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Cooper Turley, also known as "the music NFTs guy," joins NextMeta to talk about his humble beginnings, ascent, the evolution of crypto, onchain music, memecoins, celebcoins and building a web3 record label. The meta he keeps going on about is the one of onchain music and the future of artist-fans relationships that keep giving
Returning guest Cooper Turley is the founder of Coop records, which is a hybrid between a Web3 venture fund, a record label and an incubator. Cooper is focused on revolutionizing the music industry by bringing artists onchain and empowering them to keep control and ownership of their work. His bio currently reads: onchain is the new online. -- This episode of Show Me The Crypto is brought to you by Ballet: Making Crypto Easy. Check out Ballet's REAL Series cold storage: https://bit.ly/3KNNX5G Check out Ballet's Physical Bitcoin: https://bitcoin.ballet.com/?utm_source=showmethecryptopodcast&utm_campaign=kol -- Follow Cooper on Twitter: @Cooopahtroopa Follow Cooper on Warpcast: @coopahtroopa.eth -- Follow us on the socials: Twitter/X: @showcrypto TikTok: @showmethecrypto Instagram: @showmethecryptopodcast -- *Any financial compensation we receive will always be clearly identified as an advertisement or sponsored content. We don't accept payment to feature guests, and we don't accept payment to influence the coins/projects we discuss on Show Me The Crypto. Any ads will be clearly identified during the show, and information on our partners will be featured in the show notes.
This episode welcomes Cooper Turley, Founder of Coop Records. Cooper is a recurring guest on the pod, though this time, we focus all of our attention on how to go viral onchain.Consider this a round table discussion where him and I share our insights, lessons learned, and debate our perspectives on the current state of the onchain creator economy.I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Daniel Allan, Cooper Turley, and BlockchainBrett joined Season 7 and spoke the responsibilities that come with raising $1M.Full EpisodeSeason 7 Episode 21About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Daniel Allan, Cooper Turley, and BlockchainBrett joined Season 7 and spoke about artists following in Daniel Allan's path in web3 music.Full EpisodeSeason 7 Episode 21About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Daniel Allan, Cooper Turley, and BlockchainBrett joined Season 7 and spoke about how Daniel's fund raise is changing the game for independent artists. Full EpisodeSeason 7 Episode 21About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Daniel Allan, Cooper Turley, and BlockchainBrett joined Season 7 and spoke about 'the artist seed round.'Full EpisodeSeason 7 Episode 21About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Daniel Allan, Cooper Turley, and BlockchainBrett joined Season 7 and spoke about how Daniel is going to use the $1M he raised.Full EpisodeSeason 7 Episode 21About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Lucas Campbell is head of Web3 Strategy at Bankless. Lucas has been in and out of crypto since high school, but he fell deep down the rabbit hole in 2017 during his junior year at the University of Colorado Boulder. It was around that time he met (friend of the podcast) Cooper Turley, and the pair worked together on several initiatives including a blog called DeFi Rate and a newsletter called Token Tuesdays. Beyond his current role at Bankless, Lucas is an advocate of content collectibles in the form of NFTs. -- Our first Podcast NFT Collection "The First 100" is now minting! This collection celebrates our first 100 episodes! Official mint site: https://showmethecryptopodcast.com/ -200 total supply (100 set aside for guests; 100 for general sale) -0.04 ETH each -Mint closes March 31, 2023 -- Follow Lucas on Twitter: @0x_Lucas -- Follow us on the socials: Twitter: @showcrypto TikTok: @showmethecrypto Instagram: @showmethecryptopodcast -- *Any financial compensation we receive will always be clearly identified as an advertisement or sponsored content. We don't accept payment to feature guests, and we don't accept payment to influence the coins/projects we discuss on Show Me The Crypto. Any ads will be clearly identified during the show, and information on our partners will be featured in the show notes.
Mint Season 7 Episode 21 welcomes music collectors Cooper Turley of Coop Records and BlockchainBrett of Palm Tree Crew Ventures who are joined by web3 music artist and producer Daniel Allan to discuss Daniel's recent one million dollar fundraising round to propel his music career. The three delve into the artist seed round, ROI when investing in artists, how Daniel plans to spend the one million dollars, the future of web3 music + much more. I think this model changes the game completely and provides creatives with a new means of support. The goal of this episode is to shed light on the process and what goes into raising a million dollars. Full disclosure, I did invest in the round as I've been support Daniel's journey by documenting his early beginnings on Mint and by collecting his music NFTs. I'm excited to see how this experiment plays out and stoked to capture this milestone for you all to hear.Additional ResourcesCooper's TwitterBrett's TwitterDaniel's TwitterEpisode Timestamps and Transcript---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Season 7 NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Support Season 7's NFT Sponsors
Welcome to the FuturePerfect Podcast where we talk with compelling people breaking new ground in art, media, and entertainment. This podcast is produced by FuturePerfect Studio, an extended reality studio creating immersive experiences for global audiences. Visit our website futureperfect.studio for more details.The text version of this interview has been edited for length and clarity. Find the full audio version above or in your favorite podcast app.For episode 006, Wayne Ashley interviews Andrew Keller, founder of We Few Group, a post-media company that manages singers and songwriters, and develops brand partnerships and ventures with internationally known visual and musical artists. Making innovative use of blockchain technologies and NFTs, Andrew has been building compelling projects with such noted organizations as the David Bowie Estate and singer-songwriter Stefan Storm.Early career at Columbia RecordsLet me start right off by saying how excited I am to be speaking to someone who's been part of the music industry for over 20 years. As much as I love music, I've had very little access to the inside workings of the business. You've had these long relationships with labels like Columbia and Capitol Records. What are some of the most important insights you've gained over the last two decades?Andrew Keller: One of the biggest insights I've gained is that change is necessary and hard. When you're dealing with global major labels it's really hard to make noticeable changes. There's a lot of people working at major labels who are innovative and want to do good. It's just really hard to turn a gigantic ship around. You're dealing with all sorts of policies and god knows how many different types of contracts that were written over the years.How did you get started at Columbia Records and what were your major focuses were when you were there?AK: I started at Columbia as a 17 year old and was a total music-head. I grew up in New York City so I had access to absolutely everything, and thankfully, I had parents who were simultaneously really supportive and also slightly oblivious. From the time I was 13 or 14 I was going out to places I probably shouldn't have been and exploring all sorts of different scenes from nightclubs to hardcore and punk shows to mainstream pop shows. I was really giving myself a crazy education in different subcultures and figuring out little scenes and pockets that had their own worlds, archetypes, and systems in place. And they're probably all relatively similar, it's just people wearing different clothes and different hair. But the whole concept of having these scenes and worlds always excited me. It kind of all played into ideas of identity—sonic identity and visual identity.I was going to lots of shows around 2002 when there was this giant emergence of bands in the tri-state area who were coming out of the punk scene. And it became kind of this pop-punk, emo, screamo post-hardcore thing. I refer to it lovingly as the Warped Tour-scene, which was this festival that traveled around the US for years. There was a ton of attention on bands that I was friends with and bands that I had built relationships with as a fan.One thing kind of led to another and I ended up getting hired as a junior A&R scout / assistant at Columbia and got to work for some amazing people. One of whom is kind of this incredibly legendary small bald man named Matt Pinfield, who was a DJ and then VJ on MTV. A lot of the time we kind of ended up having a deal where he would get booked to DJ and then I would basically cover his set and he'd split the money with me if he had to leave.So I started DJing and it was just this awesome moment in time where I was really young and exposed to so many people. It became clear to me at that point that I just loved being around creative people. I was never in a band. I don't sing. I don't consider myself an artist in any way, shape or form. I do consider myself a creative person and a professional fan. I realized early on that for me it was gonna be about being the conduit and the kind of middle man between the artist and the rest of the world.That period of time was really incredible. I got to work on MGMT's first two albums as a coordinator then started to sign bands on my own like Cults and St. Lucia and doing stuff in the dance space with Krewella and Dillon Francis. And then one of the last things I got to do at Columbia was Bring Me the Horizon, which as a metal kid was unreal. And that was all under a guy named Ashley Newton, who is still one of my closest friends and mentors. He was responsible for signing Spice Girls, Massive Attack, Daft Punk, and Pharrell. Ultimately I went with him and Steve Barnett, who had been the chairman of Columbia, over to Capitol Records when Steve was relaunching Capitol.Streaming music, shifts in the industry, and joining Capitol RecordsI'm very interested in the sort of crises that upend one's assumptions about the world and motivate people to do something radically different than what they've been doing. You mentioned inertia in the music industry when we talked earlier. What happened that caused you to leave Columbia, join Capitol and eventually start your own company?AK: There were a few things. I was 30 and had started at Columbia when I was 17 and I really wanted a change. I loved my artists and everyone I worked with. It really was a family, but I was too comfortable. If you do A&R at a label your real challenge at the end of the day is to sell records. Your goal is to find artists, help them make the best record possible and have as much success as you can. There's a million ways to do it, and I'm not even saying I was great at it, but it's a very linear goal. You go from point A to point B, and that's fine, but it had just done so much and I needed a change.So Steve Barnett called me and said what would you want to do if you were going to stay at a label? And my answer was that streaming was starting to become really dominant. And the thing that streaming changed was access to global music. Before streaming if you were a British band you would sign to a label in the UK for the world. But unless something really took off, you might not even get a US release. When Spotify started putting out music, for the most part, nothing was geo-locked. Everything was coming out day and date, but labels were still working territorially.So I said to Steve, I think there's gonna be a really big shift in the way music is consumed from an international standpoint and I wanted to create “international A&R 2.0” for streaming. So off I went to Capitol Records where I started figuring out this whole system. And also taking systems that were already in place and trying to break them because there were things that didn't make sense to me and that I thought needed to be changed. Part of that was really just being the ambassador and being the person who could go and have some difficult conversations. But also go and represent Capitol around the world. It was a lot of time on airplanes.I had a ton of fun at Capitol. I got to partner with Lewis Capaldi who is on his arena tour right now and is a fantastic artist. I introduced Capitol to SM Entertainment, one of the biggest K-pop labels in the world, and they have an amazing and fruitful partnership. When I reached the end of my deal at Capitol I was in my thirties and my brand had always been owned by a major corporation. There were things I wanted to do that I'd never be able to do in those situations. For example I wouldn't be able to music supervise a movie, I wouldn't be able to launch my own projects or do certain things.An open-ended post-media companyFrom here you started your own company We Few Group. I like to call it an “open-ended post-media company”. You take on so many roles—an artist manager, a mixing engineer, an NFT project producer, an entertainment strategy consultant, you're also working closely with visual artists to produce a graphic novel and even knitwear. This kind of post-media practice that you engage in is so exciting to me and it's exactly what FuturePerfect is doing. How are these different worlds and practices connected for you?AK: When I went off to start We Few Group everyone was like what is it, what are you going to do? And I just said I'm going to do things that excite me with people I like. And that was it, that's the entire thing.For example, you mentioned the knitwear. A couple of years ago, there was a painter that I was obsessed with and I wanted to buy his paintings. I ended up getting on a Zoom call with him for over two hours talking about what he was doing. At the end of the call he asked—if I manage artists could I also manage a painter? He's in the kind of traditional art world, but makes these 30-second horror films around each of his pieces on TikTok. It's all kind of neo-gothic stuff.He has all of these kids as fans, everyone from artists and influencers and just regular teenagers and 20-somethings, the typical TikTok audience. And they all wanted merch. They weren't necessarily buying fine art, but they wanted merch. And he and I started having conversations about it. He wasn't really interested in making merch because he is an artist, but he was like, I'll start a clothing company. Next thing you know, I'm learning about knitwear.This connects back to your earlier question of why I was leaving. The answer is I wasn't learning stuff. There was no time in my life at a label that I would ever be learning about making knitwear, or consulting for Arizona Iced Tea and helping them with their entertainment strategy for two years. I now know more about consumer packaged goods and beverage production and can wrapping. Is that the world's most useful thing to know [laughs]? No but I love learning that kind of stuff and being around it.Crypto and transforming artistic engagementThis brings me now to your fascination with the crypto space. That's another expansive world. What about crypto most excites you and your efforts to transform both artistic and business practices? How did you get into it?AK: I got into crypto early. I'll preface this with saying it's not because I bought millions of Bitcoin at $2 and am now sitting here just pounding money. I wish that were the case, but it's not. I started buying little fragments of Bitcoin in like 2010. Growing up things like business and banking and the stock market were like the devil to me. For better or worse, I kind of vilified it in my mind. But with crypto it felt almost like punk rock banking. I was completely intrigued by it as a kind of rebellion. For years friends heard me talking about crypto, and when the pandemic started and touring was shut down there was suddenly a bull market mentality in the crypto space. And NFTs, which had been around for a few years prior, started to be something that artists, managers and agents were paying attention to. People started calling me saying you probably know about this stuff, right?I gave pretty much everyone the exact same conversation. I said please don't do this, it is really early. This is a real world and kind of culture. You do not care about them. They do not really care about you. Your fans do not care. You know, this is bad for everyone. I guess not a lot of people were voicing that at the time. A lot of people were saying we should do this and people made a bunch of money, but I think a lot of them also looked a little dumb. A lot of the projects were pretty empty. Most of them don't get talked about anymore.But as this world kept growing I started getting calls again. I realized that I could help be a middle man and tour guide. I could help bring the right people with the right intentions in and help shape what adoption to Web3 looked like and help introduce people to the real crypto-native world and to the people who really care about this. A lot of what I do now with Web3 is try to find interesting projects and people who I think will love and enjoy this space and help them either dip their toe in the water or jump in the right way surrounded by the right people.Working with the David Bowie EstateTalk about the David Bowie project, because clearly this is something that you have a lot of passion for, and through it we can better understand what you mean by NFT, crypto space or blockchain.AK: It was without a doubt, one of the most incredible and surreal things I have and probably will ever get to be a part of. Let's put it this way, when my son came home from the hospital in his nursery at home over the changing table is a caricature of David Bowie. My dog's name is Bowie. I'm not a casual Bowie Fan. I revere Daivd Bowie.I couldn't write it better. I'm sitting on the computer one night buying something on the NFT marketplace OpenSea with my dog Bowie sitting next to me and I get a text that says “I can't really say much, but can I introduce you to the Bowie estate, they want to talk about NFTs.” We end up starting this dialogue with the executor of the Bowie estate, who is just an incredible man. He had heard a lot about crypto and what was going on in this space and was very cautious, but had a kind of bullishness. As someone who knew Bowie well, he knew Bowie would've been really excited by this. For me, there had to be a very specific why. That question of why are we doing this? What is our north star for this?What was the vision that emerged for the project?AK: I basically spent the weekend thinking about Bowie and everything I knew about him and digging into his art collection because he was a huge art collector. I happened to have the catalog of the Sotheby's auction when they auctioned off his collection. So I started going into it and asking what did his collection look like? What kind of art did he collect? Then you start thinking about him as a technologist and a lover of new technology. And you're like okay you had BowieWorld before Metaverse was even a thing we talked about. You had BowieNet, which was his own ISP and kind of fan club site. You had BowieArt, which ultimately became a showcase of art that he liked and art made by his community. And then you start thinking about Bowie Bonds and the idea of him having commodified his work and well, that sounds a lot like a bunch of NFT projects. And I just went, okay, this is a guy who kind of had the ethos of the crypto artist before that was a thing. If the blockchain is the permanent immutable ledger, then let's go put this on the blockchain. Let's go put his legacy there.So what does that mean to put his collections on the blockchain?AK: Well, it wasn't his collections, it was, let's do a project that puts on-chain—something that is on the ledger and can never be deleted—that he was here. And let's create something to honor his legacy. I kept going back to the fact that he was a huge supporter of new artists. He was a digital artist himself. I got access to the Bowie archives through my partner Joaquin and I would literally get screenshots on my phone of anything from the archive whether it was an outfit he wore or a ticket to one of his shows or art he had done or a photograph. Everything is meticulously databased. And so Joaquin and I basically started narrowing down this idea.The project became, let's get a handful of the best artists in the crypto art space, from super established to new and up-and-coming and give them free rein to create anything they want to contribute to Bowie. They also had the added bonus of incorporating anything from the archives, which no one has ever been able to do. From there I started to ask who do we want, who makes sense here?I did things like going through Bowie's personal art collection and basically tagging a bunch of stuff like “landscape”, “British artist”, “contemporary African artist”, “sculptor”. And then I did the same with crypto-native artists and tried to find what the connections were. It wasn't about finding a one to one match with everyone, but there were certainly people where I could say okay, this guy's work kind of reminds me of this guy's work. Or I think what this guy does with his art is kind of interesting in relation to this part of Bowie's archive. And also people who were fans of Bowie and people whose art represents certain things that I thought were key to Bowie's legacy. So we came up with a dream list and started approaching them. Almost everyone said yes.What makes this specifically crypto art? How do you differentiate the art that emerges within the blockchain? What is unique about it?AK: What makes this special? Well it is a new medium for art, a new way to distribute art. Artists are able to do things they couldn't do with prior art forms. For example, there are some works that are coded to literally change the time of day; there are pieces that morph over time; some of the artists built mechanisms into the work that would change the work automatically at a future time…at the end of the day it's just art. There's a community aspect to this art. All of the artists in the project interact directly with their community, their fans, and collectors. There is no middleman. There are no traditional rules. There needs to be collaboration, direct connection, dynamic movement, and that's what makes it special to me. Being on the blockchain is a means for it to exist. And then there is the “smart contract.” That's a huge part of what an NFT is, the actual code you are gaining access to in this token. This contract protects not only Bowie, but artists and the NFT community from being exploited. Everything was a 50/50 partnership between the artists and the estate, and 100% of the profits went to charity. Launching a new transmedia art projectTell me about Kids of the Apocalypse, another far reaching transmedia project that spans across music, NFTs, music videos, a comic book, and film. Here is a quote from the Kids of the Apocalypse Discord channel that sums up the project really well: In the aftermath of a cataclysmic bio-explosion, a social movement of revolutionaries is born to break the chains of the tyrannical rule of Horizon Corp in the wake of the apocalypse. A multimedia art project born from the music, Kids of the Apocalypse (KOTA) aspires to highlight the themes represented on the journey of our - awakening, unity, and deposition of unjust power. Positioned as a multimedia IP with strong experience and connections in the music industry alongside a world-class design team, KOTA is a love letter to those who dare to speak out and be themselves - delivered in the form of a suspenseful, emotional, and immersive sci-fi adventure.AK: Kids of the Apocalypse was a concept and story that was conceived about 10 years ago. There was a Swedish production group called The Sound of Arrows, and Stefan Storm from the group had started this kind of side project idea Kids of the Apocalypse. Imagine a dark comedy version of—I'm gonna say X-Men because it involves mutants—that is alt and internet leaning and kind of self-referential which also has a music component. There's this whole story and a really immaculately created lore and universe. And now imagine 10 years ago saying let's make this happen. Where the do you begin? So this idea sat there for a long time.So cut to 10 years later and I'm reconnecting with my friend Derek Davies, who was the founder of Neon Gold, which was a label that I had actually done a label deal with when I was at Columbia and who had signed Sound of Arrows and put out their first EP. He was still in touch with Stefan, and Derek is also doing a lot of stuff in the Web3 space. He has an incredible company called Medallion. I think we have put together a pretty incredible team—we've got Derek and the Medallion crew, we have Stefan and his crew, we've got an incredible creative agency who have been working on all of this alongside Stefan. And we've got the guys at Bench Mob who are some of the best digital architects out there from a social media strategy perspective. We've got an incredible community manager, we've got a advisory board of people who really are some of the best and brightest in the space from Cooper Turley on the music NFT side to John Roger, who's one of the advisors and was marketing for Star Wars for Lucasfilm and then became the first head of franchise development at Disney.We have released a few songs and one video, which I think might be the number one (I hate data points because they get outdated quickly so I might be wrong here) most traded piece on Glass which is a music video NFT protocol. We've also created something that I think has never been done before, which was creating a mechanism that integrates traditional streaming with NFT minting. Where in order to gain access to the allow list you actually had to interact with and log yourself into your Spotify or Apple account. This is a very blockchain-native project, but I also want everyone to be able to hear the music, even if you don't know what an NFT is, because the music is fantastic. The first drop is a PFP (profile picture) project. It's season one and includes the eight main characters, which you're randomly assigned to and each of them has its own unique theme music and properties, and it's all happening on the Blockchain. We're doing all this on Solana, which is a chain that I think allows for very quick movement. And part of what we want to do is really involve our community in the storytelling and really let them into all of the bits and pieces of the lore. And to me, a lot of that will come from surprise and delight and from airdrops and from opening up your wallet one day and seeing things you didn't know were going to be in there.For those of us who are still new to this space, what is a wallet? AK: The wallet is the digital space through which everything is integrated and enters into your possession. Your wallet is where you hold your cryptocurrency, where you hold your NFTs. So you may log into your wallet one day and if you're a holder of Kids of the Apocalypse NFT, you may find something new that has been added to your wallet. We've also created an amazing community in Discord, and the fan art alone is pretty incredible. I encourage people to check it out because we really are trying to build something unique. I think the website is one of the coolest websites I have seen, it is fully immersive, and we're going to play with it.So how will the comic book and full film emerge? How is that all going to be integrated?AK: The full-length film is a dream. It could be a short film too, we don't know. The plan is for this to be a story told in a moving visual media. We're still having discussions about how and what that will look like.Before we stop, were there any other current projects that we should be aware of?AK: Yeah there are two things. After the Bowie project I felt that it was important for me to put myself out there more. I felt that there was an opportunity to experience what artists and creators in this space go through, their step-by-step process. My father was a photo journalist, and I've always loved photography. I had this idea going back to the idea of the blockchain as a permanent immutable ledger; and thinking of photographs, particularly snapshots, as as memory objects; and what if you minted those memories to the blockchain, and then they're there forever. Now what happens if you then renounce your ownership of them? If you're using the snapshot as a representation of a memory, what if I minted it, and sent it to you and now it's yours? What does it mean for someone else to have my memory? It was an idea that I kept coming back to and I finally felt the need to bite the bullet and just put this out there. It's called Memory Loss. I spoke to a few artists in the crypto space to see if the idea offended anyone. I got their support and encouragement. I minted some of the snapshots and made them available on the Tezos blockchain, which is a space that is more experimental, low key, less pressure. It's on the marketplace Objkt. I do have ideas for future ways for this to evolve.The other project, equally experimental, gives support to visual artists who want to start playing in the music NFT space. There are some artists making really amazing music and building a fan base and building patrons and building their own worlds with their own rules in this space. I wanted to create a way for visual artists, who are curious, to safely and with integrity and respect, integrate themselves into that world. The short of it is I am launching an NFT-based singles label. The name is, W3 F3W like my company, except that the ees are 3s. It's going to be a place for great new music and great visual art to collide and hopefully again, just bring people into a world that I'm pretty excited about. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit futureperfect.substack.com
Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa, the founder of Coop Records talks about building a music audience in web3.Full EpisodeSeason 6 Episode 10About Mint ShortsA new segment on Mint capturing the best moments from the podcast in a bite-size format.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Free NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
I'm digging into the mailbag for today's episode. For the first time in over a year, I asked Trapital listeners and readers to send me their most burning questions about the music industry. I've pulled out nine questions from the bunch to cover on the show. We're covering everything from NFTs to artificial-intelligence-assisted music creation to investing in music catalogs going forward and a whole lot more. I'm hitting you with my honest thoughts on each. Here's a look at the topics:[0:54] State of music NFTs [4:40] Customer problems as a music startup[8:35] Lack of new music superstars [12:07] Future of AI-assisted music creation [17:00] Tradeoff for artists wanting ownership [22:11] Hasbro selling eOne[26:16] Music catalog investing in 2023[29:41] Globalization of hip-hop [33:21] Emerging artists as startup founders Trapital's first-ever Cultural Report for 2022: https://trapital.co/culture-report/Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.co Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Check out The Drop, REVOLT's weekly newsletter to stay ahead of the latest news in hip-hop and Black culture. To learn more, visit revolt.tv Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of music, media and culture. Learn more by reading Trapital's free memo.TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Dan Runcie: If you're an owner of I.P., often times that I.P. may be the most valuable thing that you have. But does it always make sense for you to then be the ones that produce it? Of course, there's unique examples of this, right? I think Disney is a company that clearly does both, but Disney is such a unicorn in what it does in so many ways, and we've all seen that flywheel of what they've done, and that flywheel is so relevant because it's hard to see another company that could really do that to that level. But it's more likely than not that if you are an I.P. owner or it's probably in your best financial interest to partner with a company that you can leverage their production because they are skilled at being a production company to do that thing.[00:00:46] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:01:04] (Intro) Dan Runcie: From you, the listeners who make Trapital, exactly what it is. So this is a mailbag question where you all sent in your best questions. Some of you emailed them, some of you posted them on socials, but I looked at the questions and picked the best ones, and this is a mailbag episode. It's been a while since we did one of these, so it felt good to do one. I actually wanna do these more often just because I think the questions were really great and we're able to address a bunch of topics that we'll get into A.I, the future of music, globalization, ownership, and all the topics that we love to break down on capital and a few ones. So let's jump in.[00:01:41] (Pre Roll Ad Moonpay) [00:02:11] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we have our one and only Mailbag episode from Trapital. It's been a while since we did one of these. I feel, maybe at some point earlier this year we did a mailbag, so it was finally good to dig back in, hear from folks and be able to answer the questions that a lot of you have been thinking. This podcast has grown quite a bit this past year and was in the 1% for the most shared podcast according to Spotify wrap, so that was pretty good. Some applause for that. And I wanted to bring in some of the questions from some of the avid listeners and readers we have. So I posted in social media, posted in the newsletter, and this is a roundup of the best ones. Covered a bunch of topics. We're gonna talk about the future of A.I and music, the state of NFTs, globalization, ownership, and a whole lot more. So let's dive into the first question we have here. So, Ken Penn wants to know what is the current state of music NFTs and our major labels as interested in them as they were? So first for some clear context, a lot of people have been asking questions about this because the general trends of N F T discussions from last year to this year is not quite what you would expect. A lot of people saw that Bloomberg report that came out earlier in 2022, I think they said, N F T transactions were down 97% from the peak that they were at in 2021. And if you type in the word NFTs in Google Trends, you'll probably see a slope that looks quite downward. That is very true, and that's clearly where that is. But I think there's a big difference between that, which I think 97% of that was the hype and a lot of the crap that you likely would only see at the height of the pandemic when money was flowing like crazy. Think about the time when like Pet rocks were being sold and Logan Paul was buying his NFTs or trying to sell his NFTs for whatever. If that was the top of the market, then I think we're seeing things level off a bit more now because you are still seeing partnerships from the major labels and from a lot of artists. I look at Warner Music Group. Warner's been active, more active than any other major label, I think, when it comes to active investments and being forward-looking and being public about those investments. And it was just six, seven weeks ago that they had formed a partnership with Open Sea, which is one of the largest platforms out there to be able to trade in as a marketplace to be able to buy and sell NFTs. So you also have other deals that we've seen. Universal Music Group recently hired two SVPs that are focused on web three with a pretty strong focus on NFTs themselves. And more broadly, you have companies like Public Pressure that just raised $6 million to continue to build in this space. I have said this a few times in this podcast, but I think that Web three and NFT specifically, you had to get through the.com era. You had to get through that heads.com phase of people just starting shit because it sounded like it was something that was gonna resonate, but after a lot of that didn't work out. You obviously had the.com bubble burst. That era still gave us Google, it still gave us Amazon and all these other companies that have still continued to be successful and be some of the biggest companies in the world today. And I think there was a very strong chance that we will still have that with this current wave. It may look slightly different in music, but I still think that we're gonna see, and we have seen more of the true opportunities, whether it's on the artist side of artists that are selling actual NFTs that their fans would find valuable and that others will wanna buy into as well. And I think you'll see this on the major label side with more investment going into acts that can actually reap the rewards from it. One of the biggest deals of 2022 when it comes to N F T sales was Snoop. and what he was able to do, just capturing that momentum. After the Super Bowl. We wrote, or I covered a lot of this in the culture report that Trapital put out will include a link to it in the show notes if you haven't checked it out yet, but still a lot of upside on NFTs. I do not see it quite as much as the bubble that I think was clearly there in 2021. A lot of that quarantine rapid growth needed to calm back down a bit, and I think NFTs are one of the areas that were hit a lot harder than others, but I still think that there's plenty of upside for people that actually wanna build and don't just wanna do grifter, whatever the hell else people were trying to buy itself time. Another question here is from David from Santa Monica, and this was actually a reply to a newsletter that I recently put out where I was talking about some of the cost challenges that music startups and music tech companies will face as in regards to working with customers and customer service and working and dealing with unprofitable customers and wanting to move further up. Mark's question was whether or not I had any data on the customer service costs that these companies have. And I wanna answer that question in a slightly different way. It's less about customer service in the same way that you know, you or I may go call Comcast or may call Xfinity when we're having an issue with our cable or our internet, but it's more so you are a client or customer that is trying to use this particular service, whether it's free or you're relying on it to grow your own business, and you are now having some challenges, you're having some type of question. The thing is a lot of the companies, especially a lot of the distribution platforms, started off being available to everyone, but I think they realized how expensive it is to serve the clients and to serve the customers who are not driving the most business possible. It's no different than a lot of people see when they're working with client services. Overall, your $2 million clients in a lot of ways can be so much more enjoyable to deal with and work with than your $2,000 clients or $2,000 clients will chat a nickel and a dime. They have a bunch of questions about this, that, and the third, but your clients that have a bit more money, they normally come in a bit more clear and confident with what they're looking for, and it can lead to better business in the long run. And I think to a lot of extent, the same is true with a lot of the artists that you end up serving or a lot of the customers that a lot of these platforms end up serving because a lot of their time gets spent with customers that just don't justify the ROI of how much it costs to have that person on staff continue to work and continue to coach and work directly with someone who's just not generating enough revenue to be able to justify the spend. And if you think about how a lot of the companies focus on these things, especially if you're being built out like a tech customer success. This is a role where whether even at the high individual contributor, or the middle level manager role, you're talking, you know, $150, $200,000 plus for someone that can do that roll on annual basis. I mean, I'm thinking of myself, it was six years ago at this point, I was offered a customer success role from a startup that has, you know, now been acquired. I believe the offer was right around that $150, or maybe it was a little bit more than that K range. And that's how much you're paying to have one person that is dedicated to not just you, but to other clients.But if you were to fractionize my time, let's say that, you know, I was someone that was making $160k a year and I had 12 to 16 clients per year that I was serving, you have to justify, okay, is it worth $10k of the company's time to be able to continue to serve this person if that's what I'm spending my timeline, and we all know that it's less likely that it's gonna be an even split. So that's where these things I think, can often come into play, which is why I think you've seen a lot of the distribution services and a lot of the others start to be more selective over time. And they start to have cut-offs in terms of who they're willing to serve and who they're not willing to serve. And that's one of the reasons why I think we see that shift where, especially in music distribution, it ends up leaning itself towards just having a low cost option, like Distrokid or a tunecore where it essentially doesn't cost much at all to upload the services, but it's a bit more do it yourself or you get something that is a bit more boutique. But by being able to join the boutique offering, it's much more selective as a result. So the next question here is from Arthur from Twitter. He didn't specifically say his name, but it was a good question here. He asked, who gets more blame for the lack of consistent superstar X, labels or customers? The answer is neither. The answer is technology. If you're trying to blame anyone, I personally don't call it blame. I more so call it the driving factor, but this is more about technology. Technology was the driving force that lowered the barriers to entry for artists to be able to create more music than they've ever created, and to be able to release it the way that they've done it. And because they're releasing music the way that they've done it, it then becomes harder and much more noisier for new artists to be able to enter the scene and be able to hit the same heights that they did. And because of the increased number of options that are there, it makes it even easier for powers that be to continue to invest more in what they already see proven. Whether that is your superstar artist or ones who have already proven themselves that seem like they'd be most likely to be the next next bets, whether that's your Taylor Swift or your Adele, or your Beyonce on the proven side or on the artist coming up, whether it's someone like, Olivia Rodrigo, or like Blast, or Billie Eilish or someone like that. So these things that are, I think, a big factor just based on where things are and barriers continuing to be lower and lower. And there's been countless reports on just how difficult it is and how record labels are starting to feel like it's having a harder time to break new stars in the way that they once did. It's harder to have new superstars reach the levels that they did. I think you see this in some of the analysis that's been done on charts and stuff like that too. It's a lot of the same names that have been household names for over a decade that are continuing to stay there and it's harder for the new artists to really come through. So I guess if there's anyone to blame for that, we can blame the founders and the product managers from the companies that enabled the barriers actually to happen in the first place. I know a lot of people disagree. I do think it's a good thing that people have more options than ever just in terms of the artist's perspective, but just because I think that it brought a lot of flexibility. But with that, there's always trade-offs like any new technology brings. There's good with that. There's bad that comes with that. I do think that the pros and the cons outweigh them. I do think that the pros do outweigh the cons with that, but still very aware of the downsides of the current timing. This next question is from Joe Edwards and he asked, what is the ultimate potential of GPT-3? This is a hot topic right now, I think for a lot of folks, and it's a question that I think everyone from record labels to attorneys, to emerging artists are trying to figure out, but here's my perspective. I think that GPT-3 is a great tool that will be able to give songwriters an extra tool that they can have by their side. I think we recently heard Bruce Springsteen on a podcast talk about how he could use A.I., whether it's something like something that can help jog his memory or jog his thoughts, specifically if he's having a better writer's block and how difficult that can be for a songwriter. You just wanna be able to have a few things that can aid your process of bringing thoughts together. The pen that comes from that would ever truly replicate something that Bruce Springsteen would wanna put out himself. But just give it how advanced these tools get and how better and better they get. It's likely gonna provide someinspiration that can be helpful. That said, I think it would be more helpful to help existing artists, and I'm a bit less bullish right now on new artists coming up. I think we all saw what happened with Capitol Records and FN Meka and that whole mess, while I don't think that that's all A.I. driven, part of that's driven by the people that were running it. I do think that that is an inherent challenge that some people may be a bit weary of, at least for now. But one place that I do think A.I. and GPT-3 specifically could be unique for is for giving certain artists or certain people the ability to access a sound catalog or an ability to access a group of songs that they can use to then scour to figure out what they can then glean from that to be able to create the new songs that are able to create lyrics that they could use in the future. The reason I highlight this is because I'm sure if you're trying to use a song that is based on a song that is owned by a major record label, the record labels and their lawyers will come after you, and it is something that I know that is already top of mind for. But there's a lot of music out there, a lot of music that people would want to hear that isn't owned or controlled by the major record labels. And I think in the same way that you saw platforms like Epidemic Sound or Splice and others be able to create, whether it's monthly subscriptions or other types of opportunities to buy access to a right to use any of the songs in the catalog. I think you could see something very similar to that happening with A.I. and GPT-3 specifically, because yes, if GPT-3 tries to scour all of the songs available, that is a legal nightmare. But if you're an artist and you wanna be able to pay $10.99 a month or whatever it is, to be able to access this tool where you could type. Any prompt that could help spur your thought, that could be a very great use of $10.99, especially if that gives you the ability to make the next album from your bedroom that could be nominated and win a bunch of Grammys or sell, or, you know, do a bunch of commercial success or just have enough success for you to be a standalone successful musician in your own right. Because I do think a lot of those things are likely to appeal more so to independent artists. I also think that we'll see some potential with GPT-3 with an artist that breaks out on TikTok in general, I almost feel like it's inevitable that there's gonna be some artist in 2023 that has some song that goes viral on TikTok, and people are gonna be like, oh, where did the idea for the song come come from? And the artist is gonna say, oh, I just typed in a prompt. Write me a song about X, Y, Z. And here's what came up. Because we already started to see little hints of how artists would use name generation or using tools to come up with things, right? You've all heard the story about how Lil Nas X used insights from Reddit and insights from Twitter to create Old Town Road and how he essentially engineered that song to reach a type of success that it did grant. A lot of that was outside of his influence, just given things going viral after the whole country music controversy. But a lot of the things leading up to that point were influenced by him. And I think even on a more simpler side, artists like Childish Gambino and Post Malone, I'm pretty sure that both of them got their names from some random computer generators. So there's been things like that that we've seen and I think we'll continue to see more of that. And I think even the answer to this question is gonna continue to evolve. So you could ask me this question in a year. I think I could probably have this as an end of the year podcast question for some time now. And their law used to be something new to glean. The next question here is from Mercedes G. She wants to know why don't artists prioritize ownership even though artists have been pushing ownership for decades? So this question is a bit nuanced because I do think that there are a lot of artists out there that do push ownership, and they are clear that they wanna be able to own their masters and own their publishing and understand the value. I think the challenge comes though, when it becomes a trade off and that trade off is likely offering the artist something that they couldn't have otherwise had because owning your masters and owning all those things sounds great and it sounds great if we assume that the artist could have reached the same heights that they could without giving up something in exchange.The thing is, when an artist is starting to pop and they are already experiencing what some of the challenges are, being able to really hit that next level and whether that is something that they want to do because of some of the things I answered with earlier questions. With more and more music coming out, it's harder for everyone to break out. It's especially harder for artists that are already signed to two record labels to break through. That means it's gonna be even hard for an artist that doesn't have the major label resources behind them to break out as well, which could make them even more likely to wanna then sign with the major record label, especially if they are cutting you a check. I'll look at a few examples of younger artists as well. Look at an artist like Lil Dirk or even NBA Young Boy, I'm pretty sure little Dirk. Posted that he had gotten a 40 million deal recently this year. And I think Dirk is someone that has been popular. I mean, it's several years ago at this point that he was on double XLS freshman list, but even as an independent artist, it could have taken him quite a bit of time to ever hit that amount of money, especially if he's trying to cash it in on the moment that he has. So it's one thing to push ownership and it's another thing to still be able to say, you know what, no, I'm good. I don't want that check. Let me continue to do what I'm doing. When someone offers you an eight figure check that's right in front of you. And I think there's a bit of that human element that can sometimes get a bit lost cuz it's easy for the people in the pita gallery playing Monday morning quarterback to go say, oh, why would you do that deal? Or us to focus on some of the survivorship stories of Master P turning down a million dollar record label deal. Different people that may have offered it to him. Because for every success story like Master P, there are other people that turned those same type of deals down but it didn't take off the way it did for P and then they go back to the record label and being like, oh, hey, could I still get that deal? And the record label's like, no, like the moment passed and the only reason you're coming to me is because you don't feel like you have the momentum that you had before. So there's a few factors here that I think are important to consider, and there is that human element that I think just changes. It's one thing to be a Twitter pundit and put your thoughts out there, but it's another thing to really still say no when a company that you know, they're rolling out the red carpet for you their show, they're presenting the seven, eight figure check, whatever it is, and then you still saying, no, I'm good. And then I think you even see us at the highest levels as well. You look at the deals that you know, someone like Drake or the weekend, you're more so hitting now into the nine figure deals and these artists are more likely to be able to continue to have ownership, but they're still licensing their masters or licensing their music out to the major company. So there's still some trade off there. It's very rare that you ever are really seeing superstar artists that still are hitting those superstar artists levels that is like, you know what? I'm good. Let me just go release everything independently. Cause I think at the end of the day, if you are a priority on these labels, and if you are still getting the best that you can get, you're more likely to figure out, okay, what trade-off is commensurate at what level? And that doesn't mean there wasn't a better way that could be done optimally. My explanation here is more of an explanation of the entire landscape of less of an advocacy for one position or another. But I do think in general, just given how much harder it is for record labels to be able to truly, I think, focus and invest on that artist development piece because they're expecting artists to come to them when they've already hit zero to 60. I think it really puts the onus on the artist to be like, okay, are you happy at 60? Because if you're happy at 60, you may not need the record label, and maybe you think you could get to 70 or 80 yourself, but it may take some time. But if you're trying to get to a hundred, it's gonna be really hard for you to do that independently. So a lot of it requires some questioning on where you wanna go, how far you wanna go, and why that may or may not be as important to you. [00:22:52] (Mid Ad): Today's episode of The Trapital Podcast was brought to you by Revolt. Revolt is on a mission to curate and share the best of the best in hip hop culture and social justice. You may remember a couple months back I had the CEO of Revolt, Detavio Samuels on the podcast scene. He talked all about the mission and where things are going, and I think this is one leading company that is elevating what's happening in black culture. It was launched by Sean Diddy Combs back in 2013, and the multi-platform Network offers breaking news videos, artist interviews, exclusive performances, and original programming. They have content for everyone, like Asset over liabilities and original podcast with the host of Earn Your Leisure that gives you a behind the scenes look into the business investments of artists like Soulja Boy and Rick Ross. They also have the Drop Revolts weekly newsletter and curation of the latest in hip hop and black news, and they have the black print where sits down with innovators and change makers laying the ground up for the next generation for the culture. You can learn more and sign up for Revolt's newsletter, the drop@revolt.tv.[00:24:00] Dan Runcie: All right, this next question here is about a specific deal that's going on, but it's gonna be a good one to answer. JB from Atlanta asked, now that Hasbro has sold E-One's TV and film division, could quality control be a potential buyer? So a few things to unpack here. Earlier in November, Hasbro announced that it will be selling its TV and filled divisions of the comp company. Note that this news, three years after Hasbro had initially acquired all of Entertainment One, which included its music division. And then I think it's been about a year now. My time may be off, but it's been about a year plus now that it had rolled off its music division, which then became Monarch, which is run by Chris Taylor and that team. You may remember them because they were the team that was involved with the selling and the acquisition of Death Row records and then that deal with Snoop Dog. But Hasbro overall has kind of been in this, oops, maybe we should have done this deal when they went and bought E-One. And I think the big takeaway away for Hasbro has been that if we want to leverage the IP that we have, and as many of you know, Hasbro toy companies, so it has the IP there, but it also has some brands that were in that production, like Peppa Pig and things like that. They can still own the IP, but they don't have to own the in-house production to be able to then leverage that IP and make it happen, and then when you own those divisions, it just can be so costly to try to do that. So they got a lot of pressure from Wall Street and other analysts to sell that division and focus on what they do. If you're an owner of an IP, Oftentimes that IP may be the most valuable thing that you then have, but does it always make sense for you to then be the ones that produce it? Of course, there's unique examples of this, right? I think Disney is a company that clearly does both, but Disney is such a unicorn in what it does in so many ways, and we've all seen that flywheel what they've done, and that flywheel is so relevant because it's hard to see another company that could really do that to that level. But it's more likely than not that if you are an IP owner or it's probably in your best financial interest to partner with a company that you can leverage through their production because they are skilled at being a production company to do that thing. So that was a lot of the reason why that sale happened in the first place. Now let's talk about the QC part of this. I would be very surprised if Quality Control was to go on and buy a TV and film division because I also look at Quality Control as an IP. I mean just given the ownership structure, they may joint own some of that with Motown, give the joint venture there. But they are IP owners that can then use that to leverage, whether it's the brand or the story of your little baby Migos and even the rise of coach K and P and and things like that. And while QC does do investments, like I know they're involved with SoundCloud and they have a few other things going. I would be very surprised if they went on to acquire a type of, you know, studio themselves. I know that QC does have a film division, but my impression of that has always been more so, yeah, let's stay quiet, let's have that something that we could have that small and manageable in-house, but if they still have a big release, I think they would probably wanna go to shop that and market the same way that any other big time producer would want if they wanted to push something further. No different than, I think you kind of saw with the Little baby documentary that eventually went on, Amazon was released on Amazon Prime a couple of months ago. So I would be surprised there, if anything, I mean, I think QC is one of these record labels that may be looking for an outside investor itself, but I'm not quite sure what the Motown relationship, just given the joint venture ownership there and how that may look, whether or not who the actual company is that owns, whether it's the brand or the artist or anything like that.Moving forward from that. All right. Couple more questions here. So is music investing specifically, like in catalogs, is music investing still a good idea in 2023? And my answer is yes, but not in some of those 2021 pandemic era evaluations. And that's because I think what I liked about the catalog boom is that it brought awareness to something that I think a retail investors in the niche knew, but a lot of others weren't focusing on, is that there's a lot of value to be had with owning some of these catalogs because there's certain artists that I think do have the potential to just feel similar to a evergreen stock or something like that continues. Provide consistent revenue that isn't correlated with the economy time and time again. But I think there's a few things that happened that people may have missed. One, there is a decay curve with all of those assets. And even as much as people wanna tell you that the Beach Boys or Michael Jackson or the Beatles are timeless, everything has a decay curve. I mean, you could even go back, you know, decades, even. Frank Sinatra or Elvis. I know that you know that the movie that came out recently, but even folks like that, the discussions that are happening now about those people aren't anywhere near the type of discussions that you may have heard, at least when I was growing up, and that just shows you how much has changed in several decades since then. So, and I think the music listening would've probably aligned with that as well. So there's that, and I just think that the valuations that were being paid for a lot of these things probably just wouldn't happen again. One, because interest rates are nowhere near as low as they were, but I think even regardless of interest rates, there was a lot of overpaying for those assets just given the excitement. So smart on a lot of the artists for cashing out when they did and getting a lot of those returns because at least from what we've seen from a lot of the reports, You've seen some of these financial time stories talking about Hypnosis. And Hypnosis has at least from what the returns have been from their catalog has not been able to generate returns that a lot of the investors feel satisfied with and feel are in line with what they had, which is why I think you started to see more challenges there. There was almost an entire year period where the company didn't make an investment, and I think you've seen a lot of things ring true for others. There are still catalog sales happening. It just may not happen at the particular dollar amount that people wanted. For instance, there was Pink Floyd deal that was being talked about for a while. It's still being talked about. I believe they wanted $500 million, but based on some of the recent findings that had come out, the offers that they started to get were much smaller than they would've liked. So people are still interested in buying Pink Floyd. It may not be for the amount of money that the rights holders wanna sell it for, but there's still interest there, and I think that rings true all the way up and down the board. Listen, it wasn't even just music investing. The quarantine era of the pandemic led to a lot of sales for things happening that just probably wouldn't happen in the same way today. All right. Another question here is how does the globalization of hip hop Influence its business and cultural impact? And this question came from chat GPT. Someone had submitted this question and then it came back as, oh, what do you think is a good question to ask about the business of music or the business of hip hop? So this is a fun one. I know I've written about it a few times, but for the sake of brevity, I'll tackle it in two ways. First, A lot of the Western hip hop artists were able to reach a much bigger audience as a result of globalization, and I think it made it easier for some of them to launch global brands as a result. I look at folks like Rihanna and folks like Jay-Z. Look at some of the deals they've done with, whether it's ACE of Spades for Jay-Z, or the Fenty partnerships with Rihanna. These partnerships are tied in with European companies and there has to be some relevance for how big you are seen in Europe and other areas for those things to really have an impact. And I think you saw that compound as well. When you look at someone like Rihanna and Fenty Beauty, being able to enter Africa and just given the ethos of that brand being able to be inclusive and have shades for all skin tones, it makes perfect sense to be able to do it in Africa, which you just think about the beauty industry. This is an entire continent of people, especially women. Different complexion and skin tones that were largely overlooked by the many other major brands. So being able to have that influence there directly ties into an artist like Rihanna, you know, years, decades earlier, being able to tour in these places and being able to have her name out there, being able to be seen in that way. So I think it affects it from that perspective. And of course, Jay-Z, Rihanna are more so people at the top of that chain that are billionaires, but I think it really made a large impact on everyone else on the other side, I think it's made a huge impact on international artists too, because we've seen in so many other places that hip hop has truly been that connective tissue. It's really been that gateway that can help. Raise and elevate the voice of the unheard or elevate the voice of the people that may not have either gotten a chance to get their word out there or can really speak to some of the challenges that are happening. And that's the way that hip hop started. You look at Public Enemy, they saw themselves as the black CNN. They were trying to voice what's really happening. You listen to songs like Grandmaster Flash, The Message. This is what's going on in the streets of New York right now. And I think that if you listen to a lot of hip hop from other areas and you hear things translated, you're hearing a lot of that. And even someone like Bad Bunny, how he speaks about some of the challenges and the oppression that's happening in Latin America, or even things that are happening in Puerto Rico specifically, or even how we spoke out about disaster relief and even L G B T Q issues. It's not a coincidence that this is a hip hop artist that is doing this in their own language and that's happening. So I think we've just continued to see more and more influence and we'll continue to see how hip hop continues to be such a big driver. And it's not just Latin America. You're seeing it in France and you're seeing it elsewhere. And as globalization of music more broadly has made it more possible for artists in local languages to truly rise up. I think you're gonna see more and more of that coming from hip hop in a lot of those local language areas. All right. And the last question we have here is from Quai Bangs who asks, do I notice similarities in emerging artists that follow the start-up path to start-ups themselves? And I definitely do see a lot of those. And I like the question because I've been hearing so much from founders in the space and start-ups in other companies about two things. Truly identifying and seeing artists as founders, not just as the creative talent behind what they're doing, but they are the ones that are the founding person of this company that if successful as it can be, it'll be a company built around them to then help focus and really benefit and speak to their strengths and address their weaknesses as well. No different than a start-up would be who is that? Who are your co-founders that you're gonna find that may not be on the talent side, but can help with the business? Or if you wanna do it all yourself, who are the people that can be around you to at least help support in that way? And I think that you've seen some of those things happen, from time and time again. You look at the start of Dreamville, I very much do. Ibrahim Hamad and Jay Cole as two people that are in line with being able to do that and continuing to push forward, which I think has been pretty strong, seeing how they've been able to do that over the past decade. Plus, you look at any of these record labels and I think you're more likely than not going to see some type of tandem there. We talked about Quality Control. I think you see a lot of that too, and I think no different than a start-up may try to get equity for what they're doing. I think you're seeing certain artists start to explore this as well, whether they're trying to explore on chain, we're trying to sell tokens or they're trying to get a more formal structure in place. I recently had the investor, Cooper Turley, Cooper Tupa on the podcast, and he was talking about this as well, and how he's investing in companies that are looking at this investing artist specifically so that he can take an equity stake out of the artists themselves and be a bit, you know, less dilutive than a record label that may wanna take 80% of the cut moving forward in exchange for in advance. So there's plenty of trade-offs there. I think it's an interesting thing to continue to explore, but I think that it is a sign of what that path to the future looks like. Cuz I think that artists, our founders, at the end of the day, how they go about that, you know, is one thing or another. And who wears that CEO hat. Whether it's someone that artist proactively puts in place or it's someone. It ends up being at the record label that they signed to, or it's their manager. There's so many ways that these hats can be worn, so you'll be interested to see how it plays out. But wow, that was fun.That was a quick bunch of rapid fire questions there, but this was really great. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you enjoyed the podcast this year as well. Definitely continue to share it with anyone that you think would be in. And let me know if you have any other questions. We can keep this in mind. I wanna do these more regularly in general. So, yeah, if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, send us a quick note, whether it's, you know, on social media or email. And then we'll keep them rolling so that the next time we do a mail bag podcast, we can keep it rolling.
Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa, the founder of Coop Records talks about whether the goal is to build a trustless music industry using web3 and if it's even possible.Full EpisodeSeason 4 Episode 22About Mint ShortsA new segment on Mint capturing the best moments from the podcast in a bite-size format.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Free NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Cooper Turley, better known as Coopahtroopa, is betting big on ushering a new generation of music. In September, he announced a first-of-its-kind investment fund focused squarely on web3 music projects and artists themselves. Coop Records raised $10 million and Coopah will be the sole general partner. He's hesitant to call it just an investment fund though. That's because Coop Records is also a record label and incubator. Coopah will invest directly into web3-native music artists in a “seed round” — turning emerging artists into venture-backed startups.Structuring an artist's company is what Coopah sees as web3's biggest opportunity: resetting ownership dynamics. NFTs are another vertical of the Coop Records fund, in addition to the seed-stage investing in both companies and artists. Coopah joined me on the show to give us an in-depth look at how Coop Records is eying its investment opportunities. Here's everything we covered:[0:00] How Coop Records started[2:06] Focusing on emerging artists, not established ones [3:35] Coop Records' investment thesis[7:24] Investing in artists during “seed round”[9:50] Structuring artists as a holdings company[11:40] What does an exit look like for artists investors?[15:00] Artists as CEOs[20:11] What makes a music NFT historical [22:28] NFTs as a replacement for masters and publishing[27:18] Accredited investors vs. fan investors[29:30] Artist success stories with community building on web3[31:40] Focusing on story when marketing NFTs[34:25] Optimizing for engagement not reach on social [39:24] How tokenization changes the artist-fan relationship [47:00] Predicting the year that music NFTs go mainstream [48:25] Coop's big question for web3Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Cooper Turley, @Cooopahtroopa Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a Sponsors: MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo.TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Cooper Turley: And I think that gets to this artist development piece more broadly is that you're trying to start the process much earlier, much earlier than I think a lot of the major record labels are starting now. Because I think they often wanna see artists having some proven. Track record before they're willing to sign them.[00:00:24] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Dan Ruey. This podcast is your place to gain insights from the executives in music, media, entertainment, and more who are taking hip hop culture to the next level. [00:00:49] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Cooper Turley, aka Coopa Troopa. He is the founder of Coop Records, which is a new venture fund, a 10 million fund that is focused on investing in the future of music, specifically in web three. He is someone that has made a name for himself as a thought leader in the space. He was involved with the Dow Friends with benefits and he's now started this fund to make economics better for artists and ultimately help them take more advantage of the opportunities that are around them. So we talked about a lot of it. We talked about how he views the space right now, why he started this fund, and what the fund's investing in. There are three main areas that we go into. We talk about investing in music startup. Investing in artist seed rounds and investing in NFTs themselves as an investible assets that him as a general partner and little Bited partners would wanna see returns from. So we talk about what the economics of that look like. I think that. Cooper stands out in a lot of ways because he has a much more nuanced understanding of how Web Three fits in with the broader ecosystem of what's happening right now in music, what some of the trade offs are with the financials, the relationship with fans, what services it offers versus the traditional record labels and more really insightful conversation, and I hope you enjoy it. Here's our chat.[00:02:07] Dan Runcie: All right. Today we're joined by Coopa Troopa who just launched Coup Records, which is his fund that is investing in the future of music and Web three specifically. And first off, congrats. I saw the announcement, it's really dope. So walk me through the process from thinking about you wanna start this fund to where you are now, today with it.[00:02:28] Cooper Turley: Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. I've been in music for the last 10 years in crypto for the last five, and so I've seen everything from ICOs to Defi, to Dows, and not most recently NFTs. You know, throughout that time I've been active across public markets as a trader, behind the scenes, as an angel investor, as a community builder, and as an operator. And when I started to think about how to connect all the pieces together, I've always been a fan of music. I felt like there was never really a clear vehicle to help elevate and amplify the space. And so I found coop records to be the best way to really just zoom in on this niche that I'm so excited about and figure out how to really help the founders, artists, and builders that are supporting this space everyday.[00:03:05] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. What were the conversations like getting buy-in from LPs?[00:03:10] Cooper Turley: Basically helping to explain what music NFTs are, why this is a vertical that you'd wanna invest in at this time and day? You know, historically I think that music has gotten a bit of a bad rep, cuz it's very antiquated in a lot of ways. You know, there's a lot of systems that are very complicated and hopefully we can unpack some of those on this episode. But, I think we through presents a new opportunity for artists to monetize in creative ways. You know, as someone who's been a curator my whole life, it's very easy for me to understand the value of investing in songs, artists, et cetera. But for someone who's not music savvy and not passionate about this sector, you know, the majority of those conversations are why would anyone wanna collect a song? Why would someone wanna invest in an artist? And trying to help people understand why there's an opportunity here that I think is. Influential and paramount for the next chapter of music. But once people get over that line, you know, I've kind of been able to build a brand for myself that I think speaks very clearly to why I'm so excited about music. And so for investors that are looking to get exposure to the space, coop records is a great way to get that exposure without them having to get as deep in the trenches as I am.[00:04:07] Dan Runcie: Right. And I gotta imagine that that probably took a few conversations just given things that I'm hearing too, from folks. People, they understand the promise and the opportunity of what NFTs and what web three offer, but there's. Hesitation, there's still perception about what's going on and some of the headlines that people see. How did you communicate or address some of those concerns while still sharing the value add for what you have? [00:04:32] Cooper Turley: Yeah, I really focus on emerging artists. You know, I think that this is where the vast majority of value will accrue over the next couple years with Web three. And so when you think about investing in music, most people's mind goes to like, how do we get Drake to drop NFTs? I actually don't really focus on that at all. Instead, I think about how do we develop the next act that becomes Drake using Web three tools? And so for investors that are kind of hesitant about getting involved in the space, I point out early examples like X copier people, you know, crypto artists who really made a brand and a name for themselves on the back of selling their nfts. And obviously in the case of people, he had a major brand before, but it wasn't until the existence of NFTs and sort of these community based assets that they started to see monetization aspects with their fans and with their collectors. And so trying to highlight that there's an opportunity here to develop and support emerging artists new to Web three through music, I think it really made a clear case that. This isn't about trying to get your biggest celebrity to drop NFTs. I think that will happen at some point in time. But this is about investing in the infrastructure and the artists that are going to make this space very valuable over the next couple years.[00:05:31] Dan Runcie: And one of the things I like too about how your fund is structured or reminds me a bit of Matt Pinkus and how his music fund is structured. It's not just focused solely on startups that are trying to build the next tech platforms. You're also looking more broadly. The NFT space itself and what that opportunity looks like and it'd be great to break each of those down. So let's start first with the music tech companies, cuz I know that's 85% of your fund looking at preceded seed stage companies. What's your thesis for the type of company that is a coop records company that you're looking for? [00:06:04] Cooper Turley: I'm a really big fan of composability. So in Defi there's this concept of money Legos or protocols and platforms that could plug into one another. I believe the same thesis will play out with music, where we're gonna have music legos, where there's different marketplaces, service providers, tooling, infrastructure that can help sort of amplify what an artist can do with Web three. And so when I think about investing in a music tech company, I think about culturally, is this company aware and active within the pocket that I'm spending a lot of my time in? And then beyond being aware of sort of the artists, the songs, the type of platforms that are doing well in this space, do they have the open mindedness to wanna work in collaboration with those other platforms? So in accurate, we can kind of create this toolkit in this stack where if I am an artist who's new to web three, it's not about choosing Spotify versus Apple, it's actually about trying to develop a presence across many platforms. And hopefully those platforms. The life of the artist easier by making everything connect together with one another.[00:06:56] Dan Runcie: And I feel like this speaks to one of the broader themes that I know you've talked about before, is. It can't be this approach of web three versus web two. These things need to be collaborative. No more zero sum games. How can you think more broadly about the opportunity there? How do you view that more broadly, not just with the fun, but also likely how you're seeing the space with any artist that you're working with too?[00:07:21] Cooper Turley: I'm really laser focused on web three platforms because I think there's a lot more room for change within those platforms. You know, I have nothing against legacy platforms like Spotify have done fantastic work for artists and I think there will be at a time and day when they're able to enable music, NFTs to be purchased, collected, listened to within their platform. But the reality is these companies are so sophisticated that trying to move the needle is very complicated. And so for someone like. I'm running this fund as a solo gp. It's a relatively small fund, and so when I think about where I can have impact and leverage, it's typically working with very early stage founders. You know, I can get in the trenches and help to develop the product. Think about how we're onboarding artists, think about new marketing strategies. And so for me, I think right now it's about cementing the cultural relevance and value of this emerging wave of Web three music. And once that's been clear and established, we can take those same values, ideas, songs, artists, and help to bring those into the traditional industry in a more clear way. Because right now I think that a lot of the bigger players, let's call it major labels, et cetera, they recognize that there's value to be captured in Web three, but I don't think that they have the same level. Boots on the ground cultural awareness that maybe someone like, um, myself or some of my colleagues have. And so I think the challenge here is a, making it very clear what that culture is so you can start to translate it to larger players. And then once that they agree there is something of value there, you know, being able to act as a connector where you can say, Hey, maybe instead of going and doing a 500,000 or a million dollar drop for the biggest act on your roster, let's go ahead and find an emerging artist who's curious about the space and develop them with the course. Five or $10,000 drops and instead really build that community and that collector base in a very organic way.[00:08:56] Dan Runcie: And I think that gets to this artist development piece more broadly is that you're trying to start the process much earlier, much earlier than I think a lot of the major record labels are starting now. Because I think they often wanna see artists having some proven. Track record before they're willing to sign them. And in some ways your approach isn't too much different. Maybe it's just a bit of a different stage because one of the other areas that you're investing in is artist seed rounds. And can you describe. What stage an artist would have to be in order to be at the seed round, and what types of things you're looking for there from an artist?[00:09:33] Cooper Turley: I think it's very similar to what I look for in companies. You know, has this artist been able to prove a little bit of traction? You know, have they demonstrated that they're culturally aware of where this industry is headed? You know, different things that I feel like are interesting to kind of describe. Cause it's not very concrete. Like you can't point to like a specific amount of sales or a specific amount of volume and say, okay, this artist is ready to be invested in. But it's really just a development process of like, is this person making web three a focal point in their career? I believe that that's something really important for me personally, cuz that's where I had the most leverage. But once they've demonstrated that they've been able to release on some of the bigger web through platforms, you know, once they've been able to collaborate and onboard other artists to the space, you know, you start to see that these people have like a little bit. Leverage was sort of their career. And at that point in time, instead of signing a traditional record deal, co records can really be the one to say like, Hey, let's go ahead and set up a company for you. Let's think about how we wanna do a cap table. Let's bring on some partners to give you the capital that you need to go and hire a team around you. So instead of selling your next three albums to a major label, you can instead fund this through accredited investors. And then over time think about the ways you wanna bring other partners into the fold, but not need to be so reliant on the capital to do that in the first place.[00:10:38] Dan Runcie: And with the artists specifically, cuz I know that you've started the fund. Maybe for the people listening, is there a particular artist that you have made a seed investment in just so people can get a good idea for, okay, this is someone that we invested in, this is where they're at in their career, and this is what the opportunity is [00:10:56] Cooper Turley: Not publicly. I think by the time this comes out, we'll be right around there. You know, I can say that privately, behind the scenes we're working. The first round, you know, we've had some very serious progress on it. Investors are excited about it. We're going through the whole corporate structure, but for me, this is a very different lane because it's not as simple as just investing in the safe note of a precede company. You know, there's a lot more complexity around IP ownership, around revenue sharing around. Kind of how this artist thinks about their company and what kind of rights they're giving back to people. And so it's a slower process, but it's one that's currently in motion. I expect that we'll probably have the first one announced within the next one to two months, but I can definitely say there's one in motion that I'm really excited about. And I think, you know, by the end of this calendar year, we should have that one announced. [00:11:37] Dan Runcie: I think part of this too is also the structure of things. You mentioned this earlier, and I think for a lot of artists it's probably. Not necessarily a new way to think about it, because I think in general, artists do think of themselves as having multiple revenue streams, but in order for this to work, in order for you to be able to make an investment, there needs to be some type of, whether it's a holding company or some type of structure in place so that you can make an investment that would touch all of these things. Can you talk a little bit about what that looks like on the artist side? [00:12:05] Cooper Turley: Yeah, it's a fantastic question. I wanna start by saying, This is early days and so this is the first stab at it. I think that this model will evolve and change over time. The way we're thinking about it is there's one Hold Co, that represents the artist ownership across their various income streams, uh, that hold co owns subsidiary entities, one of them being a music entity, which owns the masters in publishing for that artist. One being a live entity, which owns touring and merchandising, and then one being a Web three entity, which owns NFTs and. And so all of that wraps up into the larger hold cow. But the reasons those subsidiaries exist is because we wanna limit liability to each of those different vertical. If there's an issue across web three, we don't want that to end up touching the masters. If an artist wants to go and sign a record deal, they shouldn't have to figure out what to do with their touring or what their NFTs to be able to enter into agreement with a different party. And so we've kind of split up the different verticals into buckets that make sense relative to the type of partners and the type of work that it is. But all of that rounds back up into this holding company and when it comes time to invest in the artist, quote unquote, that artist is selling anywhere from five to 10% of that hold cow to accredited investors so that they can have exposure and pass through to those underlying revenue streams. But there's not this sort of majority ownership, creative control, et cetera. It's really, here's capital and exchange for you to go do what you do best. In exchange for that, we have exposure to these underlying entities, which represent the artist brand in its entirety.[00:13:27] Dan Runcie: And for an investor like you, I think most people listening have a good idea of what an exit looks like for a startup, but what does an exit look like for you as an investor, for an artist, if you're going in at that seed round?[00:13:39] Cooper Turley: I think there's a couple ways it can pan out. You know, one I think would be IP acquisition. Let's say that there's a buyout of someone's masters or publishing, et cetera. You know, there's kind of larger capital inflections that can happen later down an artist's career. I'm more excited about this idea of taking artists public cuz it's something that hasn't really been done before, but I think will happen eventually. Where right now, if you're a fan, you can't really invest or bet on an artist. I think we're starting to see us at a very granular level with music NFTs, and it's something I would love to cover as the last bucket next, but to me, I think an exit here is helping an artist really take this company that we structure for themselves and explore what it means to go public. And so rather than only accredited investors being able to buy into that five or 10%, how do you invite fans to participate in that convers. I think that there's a lot of, uh, legal nuance there that needs to be figured out. And so I don't have that answer today, but I would say that more broadly, the two ways that this could happen is a, investors are seeing a return from the IP becoming more valuable, and they're being capital injected into the whole co. Or B, more optimistically the artist, quote unquote, going public by either, you know, listing on a traditional market or what I think is more likely is creating some form of a token, which represents exposure to this entity that's been set up to represent the artist brand in the first.[00:14:49] Dan Runcie: Got it. And then from a structure perspective, do you ever hear any type of pushback or comments from artists who feel like, oh, you're getting a slice of all these revenue deals. This feels similar to a 360 deal. Do you hear any of that at all?[00:15:04] Cooper Turley: Yeah, I mean, it is a 360 deal, and I think that that's really important to like zoom in on, because 360 deals have gotten a really negative rep because of the percentage ownership that they typically encompass. So traditionally with 360 deals, it's anywhere from 50 to 80. When we talk about a 360 deal in this context, it's five or 10%. And if you start to look at the way that companies take on dilution and precede and seed stage rounds, it's kind of the same concept. You know, like that company is basically taking all of their revenue into this central entity and they're selling off dilution to investors. And so I think for artists, this is particularly scary because there's been such a history of people taking advantage of 360. But I don't think the structure with 360 deals incorrect. I just think the ownership targets that those deals are typically set at is what's really predatory. And so if we can zoom out a bit and instead say, Hey, five or 10% can give you a couple hundred grand, maybe a million dollars to go invest in a team around you, there's ways for that capital to be really value added where the dilution is actually necessary and valuable because it helps you advance your artist career in a way that you simply couldn't do without it.[00:16:04] Dan Runcie: I agree with that. I think that that's, Testament of some of the challenges with the broader major record label system as well, right? It's not that people shouldn't be willing to trade some level of ownership in exchange to get a boost from the company. It's how much ownership, it's what the terms that the actual economics look like, not the economic agreement itself.[00:16:28] Cooper Turley: Yeah, it's correct. And I think that it's something that is really important to help educate artists on. And this is the area that I'm actually most fascinated by is like artists really thinking about rights ownership, thinking about dilution, thinking about cap table management. And just with that in mind, I wanna highlight, it's a very specific type of artist that is willing to enter into this quote unquote, artists seed round. Because I think that most artists are not thinking about their brand as a ceo, but I think there are very selective artists who think about their entity as a business and for those specific artists being able to demonst. There's value in having employees. There's value in giving them long term options and equity, and having these ownership incentives be a little bit more aligned. I think traditionally music has existed in this weird ballpark where we've basically only ever sold masters in publishing. We haven't really experimented with equity or any of these other ownership vehicles that startups have been taking for the last couple generations, so I'm excited to explore it. You know, I by no means have all the answers, but I think. My time investing in precede and seed stage companies has given me a little bit of context on how things work behind the scenes, and I'm hoping that with a little time and effort, we can sort of mold those same practices and help apply them to artists more broadly.[00:17:34] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. And I have to imagine too, with artists as well, there's some artists that love the mentality of being the business person themself that can be the CEO and wear multiple hats. There's other artists who I. As much as they want the business to work for them, they just wanna focus on the art. So there's specific things that you're looking for to determine, okay, is this artist gonna be wanting to be the ceo? Or maybe making sure that they are partnered with someone that may wanna be in that role instead[00:18:05] Cooper Turley: Yeah, I mean, you just touched on it perfectly. I think that there's situations where artists have partners that are acting as their ceo, you know, and in many typical startups you have a ceo, a cto, a ceo, et cetera. Um, the artist isn't the only person that's responsible for their success. They're obviously the largest player in that. But it's less about, is this artist capable of being a ceo? It's more about is this artist capable of building a team around them that can. In tandem as a unit and as an organization. And if that artist is uncapable of operating as the CEO, because they're phenomenal at making music, it's very likely that there may be a manager, an agent, a business partner, et cetera, that could step into that role. And I think the biggest thing that I'm excited about is to realign incentives around the service providers around an artist. So whether that be a manager, an agent, a business manager, a lawyer, et cetera. Typically, all these actors are just operating on commission, you know, and they have five or 10 clients because there's no guarantee that they'll be with that artist in 10 years time. You know, these contracts aren't really a center aligned for those key players. But if we can instead start to create an instrument where a managers may be able to take a salary and then have equity that's vested over four years, I think there will be more situations where artists would be willing to enter into a full-time quote unquote agreement with their manager, because that a manager is now incentive aligned to actually spend all their time developing one. Instead of needing to commission off of five or 10 different artists just to be able to make a living.[00:19:24] Dan Runcie: It's a huge point because there's so many managers I've talked to that just talk about how thankless that job is, and that's purely just from how they're treated, not even getting to the economic aspect. You start thinking about the economics about how managers are treated and yeah, maybe you'll get 10 to 15 to 20%, but if that artist levels up and then they wanna level up their manager too, they can just be like, Hey, sorry, I wanna move on. And you, the person that brought them from zero to 40. Now you have nothing. Right?[00:19:54] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I mean, it happens time and time again from smaller artists to the biggest acts in the world. I mean, I don't have to name names here, but I think we all know examples of this happening time and time. And it's really just a game of incentive alignment. You know? And when I think about the term web three, to me that means ownership. And so for all of these different deals that I'm doing, it's about how do you create ownership incentives so that everyone who's contributing value to this entity is able to capture that in some way, shape, or form. And so I think it's a very difficult conversation to tell a manager, Hey, instead of taking a 15 or a 20% commission, you're gonna get a base salary and then have a couple equity percentage points that best over multiple years. But when you start to zoom out a bit, you start to see like, hey, maybe 1% of equity can actually be more valuable than 20% commission. Because if you're operating a multi-million or multi-billion dollar business, you know that's a life-changing amount of money. And so I don't expect this is something that's gonna happen in the short term. I think it's gonna take a very new class of partners, managers, agents, et cetera, that are willing to enter into these type of. Situations and these type of organizations. But I'm very excited to work with the emerging class of talent that's willing to try something out a little bit differently because I think that new class of talent is looking for an opportunity here. And I think that we've seen time and time again that the systems that exist today work, but I think that there's a lot of room for improvement and I'm excited to use some of the artists that we're working with help push the needle on what that could like. [00:21:11] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I think the other point that you mentioned too, was aligned as well, just in terms of artists being able to have that team around them. We've seen so many examples where whether it's Jay-Z, having someone like a Dame Dash next to him, or you have Jay Cole and e Bama, they've been working together for years. Kate, uh, Kendrick Lamar, and the whole Top Dog team. These artists are doing it themselves, and oftentimes the ones that try to get stuck, so no different then. Yeah, a startup, if you're trying to raise money, they're gonna push back. If you have the technical co-founder being the same one that's trying to go raise money, right? Like you need to have some expansion there. So I think so much of that makes sense. I do wanna talk about the other piece that you mentioned though, the NFT piece of it, because the way that you're investing in these, I think could be eyeopening to some of the folks listening because you're looking. And I heard you referred to historic NFT opportunities and NFTs as collectables. Can you talk a little bit about what you're looking for if you're investing in NFTs through this fund and how that may separate from what a lot of people may assume when they think about an nft. [00:22:18] Cooper Turley: Yeah, so there's a really amazing market of songs that are being released as collectibles right now. You know, there's platforms like Sound xyz, where every day an artist is releasing a song with 25 editions as NFTs. And I've been really active across these markets for the course of the last two years. Personally, you know, biggest collector on Sound today, one of the biggest collectors on catalog. And I'm really excited about being able to collect these early songs from artists that are building in Web three. You know, the analog I'd make here. Music, rookie cards. You know, we have rookie cards for basketball players, for baseball players, et cetera. We don't really have rookie cards for artists, and I think in a lot of ways these early music NFTs are sort of the equivalent of an artist rookie card. And so personally, I've been doing this for the last couple years. I recently just put out a post called the Music NFT Collector Thesis. This is how we're thinking about collecting from the fund. But to really break it down, we're thinking about how do we sort of acquire early NFTs that represent historical relevance of this. Web three and Music NFTs have been around for maybe a year at this point. I think that there's a huge opportunity for fans to start getting involved by collecting the songs that they love and for the fund. I almost look at music NFTs as the new form of like masters and publishing. You know, it's not quite one to one, but there's almost this new market being formed of Tradeable assets that you can buy for something like 50 bucks when it drops, and then hopefully have the ability to resell at a later. And I think for the fund, you know, us being able to participate in these markets and say, Hey, we are aware of what's happening on the ground floor with the next generation of developing artists, we're actively collecting these songs that we can show that were there from them, beyond needing to set up a company and needing to do some crazy type of investment situation. And I'm really excited about the opportunity just to have. Ownership over some of these really early collectibles, cuz I think they're very historic in the development of these artists' careers and I believe they're extremely valuable and will continue to demonstrate. So in the years to come. [00:24:03] Dan Runcie: You brought up an interesting point just about how you feel like NFTs could replace what we are naturally thinking about masters in publishing. I guess in terms of how artists are monetizing and what their ownership looks like. Can you talk a little bit more about that and specifically how that could look or what that could look like? Years down the road.[00:24:23] Cooper Turley: I mean, I'll start by saying that, um, masters in publishing are extremely valuable. You know, I think that this is a system that has worked for generations. There's a huge trend around catalog acquisition. I think that will continue to exist for many, many years to come. I think for someone like myself, me trying to get in the catalog acquisition game is not a smart move. You know, there's a lot of players with a lot more experience. There's a lot of people with a lot more money. The one unique advantage that I do have though, is developing thesises within this small pocket of web three artists, and the best way to get exposure to them is to simply buy their nf. You know the way that this looks is if there's the first song an artist ever released their artist rookie card, and there's 25 additions of that being sold for 50 bucks. If you zoom out and one of these artists becomes the Weekend, Drake Post Malone, Jack Harla, whatever it might be, there's a very high likelihood that those early additions are gonna be worth a lot more than $50. And so instead of trying to invest in the masters in publishing rights, those songs can also go on Spotify. They can stream extremely well. You can have relationships with major label. But I believe those early collectibles have a market of their own. These markets are not tied to any sort of royalty rights because it's just collectibles. You know, there's 25 additions of this digital vinyl. I can buy it for $50 and then sell it for whatever price I want in the future. And I think this is a market that not many people are paying attention to right now. But I think when it comes to new and creative revenue streams for artists, I think that collectibles are gonna be a very, very big market in the years to come. I think it's the most clear way that fans can start to get involved with sort of, Collectible nature of getting involved with an artist and as a fun, I think we're really excited to be participating here to say, Hey, we're really excited about this. I think there's some really amazing plays out there right now, and we're gonna continue to support artists on the ground floor to help develop this thesis. [00:25:59] Dan Runcie: Why do you think that a lot of people aren't paying attention? Or what do you think some of the, if there's friction or if there is just in a bit of a natural adoption curve, like what do you think's going.[00:26:12] Cooper Turley: It's just new. I mean, this entire market has only been around for a little bit more than a year at this point. You know, in total, I think we have less than a thousand artists that have ever minted a music NFT before. There's probably less than 10,000 people ever collected one before, and so. Relatively speaking, it's just a very new and small market. And I think for a lot of players that have bigger fish to fry, it's probably not worth their time to invest buying records for $50 because they have multimillion dollar record deals in place. You know, and so for someone like myself, um, a lot of what I do is help educate artists that there's a lot of value to be captured in web through right now based on how early it is. You know, I think that there's a lot of unlearning that can be done with the way artists are releasing music in Web three. And so traditionally, when you're putting out a song on Spotify, most artists I know here in. They'll take eight weeks in advance to think about what distributor am I gonna put this out through? Am I gonna sign this to a label? What's my advance? What's my marketing rollout? What's my TikTok campaign? How am I getting pre saves? How am I making the music video? And what I've been preaching is like, Hey, if you have a song, you should put that out tomorrow. You know, like there's people out there that would probably wanna collect that record. And if you can 5 25 people to come and collect music in FT for 0.05 E, they're basically $75. That's the equivalent of half a million streams. And so I think trying to teach people that you don't need to have this giant rollout process to make this headline moment with music. We've gotten really conditioned to trying to shoot for the new Music Friday playlist. You know, all of these emerging editorial playlists. One of the beautiful things about the SoundCloud era was people were just uploading music in real time and if you had your finger on the trigger, you could go and just repost something and be part of a wider movement. And I think what's happening with music and FTS now is artists are gonna start to see that you don't need to have a six week rollout to put out a collection of 25 songs. If you make that song on Wednesday and put it out on Thursday, you can immediately get funding from your biggest fans and use that funding to go and market the rest of your career and instead be able to obviscate the need for a lot of those major capital advances that typically get artists caught up in a weird position in the first place.[00:29:05] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that makes sense. I feel like if the funding's in place and you can replace early on, because I think for a lot of artists, the economics don't really work out either. Unless A, you own the underlying masters in publishing to begin, so you're just bringing on a. You know, revenue per stream or just general from what you're getting from streaming or on the other side, you're just massive, like Drake or someone like that. And your billions of streams per year brings in plenty of money. But for a lot of other artists, it ends up being either A, a loss leader if you're focusing solely on streaming or a, or you're leaving money on the table some type of way. So I feel like that approach is something that makes sense for a bunch of. On the investing side though, I have a few questions on this, but the first one, on the investing side though, how do you feel like the appetite will be for, let's say an artist does have early investors, the likelihood for those investors to be folks who are accredited, folks that just wanna be able to get a return, versus people who are actual fans of that artist. Any thoughts on what that mix may look like for the average artist that's going through the web? Growth cycle and the rep do growth curve?[00:30:19] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I mean, I can speak on this from the artist seed round that we're doing right now. Every investor in that round has been an active collector of this artist for many, many months. Prior to that, they all have personal relationships with the artist. You know, they may be an accredited investor, but they're not just bringing capital. They've been active and supportive of this artist's career way before the seed round even started. And so I think if we zoom out, there will definitely be situations. Investors just want to put in a couple hundred grand and not really worry about getting involved on the ground floor. But given how early it is right now, most of the investors who are interested in participating in these capital markets are ones who want exposure to both NFTs and to the artist equity. And so I think that over time, collectors to me are a little bit closer to like early investors. Think about them like almost angels or sort of like seed round investors. Over time, collectors will start to mirror more fan behavior. But I think for right now, a lot of the collectors I know, they're just excited to get exposure to an artist's career and to go and support them more so than they are to really go to their show or to buy their merchandise, et cetera. And I think that's where a lot of the pushback comes for web through music is like, oh, these people aren't actually fans. They're just, you know, buying NFTs. But if you zoom into what that means, it's almost a different form of fandom where they're providing capital to be able to have exposure to an artist's career. And their expectations are a lot less on the fan side. I need you to collaborate with this artist. I want you to put out this type of music. It's more so like, Hey, we just wanna support you and your career however we can. Because the more that you're able to identify your vision and create a brand around it, the more valuable our NFTs are going to become. And so it's a very mutual relationship I think hasn't really existed in music in the past.[00:31:50] Dan Runcie: You're really getting at this aspect of community and how artists can foster that, how they can build around them. We've seen the power of that in the SoundCloud era, so we've seen a lot of these things happening and what streaming in general has enabled to happen. What are some of the success stories that stand out to you when you're thinking about artists to be like, oh yeah, they've nailed community, or they're nailing community, like that's how you do it.[00:32:13] Cooper Turley: Yeah. I would say a couple artists to check out. Daniel Allen, I think has done a fantastic job of this in the web three space. Latasha who started something called Zora Topia has done a fantastic job at this Early nft. Artists like Matt Cha os. Grady bloody white. I mean, the list goes on and on, but basically you see. The small pocket of artists that are really making web through a centerpiece for their career, and they're leveraging that into creating more community conversation. Where typically all these artists have a collector chat where once you've bought a music nft, you can get into a private chat with that artist. It's typically 20 people, 25 people, and that artist is in there every day saying like, Hey, what do you guys think about this demo? Hey, I'm thinking about dropping a song next week. Which one do you like more? What do you think I should do for the supply? Do you think we should do an airdrop? And that conversation is a lot more interactive. And I think in a lot of ways artists have typically maintained separation from their fans to kind of uphold this like form of mystery and this like storytelling aspect. But what I'm seeing now is that collectors are getting really close to the artists that they know and love, and those artists are realizing that for a very specific demographic of their audience, they can be very value added, asked the right questions. And so instead of just doing a meet and greet or doing like, you know, 50 people standing in line to say hi, back to back for an hour and a half, it's like, hey, if we wanna have a valuable conversation about the future of my career, These other people that I can turn to, cause I know they have exposure to my brand and they actually typically have experience That's very valuable and it's something that I think is gonna happen more and more with the next generation of collectors to come.[00:33:37] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think that's a good way to just think about the framing of it, right? Meet and greets can be great, but it's so transactional. It is really isn't an opportunity. And it kind of has a bit of this like hierarchical thing. Like, oh, I paid $500 extra at this concert to like take a picture with you. Versus no, like if you've really been with this person, then how can you help shape that in the same way that someone that was really early on can? So I feel like there's so many principles there and there's so much that aligns with, especially on the financial side. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the marketing side of it, because I know that's a piece that a lot of artists have had questions about, but I also think that we've seen from. Project specifically with Web three projects like outside of music where whether it is the creator themselves who's been able to market or get the word out effectively, or they've been able to just find ways to build their distribution themselves. What are some of the ways that you've seen artists who've been successful on the Web three Path have been able to replicate, or at least make up for some of the marketing that they would get from a major record label, but otherwise they're recreating on their own.[00:34:47] Cooper Turley: I think it starts from the story, you know, like first of all, what is the music that you're releasing and what is the story behind that? But more importantly, like what is the narrative with how you're using the technology? And so almost fusing together like the creative side with the tech side, you know, whether this be something as simple as like creating your own artist website where people are mentioning s from, or it's something like, hey, we're using on chain splits to reward and compensate. 15 different contributors, five of which didn't touch the music, but were helpful in the development or the project management or the visual assets, et cetera. You know, I think there's new creative channels to help bring more people into the table, but I would say generally Twitter is kind of the main resource for all web three artists. You know, the ones that I see doing really well are typically putting out tweet storms, talking a lot about the drops that they're doing, why they're doing it, and how they're doing it. I see a lot of artists doing these sort of collector chats and more private investor relationships. If they have a bigger release coming out, it's not only about posting the tweetstorm, it's also about going and finding time to talk to some of your bigger collectors one on one and being like, Hey, what do you think about this? How can I get you involved? What are some feedback you would have on this drop? Are you excited or not excited? And I think typically with music, traditionally, how it's released, Artist makes a song, they have their internal team, and then they put it out to the world. And when it's out to the world, everyone forms an opinion on it. With Web three music, a lot of the time, there's a lot more happening behind the scenes before the release actually comes out, so that when it is time for one of these releases to happen, you start to see these things sell out because there was a lot of work put into the record before it came out, and that's not untraditional from typical music, but I think the difference there. Active conversations with your collectors is very new. You know, typically it's like people around a table at a major label that are talking about like, how are we gonna market on TikTok? But this is different because it's going and having very direct conversations with the people that are supporting you the most. And in aggregate that sort of. Neural net of all these different people talking about your drop in tandem. It creates this sort of network effect where when it does come out, there's almost a rippling effect that helps to make the drop become more successful. And I think that's something that I'm seeing being replicated time and time again.[00:36:44] Dan Runcie: And I know that, as you mentioned, Twitter has been a great space for artists to be able to share things. There's so much. There's so many people in the one three community that are active there, and I think have added to a lot of the discussion and narrative around it. But as someone who's active on Twitter myself, I know how small sometimes those circles can feel. What other platforms or what other areas are you seeing some of these conversations happen, and how long do you think until we're starting to see it not just becoming necessarily a Twitter thing, but it is expanding to more platforms and it's becoming a bit more of. Early majority, at least being able to catch on.[00:37:22] Cooper Turley: I think it'll be Twitter for the foreseeable future. You know, I think that's just where the vast majority of Web three people live. And I think it's actually the one social platform where you can talk about Web three and not get ridiculed for it. You know, I think across nft, TikTok, et cetera, it's very taboo to talk about NFTs, and I don't think that those users are really as tapped into sort of like the valuable aspects of Web three. And so I think for the immediate future, let's call it the next one to two. Twitter, I think is gonna be the source for all of that. And to your point, some of these communities do feel very small, but I think that's actually one of the biggest differences with Web three. You know, I think with traditional marketing platforms, we optimize for impressions, we optimize for plays, for eyeballs, et cetera. On Twitter, if you have 50 people that are consistently showing up to each of your drop, you're doing an amazing job. You know, I think that this is the biggest thing that shows why Web three is valuable is you don't need to have a million monthly listeners to make a couple thousand bucks. If you have 25 people that are willing to come and support you, you can make the same amount of money and have a deeper relationships with those individuals. And so I always say to artists, Even if you're only getting three, five reactions on your tweets every single time, that's very impressive because the benchmark to move the needle and Web three is a lot lower because every individual person is much more active and the quality of those conversations is much higher than what you could expect from a TikTok, Instagram, et cetera.[00:38:36] Dan Runcie: And I think in general, like with those platforms, you're more likely to reach people who are just casually following or passively engaging versus whether if you're already in that audience that's Twitter, you're likely reaching a more active fan base to begin with. And it gets to this whole concept of where can you not just reach followers, but reach people who are actual fans of their music? And a lot of the platforms that have grown tremendously large in the past few. Are much more overindexed on followers and less overindexed or or under indexed rather on true fans.[00:39:08] Cooper Turley: Yeah. And so there's still a lot to be done there. You know, I do believe there's a world in which artists that are using Web three and music NFTs become viral acts that have fans in the traditional sense. I try not to like focus on that too much because there's a lot of work that needs to be done to get there. I think that will happen, but I don't think it's healthy to think. What that looks like today, because frankly, we're just far away from it, you know? And I think for me, helping an artist get a thousand collectors is much more important to me than how do they get 10 million streams on Spotify? You know, if the ladder happens, that's great. But I think the former's actually a lot harder to do because it's a much smaller design space. But, you know, I think there's something really exciting there. And a lot of the work that I do as a collector is really just educating fans on like, why would I wanna collect music? Like, why would I wanna participate on the other side of these? I think from the surface, a lot of bands got really bad experiences with NFTs because artists were just selling random drops that didn't really have any merit to them. They didn't actually care about the output. They were just kind of doing something to be cool at the time. But now what I'm starting to see is that these emerging artists, they really care about their NFTs. They care about them just as much, if not more, than their release strategy on Spotify. And for those demographic of artists. If you are a fan that's looking to sort of develop a brand for yourself around. I believe that this web through music space is a great opportunity to do so. And what we're now seeing is a very small group of music collectors who are building their entire Twitter brand around collecting drops on sound, or writing newsletters or writing mirror posts, et cetera. And I think those are the type of people that I want to try and amplify in Spotlight because it's a very much two-sided marketplace here. And in order for these artists to be successful, you also need to have collectors that are willing to be active in these markets and see success from the music they're collecting as well. [00:40:42] Dan Runcie: This is one thing that I keep in mind. More broad trends about like what's happening in music, but I also keep it in mind with artists and creators who are trying to expand beyond the folks that they're naturally reaching. Because if you're only going to try to focus on the people that you naturally reach on a regular basis, it, it can work. And I do think that it's kind of like shifting a bit of the psychology, because I think so much of us have been conditioned to just focus. Who is the next person you're gonna reach? What is your customer acquisition cost? It's not just artists, it's the whole industry that's thinking about it this way, but you can build a sustainable business if you are just focused on the pub shot reach. I know it's a bit of that thousand true fans mentality applied to web three, but I think that there's plenty of nuances there. And sometimes it could be less than that. Sometimes it could be more than that. But I think there's some really unique things. One thing. Interested to hear your thoughts on though is just with artists specifically and fans and just the nature of that relationship and whether or not the tokenization of their relationship changes anything. Right. Because I feel like with fans, there's a lot of this conception that because they don't feel like there's nothing that's like financially tying them to them, maybe that brings up, you know, a different relationship than they would if they do feel actually, you know, financially tied to the. Is there any downsides or is there anything that you think of in terms of how that broader tokenization of the relationship changes any of that dynamic or expectations?[00:42:21] Cooper Turley: I definitely think there's downsides, and I think there's a lot of pressure that comes with it. You know, I think for artists that are selling nfts, you need to think about new mechanisms. Like, what is my floor price? What is my volume? Is this asset trading above what I sold it for in the first place? That's a lot of pressure, you know, and that takes a lot of time to get right. I think that over time people are gonna recognize. Collector is getting mad about floor prices. The same as a fan being mad about the type of song that you're releasing, where that's just kind of the name of the game. You know, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it's not like there needs to be a huge reliance on that. I think the one thing the artists need to focus on is actually being consistent with what they're putting out in releasing. If you're giving it your best effort and you're doing things to add value back to early collections, to be able to engage with your community and doing things that show that you're being intentional, that to me matters a lot more than like, what is the price of the tokens themselves, because I think over. We need to recognize that not all fans are the same, and it's not like all music is only gonna exist as NFTs. What's gonna happen is that all these songs are gonna be available on Spotify. If I'm a passive fan, I can go and just listen to that song. There's no expectation for me to ever have a financial relationship with that artist. But the new unlock here is if I wanna go deeper on that relationship. This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time, and I believe many others do. I can now collect something that represents a limited version of that song. And for other people that are excited about that artist's career. Not only can we share on our Instagram story, we can now go into a private collector's chat and say, Hey, I was able to pick up this sold out drop. I was able to pick up one of their early rookie cards, and I think what we start to see is that the fan base gets a little bit more. It's delineated across different verticals where there's some vans who are just showing up to a concert, you know, all the time. I go into GA at a show and I'm like, how do I get these people to buy music and FT use? And the reality is most of them probably never will because they just wanna go and have a good time. They wanna party and forget about their nine to five job. And that's perfectly fine. But I think for the small subset of people who are really passionate about music, those active listeners being able to answer into these more deeper relationships, it's really gonna empower curation in a very new way. And I think the analog I would make here, Sites like Height Machine really drove the success of SoundCloud in a very massive way. You know, there was a demographic of curators who were saying, Hey, we love this type of music. There was all these different blogs, like This song is sick, you know, all these EDM blogs, pigeons and planes, et cetera. They were adding cultural zeitgeist to these songs. And I think the financialization of these assets is not only gonna incentivize people to wanna curate and write about these different article. It's actually gonna give them the means to sustain themselves on the back of doing so. Or if I'm a curator who's really successful at identifying talent, I don't need to go work for a major label as an a and r because I can simply spin up a newsletter on sub stack, go and look at the drop calendar on sound, xyz, and then the event that I'm able to really identify. Successful drops, I can actually start to make a living on the back of my taste. I think that's something that hasn't really existed before and something that I'm personally really excited to see happen more and more in the industry at large.[00:45:08] Dan Runcie: That last piece is huge because it makes me think back to the blog era, especially at hip hop with just. How popular it was when, whether it was sites like Two Dope Boys or Now, right. And their influence on being able to have a mix tape that they're putting out. They're putting their stamp for approval. They're the media channel that's sharing the tape, that's being released from Dap Piff and being like, Hey, here is this new kid Cutty record that you need to listen to a kid named Cutty. You know, this is the mix tape. Check it out. Or the cool kids, or Charles Hamilton or whoever, one of these artists, The difference though, is that even though the artists in the blog era and the people who ran these websites in the blog era were so influential, and I think at a time they even had more influence than the major record labels did. They didn't capture the upside. They created the culture. They created the influence, but they didn't capture the upside. This allows that to happen in a way. The next version of Two Dope Boys could essentially be the one to, like you said, they could start up a newsletter, they could be able to release this and be like, Hey, I'm the one that is putting this investment in and then this is gonna stay there from here on out. That's something that's really special. And to be honest, I don't feel like there's enough discussion around that. So I'm glad you brought that point up.[00:46:26] Cooper Turley: Absolutely. And I think the one, the one thing I wanna zoom in on there, That doesn't require the artists to sell any of their masters. You know, them putting out 25 editions of a collectible song that a curator can go and buy and then help spread the word about within their pockets. There's no conversation around like, what percentage master publishing does this curator now have? Do I need to bring them into my creative decision, et cetera. It's a new market that now exists on the back of taste and curation, and I think in a lot of ways, music NFTs get pushed back cause they say, oh, you don't actually own the rights. Why do these things have value in the first place? I'm a big believer that community has a lot of value to it. You know, I don't think that art needs utility or needs IP ownership or Masters or publishing to be valuable. I think these curators are able to tell very compelling stories about the impact that music has and being able to add a new market into the equation through music and fts, it really unlocks a new mechanism for artist fandom that I think is very simple to understand. I don't think the average fan will be able. Rationalize what a master or a publishing right looks like. But I think they can understand what a rookie card or what a limited edition of songs looks like. And so I'm very excited to watch these markets mature. And I think that ties back into why the fund is collecting music, NFTs, cuz we believe that. More people are going to be able to understand what it means to own a collectible than they are going to know what it means to own masters or publishing. And so you sort of have these two different sides of the equation. I think they can both work in T and in unison with one another to make the aggregate music market more valuable as a whole.[00:47:51] Dan Runcie: And I think your fun will be a, a test to see how well that works. So, It'll, it'll be, it'll be fascinating. I feel like the structures make sense. You have each day, each piece of it there. I'll be very interested to see what the returns end up being like for each of those categories. Right. Of course, you know, most of the fund is looking at your precede and seed stage music and web three startups, so I assume that it's naturally gonna be what the expectations would be for any young startup. But I'm very interested to see what those expected multiples or the exits will be for the NFTs and then, The artists seed round investments themselves. [00:48:26] Cooper Turley: Absolutely. I will say that the vast majority of the fund is going into web three companies, but time and time again, people get really excited about this idea of investing in artists. Again, do not have the answers whatsoever, but. I'm noticing people are really excited about that ballpark. So I'm excited to at least start that trend with this first fund here and in the future. I'm hoping that we can create playbooks for many artists who don't even use nft, use their web three to also start to enter in these agreements as well. But you know, I'm really excited about it. You know, like I said, I've been in music for 10 years, crypto for the last five. I feel like this fund is a great way for me to really fuse those two passions together. And it's a very small market right now, but if you made it this far in the episode, I hope that this is something of interest to you and I would love to keep the conversation going if you have more.[00:49:06] Dan Runcie: Definitely. Before we wrap things up and let you go, one of the quotes you had mentioned, you referenced this earlier, the conversation too, that we're not at the point in Music Web three, where Drake is gonna come thro
Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa, the founder of Coop Records, joins Season 6 to share the playbook for a music artist in web3.Full EpisodeSeason 6 Episode 10About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa, the founder of Coop Records, joins season 6 to talk about why creators need to think and act like startups. Full EpisodeSeason 6 Episode 10About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
In this episode of Empire, Jason and Santi are joined by Cooper Turley, aka Coopahtroopa, for a master class on music NFTs. We all listen to music every day, yet monetization for 99% of artists is abysmal. Coop explains how artists can leverage Web3 to maximize revenue, fan engagement and creativity. We explore how music NFTs work, why they have value, which artists should participate and how Web3 will revolutionize the music industry. Cooper is an absolute expert, you won't want to miss it! - - Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:00) Coop Records & Intro to Music NFTs (06:50) The Evolution of Music Monetization (11:30) How to Value Music NFTs (14:41) Artists as CEOs & the Music NFT Market (22:59) Circle Ad (24:41) Should Every Artist Create Music NFTs? (28:57) Do Music NFTs Need Utility? (37:40) One-of-Ones vs Collections (41:35) AI-Generated Music & Virtual Artists (47:05) Monetization, Fan Data and the Innovator's Dilemma (53:16) Incubating Artists, Creator Equity Tokens & Community (1:00:01) Tokenized Media & Rapid Fire Questions - - Follow Cooper: https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz Follow Santi: https://twitter.com/santiagoroel Follow Empire: https://twitter.com/theempirepod Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/4fdhhb2j Subscribe on Apple: https://tinyurl.com/mv4frfv7 Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/wbaypprw - - Resources Relics by Monstercat https://relics.xyz/ Hume https://www.wearehume.com/ Coop's Substack https://thisweekinmusicnfts.substack.com/ Coop Records https://www.cooprecords.xyz/ -- Circle's USDC has quickly become one of the most trusted and widely used stablecoins because of its composability, stability and reserve transparency. As a seamless, trusted digital currency, USDC is a zero-to-one opportunity for the global financial system. Check out their Transparency Hub at circle.com/transparency that outlines everything from links to USDC weekly reserve reports, monthly attestations, and blog posts written by their executive team highlighting how and why USDC was built the way it is. - - Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
In this episode of the podcast Jai and Brok discuss some of the amazing web3 and music NFT programs and cohorts currently on offer. We discuss Cooper Turley's recent $10 Million VC investments, his cohort program trough Coop Records, a new NFT university course, why it's important to get in now and continue to show up plus much more. Check out Coop Records: cooprecords.xyz Help us out by following the podcast Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7tI-3hd0ZrmQ7tHEpZrq1g Follow the podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/nftprojectpod Please Like, Share and Subscribe to the Podcast. Check out Project DJ here: https://www.projectdj.io/ Follow Boi King Koi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/boikingkoi
Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa, founder of Coop Records, shares his thought process on how creators should value ownership in web3, and some ways we can teach them how valuable owning your audience really is.Full episodeSeason 6 Episode 10About Mint ShortsEnjoy the best moments from the podcast in bite-size segments.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Mint Season 6 episode 10 welcomes Cooper Turley aka Coopahtroopa who rejoins Mint to debut his new venture Coop Records backed by a $10 million funding round to double on his love for supporting music artists and early-stage crypto startups. I feel like we're gonna look back at this episode as an iconic moment in his career as he sets the example for what he calls an Artist Seed Round.Additional ResourcesEpisode Timestamps and TranscriptsCooper's TwitterCoop Records---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Season 6 NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Support Season 6's NFT Sponsors
Cooper Turley on creating better opportunities for music fans to join web3. Full EpisodeSeason 4, Episode 22About Mint ShortsA new segment on Mint capturing the best moments from the podcast in a bite-size format.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Free NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Cooper Turley is a leading collector of Music NFTs. He's an angel investor in Sound, Catalog and Royal and an advisor at Audius, a decentralized streaming protocol. He's a co-founder of Friends with Benefit (FWB), an exclusive, token-gated community. He was a former venture partner at Variant and included in Fortune Magazine's "NFTy 50" - a list of the "most influential builders, creatives and influencers on the scene." You can learn more about: 1. Collecting Music NFTs 2. Running a DAO 3. How to build an NFT community 4. Web3 career advice Check out our brand new YouTube Video Podcast! https://www.SmartVenturePod.com IG/Twitter/FB @GraceGongGG LinkedIn:@GraceGong YouTube: https://bit.ly/gracegongyoutube Join the SVP fam with your host Grace Gong. In each episode, we are going to have conversations with some of the top investors, super star founders, as well as well known tech executives in the silicon valley. We will have a coffee chat with them to learn their ways of thinking and actionable tips on how to build or invest in a successful company. ===================== Brought to you by: https://link.blockfolio.com/9dzp/stwlap68 Use code: smartventure https://momentonft.com
Cooper Turley on why the web3 music industry needs to refine its metadata standards.Full episodeSeason 4, Episode 22About Mint ShortsA new segment on Mint capturing the best moments from the podcast in a bite-size format.---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim Free NFThttps://adamlevy.io/nft/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Cooper Turley (@Cooopahtroopa) joins Erik on this episode. Takeaways:- Cooper believes that in 5-10 years music streaming will all be happening on chain.- Cooper cares much more about where culture is happening and where people are spending their time than about underlying technology.- DAOs need to prove that they can help people ship products better than private groups. They may not replace Microsoft but they can mobilize people around smaller niche categories.- Web 1 was the “read” web, Web 2 was “read and write” and Web3 will be “read, write, and own.”- Music has driven other platforms and it will drive Web3.- Music artists will have to be more like CEOs of a company rather than just creators.- Lots of crypto projects will struggle in a bear market when all they had to offer was profit, rather than underlying value.- Culture is becoming finance. There will be the advent of “patronage plus” which allows for someone to own the upside of something rather than just owning the experience.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We'll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary onthe latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup
Cooper Turley is an operator, investor and advisor whose passion lies at the intersection of music and Web3. Cooper is focused on identifying trends early on and helping creators and musicians understand and leverage Web3 to build deeper, more meaningful connections with their fans. -- Our "OG Fan" NFT is here! There will only ever be one of this version... and you can be the owner! https://opensea.io/collection/show-me-the-crypto/ Or... consider supporting our show with some ETH! showmethecrypto.eth -- Follow Cooper on Twitter: @Cooopahtroopa -- Follow us on the socials: Twitter: @showcrypto TikTok: @showmethecrypto Instagram: @showmethecryptopodcast -- * While we may hold coins/NFTs of some of the projects we talk about, we will never accept payment to feature any guest or highlight any cryptocurrency.
Without a doubt, Cooper Turley has been one of Web3's biggest champions, and is a firm believer in how NFTs can revolutionize the music industry. He got his start in Web3 as blockchain-powered music streaming site Audius' official crypto advisor. Since then, he's assumed an advisory role at Web3 culture think tank Friends With Benefits, and has continued to invest heavily in this burgeoning creative ecosystem.In this episode we cover:How NFTs can bring about the future of music fandomTurley's advice for young aspiring artistsUtility moving forward in the NFT spaceWhat it's like championing a movement the general public doesn't understandTo listen to the audio version of this episode, go to http://smarturl.it/nftnowTo sign up for the nft now newsletter where we break down the NFT market into actionable insights each week, go to: https://www.nftnow.com To follow Cooper on Twitter, go here: https://twitter.com/CooopahtroopaTo follow Cooper on Instagram, go here: https://www.instagram.com/coopahtroopa See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
✨ SUBSCRIBE TO THE OVERPRICED JPEGS CHANNEL ✨ https://bankless.cc/jpegs On this episode of Overpriced JPEGs, Carly welcomes music NFT expert, advisor, angel investor, curator, co-founder of Friends with Benefits, and did we mention music NFT expert(?!) — Cooper Turley. Cooper, also known as Coopahtroopa, has shaped music NFTs from their infancy and is building toward onboarding the next wave of Music NFT artists, curators, builders, and investors. However, are music streaming platforms ready to support the Justin Biebers, Taylor Swifts, and Post Malones of the world? Cooper shares his thoughts on everything from why music NFTs haven't taken off as jpegs have yet, to the core problems with the legacy music industry, to the future of music NFTs, and everything in between. We hope you enjoy! ------
✨ SUBSCRIBE TO THE OVERPRICED JPEGS CHANNEL ✨ https://bankless.cc/jpegs On this episode of Overpriced JPEGs, Carly welcomes music NFT expert, advisor, angel investor, curator, co-founder of Friends with Benefits, and did we mention music NFT expert(?!) — Cooper Turley. Cooper, also known as Coopahtroopa, has shaped music NFTs from their infancy and is building toward onboarding the next wave of Music NFT artists, curators, builders, and investors. However, are music streaming platforms ready to support the Justin Biebers, Taylor Swifts, and Post Malones of the world? Cooper shares his thoughts on everything from why music NFTs haven't taken off as jpegs have yet, to the core problems with the legacy music industry, to the future of music NFTs, and everything in between. We hope you enjoy! ------
The Week in Web3 Music // 06-06-2022Quick summary: Coopahtroopa's Music NFT 100, NFT anarchy from the Sex Pistols, and the beautiful descent into Camp Chaos."Welcome to The Music NFT Show with J. Thorn - The first weekly news podcast dedicated to all things music in web3. Let's f*****g go!"Special shout out to our partner, NFT Plazas - No#1 NFT News Website Dedicated to Supporting the Expansion & Mainstream Adoption of NFTs, Decentralization and the Metaverse. News, Events, Advertising and Much More. Established in 2018.MNFT News Music NFT 100. Meet the top web3 artists - broken down by genre. - Cooper Turley's visual representation of the current web3 artists. The Sex Pistols Mark the Platinum Jubilee in True Anarchic Style - “Quintessential troublemakers, The Sex Pistols, will once again direct their distain towards the Queen of the commonwealth. This time around, marking her platinum jubilee with a commemorative ‘God Save the Queen' NFT coin and physical counterpart.” What Do You Call a Headless 77-Person Web3 Band? - “You call it Chaos of course. Camp Chaos. This is the name of the latest project from SongCamp (SC), a collective Web3 laboratory experimenting at the edges of music and blockchain technology. With Camp Chaos, SC brought together 77 individuals from all over the world to launch what is, in essence, a music NFT hackathon. The goal of Chaos is to create 45 songs to be released as an NFT collection totaling over 20,000 unique tokens.” Fighting FUD Shut it Down! by Arthur Hayes Hibiki Run Sound.xyz hits 3,000 unique collectors This Week's Top of the Blocks Moonshot #402 (weekly vol 4.67 ETH) Moonshot #408 (weekly vol 4.34 ETH) Moonshot #205 (weekly vol 3.72 ETH) Artist Spotlight featuring Q (my beautiful daughter)Everybody's Crazy by Josh Lippi & The OvertimersThanks for listening to the Music NFT Show. Make sure you go to MusicNFTShow.com to get your free VIP backstage pass to our exclusive community!Got news? Submit news stories or recommend artists for the Artist Spotlight by tweeting @JThorn_ or using the hashtag #musicnftshowProudly hosted by Transistor.fm - Unlimited podcasting at just $19.00/month!Music by G3ARZ[Please note: Nothing on the show is meant to be investment or financial advice. Do your own research. Some of the links are affiliate links which means I make a small percentage of a sale if you buy through the link. I use everything I recommend myself, and only recommend those I trust. However, you can always Google them if you don't want to use my links. LFG!]
The Week in Web3 Music // 05-30-2022Quick summary: Cooper Turley explains his venture into web3 music. 'Ooh La La' working on a music NFT streaming platform. Snoop Dogg/Gary V collaboration announced at VeeCon 2022."Welcome to The Music NFT Show with J. Thorn - The first weekly news podcast dedicated to all things music in web3. Let's f*****g go!"Special shout out to our partner, NFT Plazas - No#1 NFT News Website Dedicated to Supporting the Expansion & Mainstream Adoption of NFTs, Decentralization and the Metaverse. News, Events, Advertising and Much More. Established in 2018.MNFT News Everything you need to know about music NFTs and why I invested $300,000 in Web3's next big thing - “Cooper Turley is a cryptocurrency investor and advisor. Turley says we'll see an influx of new music debuting natively through Web3. While there are still real issues with music NFTs, he remains bullish.” Introducing 'Ooh La La', MusicNFT streaming service - “'Ooh La La' is a MusicNFT streaming service that integrates a variety of MusicNFT platforms. You can discover, stream, interact in a single interface.” SnoopDogg/Gary V collab coming this fall - Tweet by CarolinaMillan.eth Fighting FUD Music NFTs are poised to explode by DegenDaVinci Megadeth has a creator coin on Rally.io New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix released by NASA This Week's Top of the Blocks Death Row Session: Vol. 2 (420 Edition) #308 (weekly vol 2.21 ETH) Gold Vinyl (weekly vol 1.68 ETH) Sinner's #45 (weekly vol 1.54 ETH) Artist Spotlight featuring Q (my beautiful daughter)Bridge #001 (Beat Foundry)Thanks for listening to the Music NFT Show. Make sure you go to MusicNFTShow.com to get your free VIP backstage pass to our exclusive community!Got news? Submit news stories or recommend artists for the Artist Spotlight by tweeting @JThorn_ or using the hashtag #musicnftshowProudly hosted by Transistor.fm - Unlimited podcasting at just $19.00/month!Music by G3ARZ[Please note: Nothing on the show is meant to be investment or financial advice. Do your own research. Some of the links are affiliate links which means I make a small percentage of a sale if you buy through the link. I use everything I recommend myself, and only recommend those I trust. However, you can always Google them if you don't want to use my links. LFG!]
In this episode Jai, Brok & Aaron discuss a recent thread by Cooper Turley about 20 current problems with music NFT's. We discuss the second 10 points from his thread. We actually recorded this episode the week before but had some recording issues so had to record this again. Check out Cooper's Twitter: https://twitter.com/cooopahtroopa/ Help us out by following the podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/nftprojectpod Please Like, Share and Subscribe to the Podcast. Check out Project DJ here: https://www.projectdj.io/ Follow Boi King Koi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/boikingkoi
Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Delphi Digital, and Real Vision CEO and co-founder Raoul Pal reflect on Web 3.0 and community-driven social tokens. Kelly has spoken with several professionals in this adolescent industry such as Cooper Turley of Friends With Benefits, Jack Spallone of HIFI Labs, Jeff Kaufman of Jump, Jeff Sloss of Seed Club, and creators themselves like Micah Johnson. It's been a memorable learning experience, and his conviction in the promise of social and community tokens is even stronger than when the series began. Pal and Kelly explore the concept of Bitcoin as a social token and ponder what the future of Web 3.0 looks like, taking the lessons learned over the past months as a foundational starting point. Recorded on November 23, 2021.
In this episode Jai, Brok & Aaron discuss a recent thread by Cooper Turley about 20 current problems with music NFT's. We discuss the first 10 points from his thread and will complete the remained of the thread in the next episode. Check out Cooper's Twitter: https://twitter.com/cooopahtroopa/ Help us out by following the podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/nftprojectpod Please Like, Share and Subscribe to the Podcast. Check out Project DJ here: https://www.projectdj.io/ Join Boi King Koi's Discord here: https://discord.gg/aZmQNVJyS2
Cooper is a Web3 investor & creator who has shifted all his attention to music NFTs, which are still a very new sector even for crypto natives. We discuss his thesis, how much he's made, why this format could explode like other NFT sectors, Snoop Dogg & Diplo drops, investment strategy, where to find them, how to evaluate different pieces, and tips for anyone else diving in. (nothing in this episode is financial advice) Thank you for tuning in. If you can spare 5 seconds to leave a review/rating on iTunes, I appreciate it. It helps others find the show. Tweet me your thoughts about the episode! Show sponsors: •Bybit: Trade Bitcoin, ETH, or your favorite altcoins on the best trading platform in crypto. If you use my link you get discounted fees and a Bitcoin deposit bonus for new accounts: https://partner.bybit.com/b/luke
Cooper is an investor, advisor, and writer who has contributed to dozens of DAOs and other projects in the crypto & web3 space. He is a thought leader and influencer in a variety of areas from Music NFTs to DeFi and DAOs more broadly. Follow Cooper on Twitter @Cooopahtroopa. [2:18] - How Cooper's music interests and writing habits created opportunities to work for DAOs [6:18] - What stood out about crypto when Cooper first learned about it [8:55] - Approaching the imposter syndrome that is common in crypto [11:25] - How Cooper has used writing to add value to crypto protocols and projects [14:40] - Cooper's perspective on the evolution of music and web3 [20:00] - A comparison of catalog.works vs. sound.xyz [23:07] - Developing the secondary market for music NFTs [24:27] - The 3 key drivers of the audio movement [28:39] - Cooper's advice for how anyone can find ways to contribute in crypto [30:44] - Managing time and attention as scarce resources [33:36] - Finding your edge in the fast moving crypto industry [35:45] - How artists can get involved in music NFTs [38:49] - Why some music NFT platforms start open where others start strategically curated [42:19] - How Cooper decides who he wants to work with [44:51] - Cooper's 3-5 year outlook on the music NFT space [52:08] - How crypto has changed Cooper's relationship with money --- Support the show by checking out my sponsors: Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake. --- https://homeofjake.com
What is most important in crypto? What wins out in the end? Today, we find out if user experience is more important than decentralization. As we progress through crypto's cambrian explosion, we often observe the tradeoff between immediate product viability and a 'no cutting corners' approach. Taking the side of UX & a product-first mentality is Cooper Turley, a champion of the creator economy. Kevin Owocki—himself a schelling point for public goods—is defending decentralization and the merits of a values-first approach. While exploring the roots of this tradeoff, we'll learn more about where we are as an ecosystem and where we are inevitably heading. ------
Mint Season 4 episode 22 welcomes music NFT collector and crypto OG Cooper Turley (aka Coopahtroopa). He rationalizes his conviction for spending 100 ETH on music NFTs to date. He came by my hotel during Eth Denver for our first in-person conversation, making this session the longest episode in Season 4. There's just too much alpha in one sitting, I hope you can handle it.In this episode, we discuss:00:36 - Intro03:56 - Music Projects Dominating The Space07:08 - How to Price a Music NFT 11:17 - Why Treat Music NFTs as Collectibles14:18 - How to Get Started as a Music Creator15:34 - Understanding the Music NFT Movement21:26 - Web3 Protocols in the Music Industry24:58 - Getting Started at Audius28:18 - Building Funnels to Grow Your Collector Base35:04 - What is LA's Crypto Culture Like?37:46 - Web3 Music Platforms and Opportunities48:26 - How to Create Digital Emotional Experiences Around Collectors50:29 - End Goal with Collecting 100 Eth Worth of Music NFTs58:30 - Open Sourcing The Entire Music Industry01:03:22 - Music Streaming in Web301:04:46 - The Consumption Layer of Music NFTs01:08:31 - Tokenomics: Risks Associated with Overwhelming Artists and Fans01:21:19 - Daniel Allan and Designing Overstim's Tokenomics01:24:13 - Building Bridges Between Web2 and Web301:28:18 - Outro…and so much more. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Cooper Turley - https://twitter.com/CooopahtroopaLearn more by visiting: https://adamlevy.io/mint---------------------------------------------------------------------------Claim your FREE Listener Badge NFT proving you listened to this episodehttps://adamlevy.io/poap-season-4---------------------------------------------------------------------------Support Season 4's NFT sponsors1. Coinvise - https://coinvise.co/2. Polygon Studios - https://polygonstudios.com/---------------------------------------------------------------------------Sign up for Adam Levy's newsletterhttps://levychain.substack.com---------------------------------------------------------------------------Follow Adam Levy on social media:Twitter:https://twitter.com/levychainInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/levychainLinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/levy-adamWebsite:https://adamlevy.io
Dapper Collectives CEO and Friends With Benefits founder Trevor McFedries joins Unchained to discuss social tokens, NFTs, the creator economy, $FWB, VC snacks, DAOs, Cooper Turley, and more. Show highlights: Trevor's past, which includes a top 10 album, working at Spotify, founding Brud, creating Lil Miquela, and, of course, falling down the crypto rabbit hole what Trevor's vision for Dapper Collectives is what type of activities DAOs will facilitate in the future why Trevor is so excited to be working with Dapper Labs and Flow what Friends With Benefits is and how the $FWB token works what sort of tokens make up the Friends With Benefits treasury why venture capitalists who want to be involved with Friends With Benefits need to have a good snack game why Trevor is not worried about $FWB becoming a security what plans Friends With Benefits has in store for 2022 Trevor's response to Friends With Benefits suspending co-founder Cooper Turley regarding 10-year old racist and homophobic tweets what can be done to onboard a more diverse demographic to crypto how Trevor defines the passion/creator economy what Trevor is looking forward to in 2022 regarding NFTs, DAOs, and social tokens Join the Unchained With Laura Shin discussion group on Facebook! Laura is launching a paid Facebook discussion group where you and other listeners of the show can discuss recent episodes, ask questions in advance, get access to special AMAs with myself and show guests and more. Those who join now and for the next two weeks will get a special introductory price of $2.99 a month or $29.99 annually. Those who join from February 15 and on will be charged the regular rate of $4.99 a month or $49.99 annually. We will open up the group on the 15th, one week ahead of my book launch. If you're interested in subscribing, head to https://laurashin.bulletin.com/subscribe. Check out my new author website! Keep up to date on all things I'm up to at the newly launched laurashin.com. There, you can find out all the latest on my book, all my writing, and press and speaking appearances. Enjoy! Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Beefy Finance: https://beefy.finance Bosonic: https://bosonic.digital/ Episode Links Trevor Mcfedries Twitter: https://twitter.com/whatdotcd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-mcfedries-0a5285a8/ Work CEO - Dapper Collectives Decrypt write-up: https://decrypt.co/82517/dapper-labs-nfts-daos-collectives-brud Announcement: https://medium.com/dapperlabs/the-future-of-x-is-decentralized-bb3245faf1b1 Founder → Brud Twitter: https://twitter.com/makebrud Website: https://www.brud.fyi/ Lil Miquela: https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ Acquisition by Dapper Labs: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/04/nft-startup-dapper-labs-acquires-virtual-influencer-startup-brud/ AI Influencers: https://mailchimp.com/courier/article/ai-influencers/ Friends With Benefits Basics FWB website: https://www.fwb.help/ Mirror: https://fwb.mirror.xyz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/fwbtweets FWB Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/token/0x35bd01fc9d6d5d81ca9e055db88dc49aa2c699a8 CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/friends-with-benefits-pro/ Background Reads Trevor's role: https://consensys.net/blog/codefi/friends-with-benefits-a-new-model-for-social-tokens-on-ethereum/ a16z investment: https://a16z.com/2021/10/27/investing-in-friends-with-benefits-a-dao/ FWB deep dive: https://ra.co/features/3914 Intelligencer write up: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/whats-a-dao-why-your-group-chat-could-be-worth-millions.html Coindesk write up: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/09/the-social-token-network-rally-friends-with-benefits-and-the-future-of-branding/ Cooper Turley removed from DAO https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/15/crypto-influencer-cooper-turley-removed-from-fwb-over-2013-bigoted-tweets/ Backlash to removal: https://twitter.com/mewn21/status/1482202603563798530 WHALE treasury tokens https://snapshot.org/#/friendswithbenefits.eth/proposal/QmWnifY3KD5ECJNtQ23m9GHt2oQ1McA3T4DEEpFarPy9jW Additional Links Sound.xyz https://www.sound.xyz/ Catalog https://beta.catalog.works/ Daily Ape on DAOs: https://thedailyape.notion.site/DAOs-95332c7ab79c49dc89f9a72c628dfeb8 Social Tokens: Cooper Turley: https://coopahtroopa.mirror.xyz/DYSs-mhdJi1uXZTaiyJfwiFZYAF9kRK6yBsAplk6A68 Linda Xie: https://linda.mirror.xyz/4PDBWBMpFFPVEsP5EGgg5to2AyEpEHEXasq_K0b-yYk Forefront: https://forefront.market/learn/social-tokens
Dapper Collectives CEO and Friends With Benefits founder Trevor McFedries joins Unchained to discuss social tokens, NFTs, the creator economy, $FWB, VC snacks, DAOs, Cooper Turley, and more. Show highlights: Trevor's past, which includes a top 10 album, working at Spotify, founding Brud, creating Lil Miquela, and, of course, falling down the crypto rabbit hole what Trevor's vision for Dapper Collectives is what type of activities DAOs will facilitate in the future why Trevor is so excited to be working with Dapper Labs and Flow what Friends With Benefits is and how the $FWB token works what sort of tokens make up the Friends With Benefits treasury why venture capitalists who want to be involved with Friends With Benefits need to have a good snack game why Trevor is not worried about $FWB becoming a security what plans Friends With Benefits has in store for 2022 Trevor's response to Friends With Benefits suspending co-founder Cooper Turley regarding 10-year old racist and homophobic tweets what can be done to onboard a more diverse demographic to crypto how Trevor defines the passion/creator economy what Trevor is looking forward to in 2022 regarding NFTs, DAOs, and social tokens Join the Unchained With Laura Shin discussion group on Facebook! Laura is launching a paid Facebook discussion group where you and other listeners of the show can discuss recent episodes, ask questions in advance, get access to special AMAs with myself and show guests and more. Those who join now and for the next two weeks will get a special introductory price of $2.99 a month or $29.99 annually. Those who join from February 15 and on will be charged the regular rate of $4.99 a month or $49.99 annually. We will open up the group on the 15th, one week ahead of my book launch. If you're interested in subscribing, head to https://laurashin.bulletin.com/subscribe. Check out my new author website! Keep up to date on all things I'm up to at the newly launched laurashin.com. There, you can find out all the latest on my book, all my writing, and press and speaking appearances. Enjoy! Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Beefy Finance: https://beefy.finance Bosonic: https://bosonic.digital/ Episode Links Trevor Mcfedries Twitter: https://twitter.com/whatdotcd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-mcfedries-0a5285a8/ Work CEO - Dapper Collectives Decrypt write-up: https://decrypt.co/82517/dapper-labs-nfts-daos-collectives-brud Announcement: https://medium.com/dapperlabs/the-future-of-x-is-decentralized-bb3245faf1b1 Founder → Brud Twitter: https://twitter.com/makebrud Website: https://www.brud.fyi/ Lil Miquela: https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela/ Acquisition by Dapper Labs: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/04/nft-startup-dapper-labs-acquires-virtual-influencer-startup-brud/ AI Influencers: https://mailchimp.com/courier/article/ai-influencers/ Friends With Benefits Basics FWB website: https://www.fwb.help/ Mirror: https://fwb.mirror.xyz/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/fwbtweets FWB Etherscan: https://etherscan.io/token/0x35bd01fc9d6d5d81ca9e055db88dc49aa2c699a8 CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/friends-with-benefits-pro/ Background Reads Trevor's role: https://consensys.net/blog/codefi/friends-with-benefits-a-new-model-for-social-tokens-on-ethereum/ a16z investment: https://a16z.com/2021/10/27/investing-in-friends-with-benefits-a-dao/ FWB deep dive: https://ra.co/features/3914 Intelligencer write up: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/10/whats-a-dao-why-your-group-chat-could-be-worth-millions.html Coindesk write up: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/09/the-social-token-network-rally-friends-with-benefits-and-the-future-of-branding/ Cooper Turley removed from DAO https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/15/crypto-influencer-cooper-turley-removed-from-fwb-over-2013-bigoted-tweets/ Backlash to removal: https://twitter.com/mewn21/status/1482202603563798530 WHALE treasury tokens https://snapshot.org/#/friendswithbenefits.eth/proposal/QmWnifY3KD5ECJNtQ23m9GHt2oQ1McA3T4DEEpFarPy9jW Additional Links Sound.xyz https://www.sound.xyz/ Catalog https://beta.catalog.works/ Daily Ape on DAOs: https://thedailyape.notion.site/DAOs-95332c7ab79c49dc89f9a72c628dfeb8 Social Tokens: Cooper Turley: https://coopahtroopa.mirror.xyz/DYSs-mhdJi1uXZTaiyJfwiFZYAF9kRK6yBsAplk6A68 Linda Xie: https://linda.mirror.xyz/4PDBWBMpFFPVEsP5EGgg5to2AyEpEHEXasq_K0b-yYk Forefront: https://forefront.market/learn/social-tokens
Today's blockchain and cryptocurrency news Brought to you by ungrocery.com Bitcoin is down 1% at $42,700 Ethereum is down 1% at $3,291 and Binance Coin down 1% at $492 Immutable X, up 18% Chinese state backed Blockchain Services Network (BSN) moves closer to supporting NFTs Gemini acquires Bitria Cooper Turley has been suspended from the DAO Friends With Benefits over bigoted tweets. Crypto Data firm Lukka raises funds a $1.3B valuation The Ghozali Everyday collection — an OpenSea sensation.
Cooper Turley is all in, all the time. He's been that way since he was a kid. In the crypto space, it truly seems like he's everywhere at once. He knows everyone and has his hands in nearly every relevant project. However, none of this happened by chance. Cooper is a champion of the grinder mindset, and it echoes through everything he touches. His approach to his career, relationships, and self-improvement buzzes with a productive energy to build and bring value to all that he does. We all have something to learn from Cooper Turley. As crypto continues to mature, it's clear that big things are lined up for Cooper. We can't wait to see what he comes up with next. ------
This episode was originally published on March 22, 2021.Blockchain and the Music Industry with Cooper Turley from AudiusIn this episode of The Unstoppable Podcast, we're talking to Cooper Turley, the crypto strategist at Audius and a writer at The Defiant, about how blockchain will impact the music industry.Cooper talks about how he learned about decentralized technology and gives recommendations for resources and social media channels to follow. We discuss the barriers to the widespread adoption of crypto and use cases for crypto and blockchain in the music industry.We talk about Audius, a streaming platform that uses decentralization to put power back in the hands of music artists. Cooper explains who is currently using the platform, along with plans for the future.He talks about NFTs and how they work with the music industry, along with some other exciting trends in the near future — like fractional ownership — and what they mean for new artists and the industry as a whole.--You can follow Matthew on Twitter and LinkedIn, Diana on Twitter and LinkedIn, and learn more about Unstoppable Domains and our work here.You can follow our guest, Cooper Turley, on Twitter and LinkedIn, and check out Audius here.--Don't forget to rate, download, and subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss an episode and we can keep producing awesome content for you.
This is probably our most in-the-weeds web3 episode yet. If you're newer to crypto, we recommend you scroll back through your feed and listen to any of our episodes with Patrick Riera, Cooper Turley, and several others to give yourself a background to enjoy this one fully. As a bonus, you can also listen to our episode with Stephen Sikes from Public to build a background in traditional finance.Joining Marshall this week in the Deep End is Barrett. Marshall introduces Barrett by first name only because, like past guest Bored Elon Musk, he is operating relatively pseudonymously. Barrett is one of the core contributors behind the Cypher Protocol.Cypher is a futures protocol built on the Solana blockchain that wants to bring a new set of traditional finance opportunities to decentralized finance. They are doing this at a time when crypto users are quickly acclimating to concepts and tools traditionally used by Wall StreetWe discuss this collision of crypto and “tradfi,” what a synthetic good is, the analogs for IDOs and pretoken markets, and end with discussion on culture differences between web2 and web 3 companies.A quick note: another core contributor to the Cypher Protocol named Izzy had originally planned to sit in on the episode recording just to listen. But after she chimed in with an interesting aside to Barrett, we decided to actually bring her fully on stage and into the conversation. So you may not hear her at the beginning, but we're thrilled that she joined to provide the nuance that she did.For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
In this episode of Masters of Community, we speak with two people at the forefront of Web 3.0 communities. Tiffany Zhong, Founder of Islands and the upcoming GM Academy community that will introduce you to all things Web 3.0. Cooper Turley, Advisor at Audius and Founder of the “Friends With Benefits” community. This episode is full of beginner information that will help you conceptually transition from Web 2.0 communities to Web 3.0 communities. Guests Tiffany and Cooper talk about the unique characteristics of Web 3.0 communities, examples of well-managed Web 3.0 communities, and how to navigate some of the biggest challenges while building Web 3.0 communities. Who is this episode for? Community managers interested in building Web 3.0 communities of their own. Three key takeaways: 1. Web 2.0 Communities vs Web 3.0 Communities: In Web 3.0, you're trying to share value with those who create it in the form of tokens and ownership. In Web 2.0, shared purpose and ownership were never thought of because the decision-making structure was fully centralized. Communities around each of NFT, DAOs, and DeFi have different expectations. Their requirements may also change depending on their growth stage. In Web 3.0, the creator community is incomplete without a community economy. Web 3.0 is taking that promise of web 2.0 building something together, and actually putting an infrastructure behind it. 2. Exemplary Web 3.0 Communities: Cooper's “Friends with Benefits” community is a token-gated community where you need to hold tokens to join a social club that talks about the intersection of culture and technology. For example, Bored Ape Yacht club is focused on real-life activations of digital NFTs, airdrops, etc. The goal of Web 3.0 communities like these is to find ways to give their income back to the community through different projects serving the collective purpose of the community. 3. Preventing Web 3.0 communities from becoming “early-adopter cliques”: Rather than only offering all-in access to everything in that community, you can start to fragment different sections of it and lower the barriers. NFTs will start to become membership tokens, and people will be able to buy in for small time intervals to see if it's a good fit for them and upgrade to a higher tier if required. Access can also be given by granting tokens in exchange for volunteer work instead of direct investment. Notable Quotes: 1. “What Web two brands would say, cool, this is now our revenue or creators would say, cool, this is now my profit. I'm going to go buy a Lambo. Is that right? It's not, how do I share the Lambo with the entire company? That's the shift” “Start using discord. Discord is where most of these communities live. And I think it's a very foreign platform to most people. But if you're looking to get involved with Web 3.0, you need to learn how to navigate.” 2. “Start spending even just ten minutes a day in this space. You don't need to start dedicating your whole workday or week to going forward if you don't have the time, but just doing incremental” 3. “Just go in with an open mindset, but also with no ego and just ask questions. There are no dumb questions. The interesting thing. And the cool thing is that everyone's learning” Answers to rapid-fire questions: 1. How do you see consulting work to help create and build community at the start of a DeFi or similar project? If you are a consultant, I think the best that you can do is provide context on what's already happened. 2. What are the absolute critical priorities to think about when setting up a new community management function? Take charge of project management and keep track of what does what and how they are contributing to the community. 3. What role do you think offline will have in Web 3.0? Offline is where you celebrate community and where you strengthen relationships but online is where it really lives and where the function of it happens on a day. 4. Can't you build a community that is open, transparent, governed, and owned by the community with a stewardship and ownership model like the co-op model in Web 2.0? The notion of holding an asset that's able to increase or decrease in value relative to the growth of that community is really magical. It also gives people the option to either play long-term games or have instant liquidity based on where they are in life. 5. A lot of web three projects have a few different owner groups. How do you keep all these different groups engaged? Everyone is aligned to make the value of community treasury grow. And outside of that, each of the stakeholder groups is doing different things to grow the value of that treasury in very unique ways. 6. Tweet-sized vision for if everything goes perfectly, where do you want to see the world of web 3.0 five years from now? Tiffany: A world where creators are able to get paid what they're worth. A world where all the current web two creators and fans will now become web three community builders and collectors. Cooper: We are in the MySpace era of crypto right now. In five years, the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter of this world will be created.
Learn more about Tiffany Zhong:Tiffany's TwitterGm.academy Learn more about Cooper Turley:Cooper's TwitterCooper's WebsiteFriends With Benefits CommunityEpisode resources:The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive AdvantageBored Ape Yacht Club CommunitySend your stories and feedback on this episode to pod@cmxhub.comIf you enjoyed this episode, then please either:Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow on Spotify
Today we are joined by our dear friend Cooper Turley. Cooper is a co-founder at FWB, a venture partner at Variant Fund, and has his fingers in or around many of the leading DAO & social tokens you probably all heard of. This conversation is interesting. We talk about his initial inspiration for jumping into the social token space and contrast that to where things are today. We talk about the DAO landscape. We talk about the underbelly of token compensation and how Web3 communities and projects might want to develop and structure compensation in their DAOs
Recently, many of our guests have been pioneers in the web3 space. Patrick Rivera provided a particularly helpful framework for understanding different eras of the web when he was on the show. From him, and other guests like Cooper Turley, we've learned that web3 is special because it enables users to have ownership of their different networks. Today's guests share the optimism of our past guests, but also note that the web3 is still in its infancy and is very much a work in progress.Those guests (Clarke & Jeff McKinnon) are building what they call "the reusable web." Like past guest Peer Richelsen, they believe that the internet works best when it's open-sourced and composable. To that end, yesterday they launched "The.com" to make it simple for website builders to create, 'remix,' and launch websites while getting paid and earning credit for their work.This is one of our favorite episodes we have ever done. We were struck by the balance that the McKinnon brothers are able to find between practicality and optimism. We'll be following along closely as they strive to live up to the ubiquity of their new domain.For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com
In light of our recent $PRTN Token launch, we're moving into the world of Web3 / and speaking to people who are putting communities first / in order to manifest a more equitable / and decentralised future. Opening our Season 5, we have Cooper Turley who's been actively shaping the Creator Economy since 2019 through DAOs like Friends with Benefits and our very own Protein Community. He's an investor at Variant Fund, advisor at Audius and will probably involved in that supercool project no-one has heard of yet. This was recorded live in the Protein Discord, so excuse the audio quality and make sure you follow our Twitter or Insta so you can be part of the next show.
In this episode of Empire Jason & Mike are joined by Cooper Turley an operator, advisor & thought leader in the fast evolving DAO ecosystem. Cooper has worked on projects such as Friends with Benefits, Forefront, Seed Club & many more. In this episode, Cooper shares his thoughts on the transition from web 2.0 to web 3.0, four steps to creating a DAO, the creator economy, how to invest in the ecosystem & the outlook for the rest of 2021. -- Avalanche: Thank you to Avalanche for sponsoring Empire. Avalanche is one of the best and fastest growing smart-contract platforms in the industry. Learn more about them at https://www.avax.network/ -- ParaSwap: If you want to make a swap at the best price across the DeFi market, check out paraswap.io. ParaSwap's state-of-the-art algorithm beats the market price across all major DEXs and brings you the most optimized swaps with the best prices, and lowest slippage. Find out more about them at https://www.paraswap.io/ --- Empire is brought to you by Blockworks, a financial media brand delivering breaking news and premium insights about digital assets to millions of investors. For more content like Empire, visit http://blockworks.co/podcasts Follow me on Twitter @JasonYanowitz and let me know what you thought of the show!
DAOs are the next big opportunity in crypto. This week, full time DAO advisor @Cooopahtroopa joins us for a definitive crash course in DAOs. We discuss: What makes a DAO, who are the main players? 30+ tools and tactics to create your own DAO Common pitfalls facing DAOs today 11 DAOs to watch out for Host: Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi . Not financial advice. ------------ Sponsors ------------- PARASWAP is the best place to trade your tokens and get the best price in DeFi today. Get started on paraswap.io/blockcrunch ------------ Disclosures ------------- Disclaimer: Jason Choi is a General Partner at Spartan Capital, a subsidiary of The Spartan Group. All opinions expressed by Jason and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Spartan Group and any of its subsidiaries
Cooper Turley is building the creator economy through crypto. In this conversation, we spoke about DAOs, NFTs, and how he personally woke up (in a never-before-told story). Cooper's Links Essays / Twitter / Instagram Continue the conversation with me... Twitter / Instagram / YouTube / TikTok / Website
Cooper Turley is a man that wears many hats — investor, advisor, community builder — Cooper is involved with DAOs like FWB, funds like Variant, and advises projects like Audius. Cooper talks social dynamics in DAOs, mixing work and play, how his role has changed in the ecosystem over the past couple of years, and mental health in the metaverse. Follow Cooper on Twitter (@Cooopahtroopa) Follow Chase on Twitter (@chaserchapman) + share your thoughts on the show :) ‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒‒ On the Other Side is sponsored by RabbitHole. Learn more about RabbitHole at rabbithole.gg Follow RabbitHole on Twitter at @rabbithole_gg
Welcome back to the show people. This week's episode is a deep one. The boys bring in their friend and very successful crypto investor, Cooper Turley. They discuss how NFT's and Crypto-currency empowers independent artists, what the future of virtual reality could be, and a lot of great advice on growing your own portfolio.This episode is brought to you by FITBOD. Go to FITBOD.ME/POCKET for 25% off your subscriptionFollow Cooper @CoopahTroopah on Twitter. Enjoy! Subscribe! Follow the ShowYoutube.com/OuttaPocket Podcast IG- @outtapocketpod Twitter - @outtapocketpod_ Tik Tok - @outtapocketpod Follow The Boys: Sammy Wilk: IG - @SammyWilk Tik Tok - @SammyWilkOfficial JVCK J: IG/Twitter - JVCK.J Tik Tok - @JVCKJ Jack G.: IG/Tik Tok - @JackGilinsky Bruce Carter: IG - @BrantCarter This podcast was engineered by Bryan Vokey for Melrose Podcasts
Cooper Turley leads a handful of online communities known as DAOs. "DAO" is an acronym that stands for a decentralized autonomous organization. In more colloquial terms, a DAO is an internet community with a shared cap table and bank account. They represent humanity's newest structure for cooperative decision making.Cooper joined us for a live episode last week to help explain why DAOs are exploding in popularity. In our discussion, he explained their governance structures, described the different types of DAOs, made some predictions for the future,, and answered some wide-ranging questions from our live audience. DAOs are a powerful new mechanism for coordinating humans at scale. If they work as intended, we could be seeing the rise of a new way of organizing people that might last for centuries. We hope you enjoy! For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more visit thedeepend.substack.com
Pudgy Penguins, Bored Apes and CryptoKitties — a Noah's Ark of nonfungible tokens — are the latest trend for people trying to get rich and engage with art in a new way. NFTs might be a fad, but there's a multibillion-dollar market for them.Today, L.A. Times business reporter Sam Dean gives us a crash course in what exactly NFTs are and how to think about whether they're worth your money. And NFT collectors Cooper Turley and Tim Kang tell us why they think the digital tokens could change our lives even if we don't buy them.Also: An update about last week's episode “Our nation's Haitian double standard.”More reading:$69 million for digital art? The NFT craze explainedWho can sell a Wonder Woman NFT? The guy who drew her or DC Comics?How NFTs could affect sports
The Delphi Podcast Host and GP of Delphi Ventures Tom Shaughnessy sits down with Cooper Turley, crypto strategist lead at Audius, and manager of social DAO Friends With Benefits. The two discuss the culture and community around projects, DAOs and NFTs, value flows in NFTs and much more! We would like to thank our sponsors for making this podcast possible. Kava: Kava connects the world's largest cryptocurrencies on DeFi's most trusted platform. Mint stablecoins, lend, borrow, earn and swap safely across the top crypto assets with a simple user experience and the confidence of institutional-grade security. To learn more visit kava.io Celo: Celo is a mobile-first platform that makes financial dApps and crypto payments accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. Celo supports over 1000 projects who are everyday building applications and issuing digital currencies from 100+ countries around the world. Learn more at Celo.org. Every Delphi Podcast is dropped first as a video interview for Delphi Digital Subscribers. Our members also have access to full interview transcripts. Join today to get our interviews, first. Show Notes: (00:00:00) – Introduction. (00:02:23) – Cooper's background. (00:03:25) – What NFT culture means to Cooper / The fun aspect of NFTs. (00:06:53) – The relationship between public exposure and building in the NFT space. (00:09:25) – Culture and community around NFT projects. (00:15:45) – Managing creative control in NFT projects. (00:17:29) – The crossover between NFTs and DAOs. (00:21:27) – Cooper's thoughts on being “too late” to a project. (00:24:04) – What a bear market for NFTs could look like. (00:26:59) – Tribalism in NFTs. (00:28:00) – Judging NFT communities independent of price. (00:30:40) – Cooper's thoughts on NFT art. (00:33:42) – Fractionalized assets versus full assets. (00:39:15) – The creator economy and NFTs. (00:48:38) – Overview on Rally. (00:50:09) – What creators need to be successful. (00:55:12) – Value flows in NFTs. (00:58:58) – Cooper's thoughts on NFT curation. (01:02:49) – Governance rights for token holders VS NFTs for social access. (01:05:17) – Rapid fire questions: Multi-chain NFTs, Audius, Loot. Resources: Cooper's Twitter FWB Website Audius Website Rally Website More Our Video interviews Can Be Viewed Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q Access Delphi's Research Here: https://www.delphidigital.io/ Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the podcast. Our current show features paid sponsorships which may be featured at the start, middle, and/or the end of the episode. These sponsorships are for informational purposes only and are not a solicitation to use any product, service or token. Delphi's transparency page can be viewed here. Music Attribution: Cosmos by From The Dust | https://soundcloud.com/ftdmusic Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US
Cooper Turley aka. Coopahtroopa is a full time DAO operator working on projects like Friends with Benefits, Audius, PleasrDAO, Forefront and Seed Club. He's a partner at Variant Fund and works with teams on token launches and governance through Fire Eyes DAO.
DAOs are heating up. In 2021, the tools and infrastructure surrounding DAOs have taken off at an incredible pace. Digital organizations have the potential to fundamentally change the way we coordinate as a species. We bring on DAO experts Kain Warwick, Cooper Turley, and Tracheopteryx to provide insights into this budding movement. What is different about DAOs? Why are we excited about them? ------
How will blockchain technology & NFTs revolutionize the music industry? Why is Web3 the best thing that could ever happen to artists & creators ?On The Ledger explores music in the era of decentralization and NFTs with the inspiring Cooper Turley and Parker Todd Brooks. Cooper is a crypto strategist at Audius, a decentralized music platform that is owned and governed by its creator. Parker is currently Ledger's VP of NFTs, and was formerly the Head of Dance and Electronic Artist Relations at Apple Music. He's focusing on bringing the benefits of non-fungible tokens and self custody artist communities. Listen to their inspiring thoughts and glimpse into the future of music & entertainment. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
For the full audio interview, transcript, show notes and more visit: https://altassetallocation.com/ The Crypto Ecosystem is quite vast and always quickly moving. There are some major trends that are accelerating - DAOS, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations - NFTs - Non Fungible Tokens - DeFi - Decentralized Finance and Social Tokens... loads to unpack and Cooper is just the guy to do it. Enjoy this episode with Cooper Turley on all things crypto! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/investinalts/support
"Open public systems allow society to scale" Credits - 1. VOICE Talks | Wally Brill reviews lessons he's learned when building smart display games and stories - https://youtu.be/iLwx3lhMDkk 2. VOICE Talks | Mandy Chan & Eliza Camber give users clues for when their app could benefit from Voice - https://youtu.be/MfTErile4s0 3. VOICE Talks | Noelle Silver shares best practices for building voice apps - https://youtu.be/KQf_n4H0tOs 4. Bankless - What is the Creator Economy? Jesse Walden, Li Jin, Cooper Turley - https://youtu.be/Yc2m_NfxZj8 5. VOICE Live from CES | Welcome to VOICE: Opportunities and Challenges for Brands | Pete & Tom - https://youtu.be/2UXOFPVulKI Alexa4Musicians TikTok: tiktok.com/@alexa4musicians Instagram: instagram.com/alexa4musicians LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/11765148/ Twitter: twitter.com/Alexa4Musicians YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo07ThYKwEBLDd62igmvYVw Facebook: facebook.com/Alexa4Musicians-108963701380281 Voice First Podcast - Your Voice First: https://anchor.fm/voicefirstai/ TikTok: vm.tiktok.com/4S73J4/ Instagram: instagram.com/voicefirstai LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/11765148/ Twitter: twitter.com/voicefirstai YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCs8lN2Bfhou5PTC34-Vt6_A Facebook: facebook.com/VoiceFirstAI / --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/voicefirstai/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/voicefirstai/support
Join Michael Wong and David Hoffman as they attempt to make a show about comedy and crypto! Subscribe to the Top Signal RSS feed! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/top-signal/id1574944825 GUESTS: @Cooopahtroopa @0x_Lucas @BlockchainJames @gladstonecallum ------
Mint Season 1 episode 8 features Cooper Turley is actively shaping the Creator Economy through projects like Audius, Friends with Benefits, and PleasrDAO. He advises Variant as an operator and investor and works with teams on token launches and governance through Fire Eyes DAO.On this episode, we talk about his recent article mapping out the current DAO landscape. With 100s of DAOs in existence, he argues which ones he thinks will outpace the test of time, his point of view on how crypto is revolutionizing the music industry, why he's betting big on DAOs, and so much more.I hope you enjoy our conversation.Learn more by visiting: https://adamlevy.io/mint----show notes----DAO Landscapehttps://coopahtroopa.mirror.xyz/_EDyn4cs9tDoOxNGZLfKL7JjLo5rGkkEfRa_a-6VEWwHow To Launch A Tokenhttps://forefront.news/blog/how-to-launch-a-token
Come learn and hear about what the Creator Economy is, and what it has in store for our industry! Li Jin: @ljin18 Jesse Walden @jessewldn Cooper Turley: @Cooopahtroopa ------
To celebrate Sam starting 'nft now', a web3 digital media company on a mission to empower the creators of culture through freshly minted NFT news, curation and analysis, we're re-publishing an episode with Cooper Turley. Cooper Turley is the Head of Crypto Strategy at Audius, an emerging streaming platform. He sits at the intersection of the music industry and the exciting developments in the world of blockchain and crypto currency. He's helped numerous artists launch projects and monetize by selling digital collectables. We'll explore how blockchain and crypto may impact the music industry, and how you can use that to your advantage. In this episode, we speak to how artists are tapping into the world of NFT's and how you can do the same as the market continues to grow.Follow nft now below as well as listen to the 'nft now podcast' wherever you get your podcasts! Congrats, Sam!https://www.instagram.com/nftnowhttps://twitter.com/nftnowAs always, please leave a review and let us know what you think, follow us on Instagram @musicbusinesspodcast, and join our Patreon community at musicbusinesspodcast.com/community. Referenced Resources https://superrare.co/ https://niftygateway.com/marketplace https://makersplace.com/ https://zora.co/ https://viv3.com/ https://www.nbatopshot.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This week VÉRITÉ sits down with Cooper Turley. He is leading the crypto community at Audius; a new streaming platform that is utilizing blockchain technology and is providing new and innovative ways for artists to build their communities and interact with their fans. He shares ways how emerging technologies can help artists solve their problems. Anatomy of an ArtistCreated by VÉRITÉ Produced by Vanessa MagosMusic & Editing by VÉRITÉ Podcast research by Ysenia Bonilla Follow VÉRITÉ:Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/verite/Twitter - https://twitter.com/veriteFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/veritemusicSpotify - Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/v%C3%A9rit%C3%A9/900063435Website - http://veriteofficial.com/Contact - anatomyofanartistpodcast@gmail.com
Cooper came from the music business and developed a passion for crypto as he traveled around the world creating content for artists at music festivals. He comes with a rich background in contributing to the ecosystem from a non-technical frame, focused on communication and human coordination. We discuss a broad swath of topics including yield farming, social tokens, NFTs, Defi summer, DAOs, and the collaborative nature of the environment facilitated by this technology. Find him on twitter or instagram at @coopahtroopa.
Cooper talks about how he learned about decentralized technology and gives recommendations for resources and social media channels to follow. We discuss the barriers to the widespread adoption of crypto and use cases for crypto and blockchain in the music industry.We talk about Audius, a streaming platform that uses decentralization to put power back in the hands of music artists. Cooper explains who is currently using the platform, along with plans for the future.He talks about NFTs and how they work with the music industry, along with some other exciting trends in the near future — like fractional ownership — and what they mean for new artists and the industry as a whole.--You can follow Matthew on Twitter and LinkedIn, Diana on Twitter and LinkedIn, and learn more about Unstoppable Domains and our work here.You can follow our guest, Cooper Turley, on Twitter and LinkedIn, and check out Audius here.--Don't forget to rate, download, and subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss an episode and we can keep producing awesome content for you.
Cooper Turley is head of Crypto Strategy at Audius: a music-streaming protocol built on Ethereum. With a degree in Music Business, Cooper witnessed first-hand how cut-throat the industry can be. His discovery of Crypto – and more specifically, smart contracts – led him to dream up alternatives to the old ways of doing things, and he began to discover ways in which fans, artists and curators alike could collectively share in the upside both financially and socially. Beyond leading Crypto Strategy for Audius, Cooper is a contributing writer for The Defiant, editor of DeFi Rate, a social token manager and an NFT collector. Our "OG Fan" NFT is here! Own the first one: https://opensea.io/collection/show-me-the-crypto/
In this episode Cooper Turley from Audius shares with us why he thinks the music industry is ripe for disruption. Whether it's the endless number of middlemen or a disjointed royalty system delaying payments to Artist, projects like Audius are here to make a change. Audius is a decentralized music-sharing and streaming protocol facilitating direct relationships between artist and their fans. We discuss what Audius is about and how to create the right and incentive designs to onboard a new wave of artists & users to the world of crypto. We also cover what makes Audius unique, the AUDIO platform token and what to keep an eye out for in the coming weeks. Big thanks to our sponsors: Stakewise.io: An ETH 2.0 staking provider, allowing you to stake your ETH and earn high yields on it in the most user-friendly manner -> Try out their Beta product before they go live in December and earn a change to win a secret prize
Distributed Media: the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Podcast Network
Join Layer1 as the team sits down w/ Cooper Turley from Audius to discuss how Audius provides a better platform for content creators and fans through the use of social tokens and the $AUDIO token, a recap on the summer DeFi craze, the use case for social tokens, and where NFTs fit into the crypto landscape going forward. Links https://audius.co/ https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa
Distributed Media: the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Podcast Network
The team sits down w/ Cooper Turley and Lucas Campbell, Founders of DeFi Rate, to discuss DeFi adoption, current and future utility cases, the emergence of DAO governance, and what their thoughts are on recent Uniswap and $ALEX issuances. DeFi Rate https://defirate.com/ https://twitter.com/defirate Cooper Turley https://twitter.com/Cooopahtroopa Lucas Campbell Anything in particular that you'd like to hear form us in the next episode of Layer 1? Let us know in the comments! Sutler Ventures - https://sutlerventures.com/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/layer1pod Twitter - @SutlerVentures Telegram - @SutlerVentures ___________________________________________ All the songs, images, and graphics used in this video belong to their respective owners, Sutler Ventures nor this channel claim any right over them.