NFTs (thread now extremely NSFW)

A speculative NFT asset has no potential to generate income for anyone but a very well-known artist. Much as with streaming, this is a technology being promoted by people who don't understand anything about the music/art business as great for musicians/artists.

My friend isn't talking about millions, more like hundreds for a touring indie act with a relatively small (in global pop terms) but dedicated fanbase.

But yeah I agree that the NFT evangelists are interested in money and tech/protocols, not art.

fuck around

my brother and I collaborated on our first NFT, check it out https://t.co/YQFstF6VVL

— of Montreal~she/he/they/them (@xxofMontrealxx) March 15, 2021

find out

oooooo fuck we didn't realize NFT's were so bad for the environment!!! this will be a one and done then, thanks for the heads up!

— of Montreal~she/he/they/them (@xxofMontrealxx) March 15, 2021

<3 kevin obv lol

My next release will be on an amazing physical, analogue NFT - a flat, circular polyvinyl chloride disc* with the audio literally engraved into it. Limited in number, each unique object exists even if the platform goes down.

*disc will require some specialist equipment to listen

— Posthuman (@posthuman) March 9, 2021

i am going to burn down the rainforest and mint it as as a NFT

My friend isn't talking about millions, more like hundreds for a touring indie act with a relatively small (in global pop terms) but dedicated fanbase.

But yeah I agree that the NFT evangelists are interested in money and tech/protocols, not art.

― change display name (Jordan), Monday, March 15, 2021 12:48 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Back in the day, we managed to sell about 1000 copies of our self-released album, 90% of that at shows. I calculated that to earn the same profit we'd probably need between 6-10 million streams. I guess the difference is that an NFT doesn't replace anything, so it's arguably just additive income. But yeah, it's gonna be very small if anything for most bands. Unlike, e.g., a print by a non-famous artist, an NFT has literally zero value except as a metaphysical ownership right.

My friend is saying it could replace the revenue lost from streaming (and now touring). And yeah of course it's a meaningless symbol, especially when associated with a non-digital product. But his optimistic argument is that fans will support their favorite artists in return for that sense of ownership, which would be depressing since it's almost indistinguishable from just donating to a musician if you're only listening on Spotify, and any increasing value of the NFT will likely be symbolic too.

But his optimistic argument is that fans will support their favorite artists in return for that sense of ownership, which would be depressing since it's almost indistinguishable from just donating to a musician if you're only listening on Spotify, and any increasing value of the NFT will likely be symbolic too.

i can very much see why most people would think this is ridiculous, but i can see that too (and not in an optimistic way). not a perfect comparison, but an enormous amount of money is spent every day on purely cosmetic items in free-to-play games. People love to spend money on completely useless, cosmetic/symbolic things to show their friends

of course, the difference is that if you do it around me i'll scream and then move to the woods

Right, I can for sure see it coming to pass, as abstract and ridiculous as it seems.

It's just hard for me to believe people wouldn't have better luck creating a high-priced limited edition of a vinyl album or something.

nobody's ever paid $69 million for a vinyl album

and nobody's going to pay $69 million for a music NFT unless it's a multi-platinum artist or something.

Also, the buyer of the beeple work did so to fuel his own investment scam. And I'd be surprised if some of that money paid to "Beeple" isn't headed back to "MetaKovan"
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/india-ban-ownership-cryptocurrencies-110427476.html

sorry wrong link
https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/12/22327594/metakovan-beeple-highest-auction-price-69-million-nft

“When you think of high-valued NFTs, this one is going to be pretty hard to beat,” MetaKovan said in a statement published by Christie’s. “And here’s why — it represents 13 years of everyday work. Techniques are replicable and skill is surpassable, but the only thing you can’t hack digitally is time. This is the crown jewel, the most valuable piece of art for this generation. It is worth $1 billion.”

lol

$69M was the third highest ever sale for a living artist, btw

this all gives me flashbacks to how in like 2014 there was a certain kind of annoying person who would pepper any conversation about any aspect of any kind of creative project with "you should totally do a kickstarter!"

wanna hear my latest dystopic vision, which i think black mirror has already done? imagine a world where NFTs - assigning value and commodifying things that previously were not in a "market" - are ubiquitous, and the whole early 2021-era where the discussion was temporarily focused NFTs and digital art seems hilariously old-fashioned and irrelevant. why not tokenize experiences, or people? shouldn't every person have a NFT value that can fluctuate and go up or down depending on the market forces. at least some people will think this is a wonderful idea, because they believe that the "market" would "reward" "good" "people". then it's basically like that one black mirror episode after that, you know the one

commodification and financialization of everyone and everything def not far fetched -- college students can now sell portions of their future income streams iirc.

and that happening in a shared digital space while the natural world burns up around us also seems pretty likely.

another layer to this is that a lot of the hyped NFTs are just, like, bad art. Like the Beeple thing -- it is very skilled and obviously took a lot of work, but it just seems kind of bad to me. Like the images don't work together well at all as a single giant image -- it reminds me of that million dollar page website. Individual images have a digital Banksy vibe.

like very /trench

yeah, it fucking blows

i was making images kind of like that for a while and it actually made me physically ill after a while, just the whole process and the way it came out in the end. on the other hand, maybe i just sucked lol

but yeah, it's just like for THAT to be the digital artwork of our time, blehhhhh

like, maybe ian cheng's Emissaries, that would be a candidate for me

it reminds me of that million dollar page website

or just like a big cloud generator website that stamps a giant FREECLOUD.NET watermark all over it. if you zoom in and look at how the individual images fit together in the mosaic, it's just a fucking turd sandwich

It's easy to dunk on the art, but I get that the current art isn't the point at all, it's just proof of concept shit, right? And unfortunately just the tip of the iceberg most likely.

yep

tip of an iceberg trying to melt itself

Isnt this all just an elaborate, digital version of what Marissa whatserface tried to pull 10 years back?

"My art is worth 10K so Im saying it is, pay up"

"My art is worth 10K so Im saying it is, pay up"

― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, March 15, 2021 10:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

hell yeah 😎

https://mintable.app/music/item/GLOTTUSLP1-THEFIRSTGLOTTUSLPSPECIALEDITIONEXCLUSIVEREMASTER/sVa9rL9JkGReJZ4

everyone buy my nft thanks in advance

Shit, forks should put up his video game collection on foundation, they’re probably worth 8 trillion

This is a dumb trend.

(The environmental impact feels specious. The explanations I read about its environmental impact relies on asymptotic models that are completely detached from the realities of “mining--” the basic idea that computation is different (e.g. power consumption and clock-rate trade-offs) on graphics processors or FPGAs than desktop CPUs especially for Etherium's proof of work problem. But you’re all smart so I’m sure there’s something I’m missing!)

Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're "buying" and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon

— Jonty Wareing (@jonty) March 17, 2021

Honestly, I have been trying to come up to speed a little so that I can not “eat shit publicly” so often, and I’m still having trouble identifying trustworthy/informed sources. I’m like a Facebook grandma now, it’s awful.

On the environment/energy impact, I mean. A lot of the most detailed writing about it comes from blockchain advocates, and a lot of blockchain advocates seem like craven monsters. On the enviro side, there are plenty of well-intentioned people grappling with yet another unforced self-own of humanity, they’re exhausted, and there are a lot of basic errors/misunderstandings.

Arguing with blockchain fanatics is exhausting, yes. A lot of the same kind of life-in-a-vacuum thinking that you get from hardcore libertarians and presumably a ton of overlap.

Deep down it does admittedly make me mad that being (I still think) right about blockchain makes me $0 and being wrong about it has made many of them millionaires.

Oh, for sure. When people chant havefunstayingpoor, it is a sad defense to have to say “You don’t have to be rich to have fun”

I mean, I can also say “I look down from my perch at you being a fucking dick” but it doesn’t seem to be working for some reason

Oh well. I have nothing to do with these people. I cannot affect NFTs. I don’t want to make art that gets mistaken for any of this, and I haven’t been for a while. I guess that’s all I need to do.

the whole thing reminds me of the poker ecosystem, where 85% of them claim they're winning players. but the money's gotta be coming from somewhere!

I don’t want to make art that gets mistaken for any of this

also, i understand, "art", digital or otherwise, has nothing to do with NFTs. art is something NFTs can encompass and financially manipulate, but there's no inherent connection between art and NFTs. it'll go away, or it will dominate the world, or a form of it will dominate the world. it seems like it will dominate the world. i am the canary in the cryptogoldmine.

*CHIRP CHIRP*
*THESE GUYS ARE THE ANTITHESIS OF THE ARTFUL SPIRIT, AVOID THEM! CHIRP CHIRP!*

maybe that's the logical end. i'm living in a bunker, 2064. everyone is rich except for the whiny dissidents. i draw a circle on the prison wall by grinding a dull femur from some bag of bones that was there when i first saw the room. i am art man

the whole thing reminds me of the poker ecosystem, where 85% of them claim they're winning players. but the money's gotta be coming from somewhere!

otm

the whole purpose of NFTs for the crypto weirdos is ultimately to funnel money into cryptocurrencies from credulous artists etc. in order to further inflate the bubbles & make them more money

It’s either that or the petrodollar

https://news.artnet.com/opinion/beeple-everydays-review-1951656

69 million, not nice
http://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2021/03/Beeple-its-fun-to-draw-black-people.jpg