send anything to anyone. I can list this token on a decentralized exchange or marketplace and someone can buy that transaction from me. It won’t be “money” in their wallet necessarily, but rather a virtual representation of potential money. The transaction is tangible at that point, it’s only a matter of convincing others that it has value.
Decentralized Royalties
As much as I like to check how many streams my music is getting, I don’t really concern myself too much with sales. I concern myself with fans, friends, and convincing people that my creative projects are worth paying attention to.
I have a number of items for sale on these Ethereum token marketplaces. Makersplace and Rarible are the main ones I use. The former I use primarily for photography while the latter is used more for my audio/video and written work.
When someone buys one of my photos on Makersplace, I get a certain amount of the Ethereum token in exchange but that token is no longer “owned” by me, it is no longer associated with ownership on my actual Ethereum wallet. I am still associated with its creation, mind you.
The buyer gets to list that token on their profile on whichever decentralized application they are logged into while using the same Ethereum address. So like if there’s a social media page or marketplace, people will see my work on their page.
Sometimes this will lead to after-market buyers who will see it, like it, and want it for themselves on their own wallet. Whenever they start buying and selling between each other, I get a commission. In all my smart contracts, I collect 12% of whatever is paid between people trading my tokens.
I want it almost to feel like a digital tape exchange. For instance, when I was in high school I would burn CD-Rs of my music and put them in handmade cases made from notebook paper and push them onto everyone who would look me in the eye in class. Those were all special, unique one of a kind items. And yet those people still lent them to friends, sent them to the trash, or worse.
If someone who held onto to one were to try to sell it to someone on discogs today, I can only imagine what might happen. They could sell it for $10 or $10k and I wouldn’t see a dime of it. We accept this as normal, and I it is reasonable to see why. I survive off disability income, so I don’t have much in the way of liquidity.
Folks who want to trade digital representations of my work for non-fungible purposes are more than welcome to do so, but my creative work needs is etched into the blockchain. Every time someone buys it, I am getting paid for providing legitimate utility. Every time someone buys my NFT, that’s my metadata and magnet links on your collection. The more chances there are for people to hear my music, read my books, or see my videos.
I don’t want fake fans or people buying into hyperbole. I don’t need to gatekeep material behind paywalls. But I would still like to get paid. And I would like to get paid by people who enjoy my work. There is no such thing as getting rich quick, which is why I try to keep the value fairly low compared to what I probably should be.
I am enamored with the idea of people trading back and forth my tokens in lieu of having to beg on social media for Cash App donations when times are rough. That said, I would hope that people do not get too carried away, this is supposed to be fun.
Decentralized Copyright
Aside from basically serving as advertising nodes for my creative work, many of my smart contracts minted tokens with metadata describing particular commercial usage rights. For instance, if someone wants to ask me for my permission to sample, remix, or cover my work for commercial use, I can launch a smart contract that allows everyone who buys that, written permission to profit from my work in such a way.
Everyone who would ask for my permission in real life would get an affirmative response regardless, so I have chosen to tokenize this process in an attempt to not have to worry about having to give permission to each and every single person who wants it.
And in the event I am no longer able to give permission, anyone with an Ethereum wallet can still purchase the ability to transform my work.
There are also tokens with terms that dictate physical publishing rights. I like to have 10 copies of one item minted with these terms. So one person can buy the rights to release something of mine on Cassette, CD, or MiniDisc. Or someone else can have the rights to make an audiobook out of my books. Or like with my music videos, purchasing the token grants you public performance rights.
All these things that I would normally just say “yes” to I no longer have to worry about it. I can still always say yes in person. I won’t always be a person, but I want my permission to last as long as I say. I set those conditions.
I can imagine a small indie label might see my album and think “that might be a good fit for a tape release, I should get the rights to it!” they just nab it right then and there. Or a bigger label might want more exclusive rights, buy all ten, hoard them until I am dead, and then profit off my corpse. You never really know with these things.
But that is the point. It is out of my hands. I enjoy creating things. I want my creations put into the hands of as many people who will tolerate me doing so.
As far as online is concerned, it’s all out there. The royalty I get is credit enough.
Decentralized Fan Club
My goal was to set up my contracts to emulate governance over the whole of my creative canon. As the rights are split up between each album and then usually divvied into tenths, it would be very difficult for any one person to own 100% of the rights to my work. But it would still be feasible to own a some of them.
The transactions of the creative work can be potential stores of value, but I wanted to mint a fun little token that I dubbed “Scarlet Death VIP Token” that was a low-demand, easily accessible token with absolutely no value. The metadata says “The owner of this token is obligated to convince their friends to listen to more noise music.” The sale price is so low that you’re effectively burning more Ethereum than you’re spending.
This is intentional so that there will be very little resale incentive. I am intending this as a social liquidity pool. Anyone who buys in automatically gives me free advertising, like a decentralized street team. There is absolutely no incentive to buy this token unless you are wanting to secure the network and help redirect other people toward my work.
I was wanting to use the VIP token as a way to replace Patreon’s rewards tier system. I can do a real world event where you can pull it up on your phone to the bartender and you get a free drink, for example.
This only has as much utility as the people who enjoy my content decide it has. There are 10,000 minted and I don’t have anywhere near that many fans. I provide social utility to their virtual liquidity pool. The more content I create the more value I create for them.
Even if they are only investing in transaction fees, they are associating themselves with me on the blockchain, and that is just kind of part of the fun I think. I want this to be fun. If people who like my stuff want to help me out they can. At the end of the day, anyone who wants to support me can just send Ethereum directly to my address.
Utility
I have been into the cryptocurrency scene since nearly the beginning. I have been scammed. I have been the last mining an altcoin before. I have usually been too poor to ever actually invest in a meaningful way, but I was fascinated by the technology and the potential applications of it. (I never lost much because I didn’t generate much.)
I was gifted a computer that I use to mine Ethereum. So I thought this was finally a chance to chart my own course for how I would want to distribute my content going forward. Ever since I was a teenager running a netlabel, that I have been endeavoring to decentralize my music, and this technology actually lets me do it.
With emerging technologies, hyperbole by the early adopters can generate a lot of confusion. I often see people using the same technologies that I’ve outlined in this article being used for ways that seem antithetical to the nature of decentralization, and it concerns me.
I feel like I have “set up shop” on the Ethereum network, effectively. All my music is there. People can use it to support me. People can use it to help me advertise. People can use it to release my stuff physically. All of the things that I do not enjoy, I can effectively automate using tokens. I can focus on my work and not have to worry about its availability (potentially) ever again. To me, that means more than anything else.
I started writing this article thinking that I would try to convince you that what I was doing was valid. Many of my peers are not huge fans of this technology, and I do not blame them.
I don’t know how much meaningful utility my creative work will provide to this emerging technology, but I hope that by outlining my reasoning I have conveyed several potential use-case scenarios. Either way, Ethereum has provided me plenty of utility. As has Bit Torrent. Two of which had awful reputations at the start. One for piracy, one for scams.
Over the last 20 years I’ve been uploading my own material to different private torrent sites and even ran my own public one for a short time where we shared weird independent music we made or our friends made.
It isn’t piracy if I’m uploading my own work. It isn’t a scam when the sole purpose is to support the artist. I do not care about how much value these tokens actually have. Anyone who wants any of these tokens to have value will be reliant on me getting being successful.
Now that’s definitely a gamble, but most certainly not a scam. There is no utility in hyperbole except to draw attention to the truth.
Conclusion
The best way to get people interested in something is to just kind of make it seem mundane. I did not invent running a digital store or a decentralized fan club scenario. I wanted to demonstrate my methods so that other people might adopt or otherwise improve upon my model. I am sure there are more lucrative ways to achieve my goals and I hope to see my peers endeavor do so.
I’ll leave you with a quote:
Our existence is ephemeral but the silicon is salient.
