Violetta Zironi’s Another Life
Web 3 Exclusive Drop by Leading Degen Singer Songwriter
⌛️ In the past, the levers of the music industry used to be pulled by record companies. Before streaming became the dominant way listeners consume music, it wasn’t uncommon for fans to actively collect the music of their favorite artists in physical form. From sheet music to vinyl records, we were accustomed to buying a format in which the intangible cluster of sound and emotion would be delivered. As evolution would have it, everything began to merge with zeros and ones over time. As RAM and processing power increased, and email conquered fax machines, code collapsed recordings into data. Now everything that can be digitized has been transmuted from a physical thing in the world into an intangible thing, living in a vast and fast network of computers. This transmutation evaporated the value of music when a coder invented the MP3 file format.
🐄 Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
That idiom doesn’t usually fit in the context of music, but my point is that the music industry changed forever. When audio all of a sudden became unpegged to the physical object and could be downloaded for free, there was less incentive for a listener to buy a record. Now the economics of how an artist is paid has been rugged (note to a reader who is not into NFTs, rugged is pronounced rug’d and refers to rug-pulls in crypto, which means a thing is wiped out like FTX customers’ wallets).
🍎️ 10,000 songs in your pocket.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Steve Jobs. You’ve probably heard of him. Besides starting a little computer company, he also had this idea around the era when there was this other thing called a compact disc 💿️, or “CD’s”. Not important. Anyway, his company came out with this product called an “iPod”, which was this thing that played MP3’s. The big idea was that it held 10,000 songs in your pocket. The software under the hood was called “iTunes”. Somehow, Steve Jobs worked out a deal with record companies where they would sell songs for 99¢ this way. Not to mention a platform which existed, before iTunes and DSP’s on this timeline, known as Napster. Conspicuously stealing from music makers by enabling free downloads, Napster was shut down. Still, there was a void in the marketplace to solve this problem. This is the part of the story where the race to the bottom accelerates. Now, no one has to buy songs.
︎ A few years later, a company named Spotify started competing with iTunes (AKA Apple Music). With streaming providers like Spotify, listeners can listen to any song for free with ads or pay to make the annoying ads go away. Do you know who suffers financially from all this? The record executives. Just kidding no one cares about them anymore. The musicians get paid jack squat from all this, which equates to an average per-play payout between 0.003¢ to 0.005¢ for a rights-holder. This is not intended as criticism of Spotify or anyone shipping music to fans. 70% of Spotify’s revenue is paid to the music makers. The problem is that music in general has been devalued by market forces.
︎ All that to say welcome to another life, where artists have the power thanks to digital ownership. In the same way the internet ushered in a new era, so has blockchain technology and NFTs.
©2023 Violetta Zironi
︎ Violetta Zironi Enters The Chat
🐻 The fact that we’re currently in a bear market is not slowing down music NFTs. The reason for the file format discourse at the top of this article is to position non-fungible-tokens-attached-to-music as the new file format which restores value to music again. By the way, vinyl records are still a thing. In fact, they are included in the utility of music NFTs – bypassing DSPs entirely in some cases. One of those case studies is the upcoming drop from Violetta Zironi.
OpenSea has for the first time, partnered with an independent singer-songwriter. Starting February 17, collectors will have access to her PFP+Music NFT Collection, Another Life. This 5 song collection is exclusive to Web 3 and will not be available on DSPs. There are 5200 PFPs (Inspired by Violetta and illustrated by Italian artist Arianna Rea - Disney, Marvel, DC) connected to the songs. Through the unique gamification of frame collection, holders qualify for free airdrops, weekly virtual shows, discounted or free vinyl records and prints of the artworks, free access to live concerts and even the opportunity to book Violetta for an in-person live performance.
⚠️️ The problem with most music NFT projects is that the quality of music is secondary to geeking out on the technology. Not this time. Unlike fast and cheap auto-tuned pop hopefulls rapping over YouTube-sourced beats, Violetta is a phenomenal singer who writes timeless songs and records them on analogue tape machines from the 1950’s. All substance and no filler, she demonstrates Rocky Balboa montage levels of determination, investing countless hours connecting with her community and singing her songs live in Twitter Spaces.
Violetta has earned her position at the top, but is hardly alone. Artists including country singer Sammy Arriaga, indie-rocker Rae Isla, and indie-folk singer Emma Miller are also treading new ground for the rest of us. The scene is actually really pumping, and there are a lot more who will prove to be the next generation of top-tier artists choosing Web 3 over Web 2. Gradually, digital ownership will encompass more of our lives in ways impossible to predict, but easy to foresee. Another Life by Violetta Zironi is only the beginning of this movement towards artist sovereignty.
︎Follow Violetta on Twitter
︎ Collect Another Life by Violetta Zironi on OpenSea
Originally published Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. Updated Thursday, Feb 9 2023