The Business of Artistry, Impact: Know Yourself, Know Your Worth

10 min readMar 9, 2021

PEACE.

At the beginning of 2017, I embarked on a journey to understand the value of music.

One day that Spring, while eating a pastrami lox bagel for breakfast with my friend, Jon Tanners, I asked him what he thought Nas’ seminal album Illmatic could be worth as if it were on display in a museum or gallery. I followed this question with an offer to join me in building a platform that would enable creatives in the music industry to determine the value of music. As fans of Hip Hop music and lovers of the culture, we pondered the value of Illmatic. Despite our very different backgrounds, this work of art imbued an almost identical historical meaning to our formative years growing up in NYC. As with all great art, the impact of Illmatic is potentially immeasurable. Yet, it’s worth can almost certainly be understood through data, providing context to answer questions like the one I asked Jon.

Since that morning, we’ve partnered with several people who have enabled us to grow our company CreateSafe into a new music startup.

To date, we’ve launched The Record Deal and Publishing Simulators, the first two features from the CreateOS platform. Internally, we refer to CreateOS as an operating system for the music business: Tools that we believe can become standards to bridge web2.0 into the web3 revolution. These tools will enable us to smoothly transition into a new way of working with technology in the music industry.

How did we get to CreateOS?

In March 2019, we began rolling out our initial product offerings for CreateSafe. We started with Artist Services, our collaboration software-with-a-service product. We developed a system that tracks contacts, deals, tasks, and conversations across a manager’s business to ensure that music was released with success. We worked with DJ Snake, BloodPop®, Grimes, HANA, Take A Daytrip, Tchami, and Y Balloon. We focused on supporting creatives through team communication and collaboration tools and services. Our goal: To bring the power of systematized collaboration to the people.

At CreateSafe, we wanted artists and their teams to ask questions, acquire knowledge, access resources, and build their businesses as they saw fit. We achieved a variety of successes along the way with our products and artist teams. Then we turned our focus to building what the operating system for this type of collaboration could be! It would need to be digital, virtual, and decentralized. A product built for the future of artistry.

After 3 years of R&D, a lot of meditation, and advice from a number of sages, the question at the heart of our present mission statement blossomed from the words of the great Nina Simone: “What role does artistry play in society?”

We believe that artistry is the foundation of human evolution, the key to the expression of the human condition, a way for us to collectively “know thyself.” In artistry, music has the ability to reach and influence the most people, in a cosmic way. As creators, curators, and selectors of music, artists move human bodies as a metaphor for the movement of the celestial bodies. Artists have the power to put people into orbit throughout the solar system of their own lives or cause ripples in time to influence their future.

How the history of music has led us to this moment…

Reflecting on our journey, a few different quotes from my recent reading come to mind:

Back in the day (like thousands of years ago), “Music (or Harmony) meant the living practice of philosophy i.e., the adjustment of human life into harmony with God, until the personal soul became identified with God, when it would hear and participate in the music of the spheres. It was therapeutic, and was used by the Egyptian Priests in the cure of diseases.”

“The Pythagorean’s believed and taught that just as medicine is used to cure the body, so music must be used to cure the soul.”

“The musica universalis (literally universal music), also called music of the spheres or harmony of the spheres, is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies — the Sun, Moon, and planets — as a form of music. This “music” is not thought to be audible, but rather a harmonic, mathematical or religious resonance.”

These quotes make me feel and think deeply about how important music is to me and so many people that I know. How music can affect you in a spiritual way that can be felt viscerally. The feeling of a revolution — the dictionary definition that refers to movement:

Revolution:

The action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course, apparent movement of such a body round the earth, also; a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something; a change of paradigm

This revolution is a new type of movement. A Renaissance movement that will be felt and heard by the people who embrace the technological shifts that lead to liberation. Some of the greatest record labels were built by artists and founded on advanced technological innovations. Columbia, Interscope, RCA, Def Jam, and Atlantic Records to name a few. It’s only natural that the next innovations in music originate from the fastest growing sector of the music industry, the artists who know how to use the creator tools like Splice, Unreal, Discord, TikTok, Zora, and more.

This movement is the creator economy mixed with web3 and the multiverse (or the metaverse). The metaverse is a metaphorical bridge between understanding and engaging in the space between the analog and the virtual. “The metaverse is about owning your keys,” the keys that you can lease to your partners, enabling them to use your art authentically and equitably in those spaces.

Our version of the metaverse is founded upon the need for metadata to be verifiably unique, accessible, and monetize-able. Which is one of the core elements of Art or Artistry being valuable to society.

So if a Revolution is a movement, then our movement is rooted in our 9th Principle. Artist Sovereignty.

Artist sovereignty is the capacity and the ability to shape your world. “The quality or state of being self-governed.” To shape systems around you as you see fit. When creators and business people alike speak of independence, the root of their desire is the ability to assemble the infrastructure that suits their needs without forcing them to compromise their vision.

It “is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision.”

This principle governs the elements of creation as much as creation itself, extending to mental health and wellness, all the way to understanding how contracts work and the evolution of how we interact with them. Artist sovereignty in the new music business means working back from your goals and constructing resilient systems to achieve them.

We believe these resilient systems manifest themselves initially as Smart Agreements.

Currently, there is much talk about how web3 smart contracts can resolve some of the music industry’s issues. Specifically blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs. NFTs for example are inherently smart contracts. These contracts enable art to be deployed, managed, and sold in the metaverse.

What history has potentially shown us, is that the usage of the term “contract” is inherently flawed. The root of the word is to “con,” which effectively presents a scenario whereby people are convinced to enable inequitable rights to be forced upon themselves.

So we are proposing that the Music Industry adopts as a standard, the concept of Smart Agreements.

If the Music industry were to adopt web3 technology, Smart Agreements, and begin to develop computer programs and transaction protocols intended to automatically perform, manage, and document, legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of an agreement, we would collectively be giving back to the future of the new music industry and ensuring that a valuable foundation is built for the metaverse to thrive.

What are Smart Agreements in the CreateOS platform?

Smart Agreements combine financial literacy and autonomy with built-in logic. An evolutionary way of collaborating within the Music industry. Our Smart Agreement Simulators were examples of what our platform can do.

The simulators are features that only address how artists make money working in the music industry, through audio streaming. But there are many other ways to create revenue in the new music industry via streaming performances, web/social product sales, subscription messaging channels, virtual brand endorsements, collectible music, and more. We are building the software services to enable these types of new music businesses to thrive in the creator economy, the virtual layer cake that D.A. Wallach once described.

Our ethos relies on the interdependence of these layers.

Where access, experience and monetization occur.

What we are building today?

We are currently building the CreateOS Wallet. The CreateOS Wallet is your collection of wallet addresses, assets, smart agreements and application access info needed to verify authenticity. It functions as a safe for your digital and virtual assets. It will also enable you to manage your money and financial decisions. A key feature will be the ability to mint NFT Standard Copyrights (aka Compositions or Masters), a first step in creating publicly verifiable music assets post the digital disruption of the early 2000’s. NFT Standard Copyrights point back to our original thesis of how metadata and blockchain could be a solution for valuing music and valuing the impact of artistry. In the words of virtual entrepreneur Mac Boucher, “it adds a layer of authenticity so that digital music assets can be tracked, measured and gamified in exceptionally creative ways that can bridge between the analog world and the virtual.”

CreateOS Standard Copyright Framework Proposal

In the coming months, we will begin to roll-out the beta. Sign up now in order to begin your onboarding process.

Logon now to http://createsafe.io and join the revolution.

How can you skill up right now and go deep in the game?

While you wait to be on-boarded, we recommend that you begin to set up your 1st web3 addresses if you haven’t done so already. You can do this by signing up for a standard wallet, which will get you a bitcoin or ethereum address, etc. Coinbase works well for starters. If you are looking for a more advanced wallet, I’d recommend looking into products like Ledger or Trezor.

Start experimenting with ethereum wallets and how they work in terms of buying, trading and collecting digital assets. MEW, Metamask and Rainbow are good to get your feet wet.

Familiarize yourself with what can be collected as an asset and how to use your new tools and assets. Like setting up an ENS domain. What is an ENS domain? It can simply be one name for all of your cryptocurrencies. You can collect ENS names and perform a number of other features with ENS.

Consider learning protocols for trading cryptocurrency work. Uniswap is a protocol for creating liquidity and trading ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. It eliminates trusted intermediaries and unnecessary forms of rent extraction, allowing for fast, efficient trading. Where it makes trade offs decentralization, censorship resistance, and security are prioritized. Uniswap is open-source software licensed under GPL. The Uniswap protocol empowers developers, liquidity providers and traders to participate in a financial marketplace that is open and accessible to all. It is a growing protocol ecosystem.

Sticking to the world of Ethereum, I would recommend checking out Etherscan. Etherscan is the leading BlockChain Explorer, Search, API and Analytics Platform for Ethereum, a decentralized smart contracts platform. It will enable you to learn about how information is shared on Ethereum blockchain.

While you’re at it, it stake some ETH (or Stack some SATS which would be a baller move, lol). This is only if you possess what some people call disposable income, consult a trusted advisor and are committed to figuring out how to make web3 ecologically sustainable. There is a debate on proof-of-work vs proof-of-stake. What is at the heart of this current revolution is how labor is going to be solved. Proof of work vs proof of stake. Which one of these, will be the more efficient means of creating, deploying, and verifying smart agreements?

Join a community of people devoted to the success of the metaverse. I joined Friends With Benefits (FWB), a tokenized community passionate about web3, virtuality, art and more. Feels akin to the bloghaus era of music a decade ago.

Explore the world of emerging new blockchain technology. Dapper Labs the inventors of the CryptoKitties have developed a new blockchain called Flow. Flow is a blockchain built for the next generation of apps, games, and the digital assets that power them. It’s an exciting new blockchain that platforms like the NBA’s Top Shot operates on. I believe it’s a metaverse blockchain. Very cool.

Join some creator marketplaces and connect your wallet as long as you feel safe. With Zora you can mint and sell NFTs as well as use their protocol to develop on top of. On Clubhouse I heard someone say, “you can re-contextualize your work in any way that you want.” It’s important when using platforms like Zora or any other marketplace to make sure you ensure that you are the owner of the copyright or master assets before proceeding to sell your work.

Last, but not least, consider writing all of the important information about your addresses, phrases and passwords in a paper journal. More specifically Save your exchange and marketplace login information in an offline safe place where you can retrieve it in case of emergency.

You can find me on the web3 internet hanging out at:

https://zora.co/yb7000

https://niftygateway.com/profile/yb7000