Music and the Metaverse: Lucas Wilson and Jon talk about live performance, concerts, NFTs and more

Guest: I can be a musician, I can release a performance, whether it's an audio, just an audio performance or an audio visual performance. I can say that there's only 100 of these recordings in the world, right? That are cryptographically stamped and these are my recordings, there's only 100 of them. And I can sell that and then those can be resold over and over again through the perception of a, through the collector mindset and the collector mentality. And I am generating revenue for myself every time that changes hands. And that's, that's amazing.

Unknown: In this episode of Building the Metaverse, Jon Radoff sits down with Lucas Wilson, the

Guest: founder and CEO of SuperSphere, a full stack VR rights, technology and delivery company. They focus on connecting fans with the things they love through the medium of immersive entertainment. And some of their recent and projects include live VR broadcasts with Billy Eilish, Post Malone and Kid Cutty. Let's jump into this fireside chat.

Jon Radoff: Alright, Lucas, thanks for joining me on Building the Metaverse. This is really exciting because music is one of my favorite things. I know it's probably your favorite thing. And I think there are so many interesting things that we can talk about with respect to music. So I'm just going to give a quick preview of some of the stuff for people that are just sitting down and watching this video. You're going to learn a lot through this. And there's a little bit of something for everyone here because we're going to talk about how NFTs around music and what's happening in that scene and some of the crazy stuff like board apes and grimes are doing with NFTs and AI. We can talk about the live music experience and how that's going to evolve. We can talk about VR, which is a real specialty of what Lucas has been working on with respect to music. We can talk about AI around music composition. We can talk about the experiential aspect of what it might be like to actually visit concerts in the future as well as some of the things that people have already done. Music is going to be an absolutely massive part of this thing we call the Metaverse. So you know, stick with us here. We're going to cover all that and probably a bunch of things that Lucas will bring in that I didn't think of. So Lucas, you know, the reason I asked you to be here other than that I've gotten to know you on Clubhouse over the last few months and just really enjoy all the things you add to our conversations about music and otherwise by the way, VR, AI, Metaverse, NFTs. So a few weeks ago I had a conversation with Raff Costa, who's a brilliant MMORPG pioneer virtual worlds guy and we talked about the subject of music and he brought up this idea of, you know, maybe the Metaverse is this continuum of like pay-per-view and we kind of have music in the Metaverse already. I'm not doing his words justice. We talked about that a little bit more recently and you made something that I thought was just a great observation. What did you say? You said something about the conversation between the performer and the audience and you really drew a distinction between that live experience and like pay-per-view or watching a movie. What bring me back to that because I'd love to start there.

Guest: Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on in this conversation and I just wanted to give a shout out to Clubhouse as well. There are apps that come and go and there are networks that come and go and Clubhouse has been one of those rare moments where an app has come that has genuinely changed how I interact and how I meet people and how I deal with people. It's been really wonderful. So I have also deeply enjoyed the chats and the communities that you've set up so I love it.

Unknown: Going back to that conversation, I've been playing classical pianos since I was five

Guest: years old. Music and technology have always been the two greatest loves in my life. As I got older, as I got older, I got synthesizers and I actually have a degree in music synthesis which arguably, I would put it up there pretty high as one of the more useless degrees on the planet. You don't get a lot of jobs saying, you're going to college. I have a dual degree in music synthesis and music production and engineering. Everybody goes, okay. Anyway, but music has always been, music is fundamentally in culture, in society, through the ages, music is fundamentally a conversation. It's a social conversation of someone who has an idea to express that they don't express in language, that they express in some other way and the response between that expression and the audience who's consuming that expression. Anything I keep my eye, as I constantly scan the horizon for new and cool technology, I keep my eye, anything that can increase the connection between a performer and the audience or between a fan and the thing that they love. When virtual reality sort of made, it's second, when it had it's second renaissance, six, five, six years ago when it first started, I thought, hey, virtual reality has been around for a long time. At this time, I think that all the pieces are in place, that it actually has a chance to hit the consumer electronic curve, the distribution curve, network speeds, all these things sort of came together to create an environment in which something beyond just staring at your screen was able to happen. And I'm not so much a virtual reality diehard as I am, I like VR. I mean, I got a headset back here and I spend a lot of time in VR, but I'm much more interested in something that increases the connection between music, especially between a listener and the performer. And that in the metaverse and all the different metaverse apps that are out there are revolutionizing how a performer and how an audience interact and how they gain something from each other. I think that was a very long answer to a short question, but I think I might have covered

Jon Radoff: it. Yeah, I think the key there is that conversation that's happening between the artist and the audience and that is a much different experience than listening to a recording, watching a video of a concert, which are perfectly great experiences. It's nothing to take away from the artistry that goes into a recording, for example, but this is a different kind of experience that happens in a live environment. And that I think is really interesting to think about with respect to the metaverse, because to me, the metaverse is this next generation of the internet, which is really geared towards that live interaction, live activities that we're doing. It's the real time nature of it that I think defines a lot of these new kinds of applications. And that we have to think about, like, as we bring VR and virtual worlds and AR and things like that into it, it's not just being injected into a world and getting to explore it or adding information even to our world, kind of the purpose of they are, it's the interactive aspect. It's the fact that it's live. And that, to me, is sort of interesting. So, like, let's maybe bookmark that thought for a moment. We can talk about some of the stuff that's already happened. So if you're watching this and you're learning about music in the metaverse for the first time, we should talk about the scale of some of what's happened already. And it's not necessarily what we were just talking about. I want to go back to the future in a moment.

Unknown: But like, if we look at some of these concerts in Fortnite and Roblox, like we're talking,

Jon Radoff: 40 million plus people.

Unknown: Yes.

Jon Radoff: That's a lot of people.

Guest: Roblox, the major metaverse apps right now, I would say are probably Roblox, Minecraft, VR chat, Horizon and Rec Room. Those are probably the big ones right now. And each one of them has their own ecosystem. And each one of them is making their own moves in how music plays in those ecosystems. And one question I get a lot, I'm sure you get all the time is, especially now, is what is the metaverse, what defines a metaverse, and all the beyond all the hype, what defines this new kind of experience. And I think this is global, but this is especially important music, is that if you haven't already read it, go to MatthewBall.vc and take a minute, take an hour to read his metaverse primaries and nine part series, that's an extraordinary explanation of the metaverse that people should read if they're interested in it. That and Tony Perisi's seven steps in the metaverse, both wonderful things. But in MatthewBall's article in his series of papers, he draws a very clear line of web, Web 1.0 was the first iteration of the web is desktop based. You were sitting somewhere and you were looking at data and you were accessing connectivity by sitting here on a computer. Web 2.0 or the next generation of the internet was mobile. Next generation of the internet was that you were able to take your data with you and be able to access it anywhere you were and then you also added location-based experiences to your data. So your data was able to be geotagged and you were able to interact in a meaningful way based upon your position and space and time. And Web 3, which is really the third generation of the internet as opposed to Web 3, which is a different thing, is that now you are not just looking at data, you are in the data. You are now you now have a physical presence in the internet and your physical presence interacts with data and interacts with other people around you that have a physical presence. So to me, what distinguishes metaverse apps and what distinguishes metaverse platforms is the fact that you have an avatar of some kind and you have a physical incarnation of some kind that is interacting with other people that are in that world and then all of you are collectively as a social group, listening to music and starting to have that same conversation between the performer and the audience that is so crucial to the music experience and to the live music experience. So the, you know, and Roblox and all of these metaverse apps are walled gardens right now. That's okay. For me, it is, for me, it feels like we are in the Lumiere Brothers days of the metaverse. It's like you are in Paris in the 1900s and you are walking down the sidewalk and there is a metal canister there with slits in it and you spin it around and you look in and there is a moving picture and you are amazed at this new technology, right? That is where we are right now at the metaverse. And it is very analogous to the early days of the modern internet where you had, you know, Xerox Park and USC and you had all these islands of knowledge and before really DNS and TCP IP and HTTP before it standards emerge to connect those areas of knowledge, you have these islands. And that is where we are right now, right? Roblox, Horizon, Recrum, VRChat, there are all these islands of communities. And the next big thing that will happen is that you are going to start to connect these islands. The HTTP and TCP IP of the metaverse will start to emerge and these islands will start to connect and that will be, I think, an incredibly explosive moment for anybody who enjoys the metaverse and also for my particular selfish interest for music and for music experiences and for music communication in the metaverse. Once again, I think I have answered a short question with a very long answer.

Jon Radoff: Well, I mean, I think that's really helpful because, you know, this may be the first time to people are even coming across this concept. They've heard about metaverse. They're wondering what the hype is. And there is this future that's sitting out there where we interact with each other in real time. There's a social aspect to it. Music, of course, is social, right? So you just hit on a really important aspect of it, which is that conversation between the artist and the audience, but also the fact that there's that community that's there and they're present with each other as well. Because I think for any of us who've been to concerts, like we know the power of that experience, the power of being part of a whole group of people who are experiencing things at the same time, you know, as a community and then also with my local group of friends,

Unknown: my social sphere.

Guest: The interesting thing about the social interaction in metaverse apps right now is that, and I encourage everybody, I encourage everybody that if you're looking at the metaverse apps right now and you're seeing all these little funky looking, very primitive looking avatars and you're like, that's silly. I'm not going to do that. I'd encourage you to get over that and to try it because I'm a 51 year old guy, right? I'm a 51 year old white guy. Because why would I be screwing around with the headset and little avatars in a social app? That sounds like something that's for kids, right? And it is. It's for kids.

Unknown: But the interesting thing, I had a big aha moment when we first started working with Facebook

Guest: now meta. My company does a lot of work with Facebook. Meta, I'm still changing that stuff in my brain.

Jon Radoff: It's all the same.

Guest: That's fine. We're respectful of the company wanting to change its name, but I've been calling it Facebook for a long time.

Unknown: It'll take a while.

Guest: So when venues, which is Facebook's metaverse platform for live experiences, and we've done a lot of work in venues, when venues first launched a couple of years ago, and we went into, when I first looked at the platform and I was seeing the screenshots before it really launched, I was like, well, that's goofy. Why the hell would anybody do that?

Unknown: I was like, but hey, it's a gig.

Guest: It's a good opportunity. Let's march down. Let's march down the road and see what happens, right? And the first time I put on a headset and went into venues and joined other people in venues and joined other people watching something. And at that time, we were still in beta. We had not launched the first music show in venues yet. We, SuperSphere, our company did the very first music show in venues. We spent July a couple of years together and we were watching test streams with people internally at Facebook.

Unknown: And I had the ah-ha moment of, this is a social experience, right?

Guest: This says, the avatars are secondary. And the avatars technology for Avatar creation will continue to grow and that will continue to evolve, and that will be fine. This is a social experience. And that, of course, made sense and resonated immediately with ah-ha, okay, Facebook, of course, it's a social experience. And then when we first started doing shows and we first started streaming into metaverse platforms and then we've streamed into several now. If you are, if you a, if you have a headset, if you have a quest, right, if you have one of these and you are going into a specific app at a specific time to see a specific band, you're a super fan. Um, you're like, you're, you just are, right? You're a super fan. You have, you are in an elite qualification of fan for that experience, whether you're a fan of the technology or whether you're a fan of the artist or both. You're a super fan. And if you're a super fan, you're siphoned to be there. And it's, it's the weirdest thing. But it makes sense. As a social psychology standpoint, when you step into that audience and everybody's there waiting for the show to come on. You have that same, you get that same sort of personal response, you get that same sort of feeling when you go into a live venue and, and everybody's there kind of buzzing and waiting for the lights to go down and waiting for the band to come on. Obviously you don't have, you don't have the smells. You don't have the same sort of electricity in some ways that you do in a, in a live show. But you, you recapture a lot of that excitement and a lot of that feeling. And when the lights go down and the band comes on, all the avatars throw up their hands and it's, and it's at the same time, it's silly and it's exciting. Because you see people jumping up and down, you hear the voices of people singing and you find yourself caught up in the experience. You find yourself doing the same things. And it's awesome. It's, it's, it's, it's music and it's experiencing music in a way that people have it experienced it before and it's connecting fans in a new way. And it's also opening up the avenue, it's opening up avenues to see and experience music to people who, for whatever reason, can't get to the live venue. Either they don't live in the same city or they have a disability, which prevents them from, from going to, that physically going to a live venue or they have a disability in which whether it's neurodiversity or they have a disability that, that the social component of being in all people in processing all those different emotions simultaneously is too hard and too overwhelming. It opens up a world for people, for other people to experience live music and it's, that for me is incredibly exciting.

Jon Radoff: Yeah, it opens up to a lot more people and it also lets us rethink the whole live experience too and what I think would be a more abundant fashion, something I've mentioned before is just sort of like the reality that a concert venue is a piece of real estate. So you're stuck with the realities of three-dimensional physical space that we're in. In the Metaverse, you actually can rethink that all over again. It does have to be front row seats as rival goods to each other. In fact, you could even integrate the audience into the musical experience. You could have them on the stage, like really, you do it any way you want. Like it seems like something people can experiment with quite extensively and it's not going to just be limited to the kind of like the VR version of the concert experience that some of us are already familiar with. I'm curious though, like how are you work with some of the most amazing artists in the

Unknown: world?

Jon Radoff: You should talk a little bit about that, but particularly I'm curious, like what are the artists telling you? How are they approaching this as a new form of bringing their music to their audience?

Unknown: Sure.

Guest: Yeah, and as you've mentioned, we've worked with, we've done more than 200 shows over the past several years when we've worked with everybody from emerging artists in small venues to solo arenas with Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Offset, Young Thug, Kid Cudi, and a public carton in sort of a list of music. Some of those? Legends. Yeah, some of those. In general, there are, just like there isn't society, I mean, there's a segment of musicians that are geeks, and I think the vent diagram of geeks and musicians is pretty large. So a lot of musicians, a lot of musicians that we deal with are already very familiar with VR, a lot of them already have headsets, a lot of them are already doing stuff, right? We worked with Young Thug about a year ago, and that dude is a hardcore geek. He is, he was pennies, and he's frid and sharp. I mean, we showed him, he was new to VR at the time, but we showed him, we showed him a headset, we showed him a headset, and showed him a couple of ideas, and then he was like, I got this. Y'all step away, I got this. And we were like, okay. And sure enough, 24 or 48 hours later, he came up with an experience that we never would have thought of. Well, that's why you're, that's why you're a highly paid artist, and I'm not. Right? It was, so the artist in general, if they're not familiar with it, we typically give artists a headset that we work with because we want them to be familiar with the experience. And once they see it, I can say this, I can say this honestly that every single artist that we work with, once they see it, and once we show them the work that we do, they're like, I get it. Okay, cool. And then they want to get into it, and then they want to figure out, okay, how do I connect to people in this new way? Because for them, it expands the audience, right? They fundamentally got into the music industry because they want to communicate. They want to, they want to spread their art and their music to an audience. And they, and this is a new way of communicating, and some of them, some of them go deep. And so in general, artists and musicians love it. They just see it as a new way of, as a new way to communicate, and a new way to reach

Unknown: out to fans.

Guest: Some of them are, there are some artists that have a very antagonistic stand to anything that's not a live in-person communication. You know, Father John Mesty pretty famously calls out Oculus in one of his, in one of his songs. And, you know, there are some artists that really don't like the aspect of separation. But in general, I'd say that's a very, that's a very niche group of artists.

Jon Radoff: So when we talk about separation, let's, let's talk about that for a moment, because I think some people envision a future where people could even play music together, right? Like who are coming in to the metaverse from lots of remote locations. There's some hard tech problems with that, right?

Guest: There are. I mean, the, you, until somebody, until somebody comes out and wins a new Nobel Prize, you

Unknown: can't get around the speed of light.

Guest: Late, late, late, late in seeing lag are, are network issues wherever you go and whatever platform you're on or whatever you're doing. It's eventually going down the same waters. And we've dealt quite a bit pretty extensively with, with performance and with audience, audience and performer interaction and dealing pretty deep with latency and lag issues. And there's only, honestly, there's only so much you can do. At a certain point, you have your, you can get it down to, you know, a second or two, a second or two of latency, maybe less. If you're on a very specialized platform on dark fiber, you can get down to very minimal latency. But doing synchronized performance across the, across the internet is, is very hard. If you're doing true live synchronized performance, it's very hard. And it requires a pretty skilled set of musicians that can, that can almost ignore the lag and, and keep playing. Because even in, if you're using a, jamulous, jam pizam, there's, there's a couple of different platforms out there for, for doing it. You're always going to get a tiny bit of lag and it requires you, it's really very, very simple. Anybody can test it on zoom, on Google or whatever. All you have to do is say, okay, count with me. One, two, three, four, one. And, and have the other person join in and you'll very quickly discover how big the lag

Unknown: is on your system.

Guest: And it requires musicians to keep play. If they're going to do a synchronized performance, it requires them to mentally keep playing and not slow down because they're listening to, they're listening to what happened a beat or two ago, which is, which can be done, but it's very difficult. In the sort of as a, as a complete tangent, in the classical music world, church organists are, are masters of, of that particular kind of playing. And it's, and it next time, if you ever go see an organ concert, think about this. The church organist hits a key. There's a mechanical and electrical apparatus that has to, that has to, that has to, that has to power a wind column to then go up a pipe and make a note. That process of hitting that key to hearing the note from the wind column can sometimes take up to a quarter second. And if you're playing like a fast, bar piece or you're playing a fast Baroque piece, which is, which is, there's a ton of Baroque music for the organ. A church organist or a classical organist is playing, you should be a measure ahead of what they're hearing. And it's, it's, I sat down at a couple of church organs and tried to do that. And it is extraordinarily difficult because you have to completely separate what your fingers are doing from what you're hearing. The performance has to be in your brain and you can't pay attention to what you're listening to. It's extraordinary. But the same sort of thing exists in doing a synchronized performance. And if, and that same sort of thing, that same sort of challenge exists when you're dealing with the interaction between the performer and the audience, because there's always going to be a little bit of a lag.

Jon Radoff: And if the lag is small, I'm going to want a head bang. And it's really me that it sounds like it's going to need to be an AI that sticks that

Unknown: animation for me.

Guest: So one thing, the interesting thing is that as long as the audience is listening to a synchronized experience, then the audience can all head bang and bob and do stuff in unison. And the data that needs to be transmitted to see your mates, your people in the space, doing actions and motions, your brain is much more forgiving of that lag than the lag and sort of live performance and live listening. If the lag is low enough, then you can have a genuine interaction between the performer and the audience. You know, hello, Cleveland, what's up? If there's a second or two of delay, you know, between a performer saying that and the audience went, woo, that's okay. 30 to 40 to 50 seconds of lag and delay, which is typical in a, in a produced live broadcast, a lot is acceptable.

Unknown: Okay.

Jon Radoff: So it sounds like we have a little bit of latitude with audience kind of engagement around the live interaction between the audience and the performer. Maybe there will be some ultra skilled performers like church organists. I'd never even occurred to me and makes complete sense now that I understand it. And I'm thinking through the whole electro mechanical process of just how organs work. So maybe we'll have some people that specialize in being able to do that. But it sounds like jam sessions where I just meet people in a random location. That's going to take a while or maybe V and A.I. I'm looking for.

Guest: Well, there is, but there are, there are companies that are coming up with clever ways of enabling live performance without relying on exact live interaction. There's a company called Endless, which is Endless with three S's at the end. Endless.fm. Has a really cool program that's available on iOS and it's available on mobile and on desktop that is based on people listening to loops. People listening to, they're listening to an ongoing stream and it's looped and you have a loop that you can, you can interact and play with the loop locally. And then you can publish it to the master sequence that everybody's listening to. So you can still interact as a musician and play locally and jam and come up with something that you like and then publish it into the stream where everybody else then listens to it the next time around. And then they can download that and interact with it. So it's a very clever way of getting, of still feeling like you're part of a live jam experience while getting around the latency and lag issues that you really can't get

Unknown: around.

Guest: Because it's just a speed of light thing.

Jon Radoff: Yeah, no, that's really cool though because that just suggests like there's going to be a lot of creativity around this. There's going to be new ways of interacting live where you can be a music creator and there will be a live aspect to it, but maybe not exactly what we're used to from all aspects of the real world. Yeah.

Guest: And you mentioned AI and some of the tools that are coming out in terms of how you deal with audio analysis and how you translate that into various other segments of data that can enable the live performance. And I think you're going to see a lot of companies and a lot of creativity come up around that. I mean, if you're playing a very simple example is that if a piece of music is playing and it's at 115 beats per minute, well, if it's at 115 BPM, then there can be a system that can understand, that can listen to that, analyze the BPM, understand what kind of music it is, and then can actually sort of prime the audience mechanics to respond to that kind of music. So maybe you're doing your own individual dancing or what have you, but all the avatars are sort of pulsing and moving at a baseline to that certain beat that is the music. So you still get the, you get a feeling of synchronous behavior while still having an individual layer on top of it. And that's just one example off the top of my head. There's a million others and a lot of smart people thinking about it.

Jon Radoff: Yeah. Okay. So we've covered like some of the VR aspects of this, the concert experience, some of these new forms of creativity. Let's return back to the artists for a moment because there's some other stuff that isn't exactly music, but it's around music happening with like blockchain and AI, like just recently like two stories that spring to mind, like I guess Grimes is going to be converting herself to an AI over time. She's going to have an AI, Girlband or something. And then the craziest thing I saw recently, crazy, I think in kind of a really interesting way is, the apes were just signed to like form a band.

Unknown: It was Unis.

Jon Radoff: Yeah, King's show. Exactly. So like NFTs of 48. Bingo. Yeah. Bingo. It's your first person to say NFT.

Unknown: I was waiting for that. All right.

Jon Radoff: We don't shy away from NFTs on this series.

Guest: No, it's, you know, why should people care about NFTs with respect to music and what

Jon Radoff: is all this stuff that's going on with like board apes?

Guest: All right. Okay. Deep breath.

Unknown: Sip of tea. Okay.

Guest: So as, and I'm sure you experienced the same thing as a founder, right? Whenever any big wave of new technology hits your landscape, right? Whenever it enters into the fringes or smacks you in the face, you can at a personal level, you can be like, oh, cool, shiny new object. Let's go play, right? At a professional level, you have to sort of look at that wave of technology and try to understand what parts of it you need to pay attention to and what parts of it you need to incorporate into what you're doing and what parts of it you, you need to ignore because it's not core to what you do and what parts of it are just annoying shiny objects,

Unknown: right?

Guest: And with blockchain and NFT, with block with the blockchain world and the NFT world, I went through that same personal process over the past year or so of looking at it and diving into it and understanding what, what blockchains, what, what value blockchain technology can bring to what we do and then what value NFTs on top of that can bring to what we do. And I came to the block, the advantages for blockchain based distribution and blockchain involvement in the music industry is huge. There's no shortage. That's an entire other hour long discussion. We did our first blockchain streamed concert with NFT drops on the Aluvio platform last week with the band Angels and Airwaves, Tom Belong and Angels and Airwaves. It was fantastic. The Aluvio platform actually is a wonderful tool in that it is. The streaming quality is extraordinary and the way that they've integrated NFT experiences into a blockchain based stream and enabled an audience to participate is really nice. One of the first solid professional attempts I've seen at that in the industry.

Unknown: But the reason why NFTs matter to the music industry is because first of all, I'll try

Guest: to spend just a couple of minutes on this and raise your hand and stop me if I'm going

Unknown: to point to the weeds.

Guest: So NFTs are essentially, I'll do a tiny bit of explanation before I go into music for people that are listening and are interested. NFTs are essentially for right now, they do a lot of other things. But think of them at a starting level as a collector economy. Think of them as the phrase digital baseball cards has been thrown out a lot and there is some truth to that in that it's the psychology of the collector. If you've ever been a collector of anything, stamps, coins, ticket stubs, match boxes, cars, whatever, it doesn't matter. If you've ever had a collector's mindset, then you understand scarcity and you understand rarity and you understand going after certain things in your specific bubble of collection and you understand why that's valuable to you and why that's valuable to other people

Unknown: in your community.

Guest: That's the collector's psychology and mindset. Something that may be worth $900,000 to you, just into your community and you may be able to sell it for $900,000, the world at large may look at that and go, why would I pay $5 for that? It doesn't matter because it has value within your community. That has existed forever in the physical world and in physical marketplaces. Cars, knives, I'm thinking of stuff that I like. Cars, knives, the prodo end of the size of the cameras.

Jon Radoff: We got the whole prodo NFT with Wu-Tang Clan. Right. The Martin Schlipply collectible, I guess he had to sell it off now. By the way, I mean NFTs, we'll put something up in the corner because I had to talk with James Zhang recently who's got a whole company built around digital art concept. Concept, our house. We'll throw a link up in that so you can go check out that as well if you want to deep background in NFTs. We covered a lot of that stuff. Sorry, cut you off.

Guest: I'm sorry and I won't go too much further into it. The thing is that once you understand the collector mindset, then the thing that I personally needed to wait for and need to convince myself was, okay, that's physical collection,

Unknown: physical scarcity.

Guest: In the culture at large, in the cultural zeitgeist at large, does the concept of digital

Unknown: scarcity have value?

Guest: Do people care about digital scarcity? If I say that I have a cryptographically secure one-of-one piece and it only exists in the digital realm, does the culture attach value to that? Do people attach value to that? The same way that they do a physical artwork. If I have a 1-of-one, is that have the same value to me and to other people as a canvas with paintings of flowers from an old dead Dutch guy? So I was waiting and the answer, at least in this initial stage of the hyper-benefit is a resounding yes. And the board apes are a great example of that. You may think that the board aged silly, you may think, why would anybody want to buy some? Why would anybody buy something like that? I think whatever you want. But the point is, is that it has reached a cultural milestone that it is collectible and people value it as collectible and people want it. Post Malone, Steve Aoki, Jimmy Fallon. I forgot which Kardashian, but one of the Kardashians, right? There's cultural touchstones are now all buying old apes and have created this aura of collectivity and scarcity around them that people now want them and that it matters. And once you see that start to happen, you're like, okay, that matters. Great. So NFTs, so you've gone from the collector mindset to crossing the line to being a digital collector and having that matter. Why does it now matter to the music industry? A couple of things. Is that number one? Now think about that as once you have the background of a physical collector and a digital collector, now apply that to music merchandise. Apply that to digital merch and music merchandise. I'm just a digital version.

Jon Radoff: This isn't like the digital hologram I'm actually wearing.

Guest: Like your set, like your set t-shirt or I'm going to reach over here. I'm going to step out of frame for a minute and I'm going to over here and pull out my favorite things. Just mine, I got this a couple of months ago 180 grand pressing of RUN of RGGA 4, RUN the Jules 4, right? There aren't that many of these, aren't that many of these albums and this matters to me, right? If I had a cryptographically secure digital version of that, then that matters to me. I'm a collector, right? So digital merchandise number one is a huge avenue. Number two, I think the most revolutionary thing for the music industry is the concept of the smart contract and how NFTs are built into smart contracts because traditionally for artists, I have a thing.

Unknown: I sell the thing and that's it.

Guest: Then I sell the thing and I lose track of it and I no longer have any hold of that and I no longer have any way to track that and I no longer have any way to make money from that. The concept of the smart contract for the first time ever that I can think of creates the concept of passive revenue generation and generational wealth for musicians and for artists. I can, if it is up to me to create a community for my, the dynamics of creating a community and being an artist have not changed, right? I still have to generate something of value and I still have to convince people through my artwork and through my music that is valuable and that they want it. And I still have the building community of people that want my thing, right? And I want to listen to my thing. But once I've done that, then I can release something that has value. People can buy it and the way a smart contract works is that I receive money from that initial transaction, but I can put a piece into smart contract that says every time that this is resold anywhere, I receive a small percentage of that secondary tertiary transaction forever. As that thing winds its way through blockchains and through the internet, I am making money from that, from that piece of content. And now if you think about an artist, that is a professional artist, a professional musician that's constantly generating content, constantly generating community, constantly building that community and everything they put out there is blockchain based and NFT based, and you are creating a wealth of content that has a passive revenue generation stream for musicians and artists. And that is extraordinary. Right, because it's not recording anymore, right?

Jon Radoff: It is the performance and other than certain artists, like recording is really decreased as a source of revenue for a lot of these artists.

Guest: Right, and I can be a musician. I can release a performance, whether it's an audio, just an audio performance or an audio visual performance. I can say that there's only 100 of these recordings in the world, right, that are cryptographically stamped and these are my recordings, there's only 100 of them. And I can sell that and then those can be resold over and over again through the perception of a collector mindset and the collector mentality. And I am generating revenue for myself every time that changes hands. And that's amazing. I mean, you know, if I have, it's the equivalent of, I have the sell. I paid, I forgot how much I paid for the sell. It kind of doesn't matter to me because I'm a fan and I wanted it and all the way through it. I was like, however much it was, I had enough money in my bank account and I paid for it. Right.

Unknown: And but now I can take this.

Guest: I no longer want it. I can take it and go sell it. I can take it to a record store and go sell it. Run the jewels. Run the jewels. Doesn't make any money from this. If I sell it, if this is an NFT and I sell it because I don't want it anymore, run the jewels. It continues to make money from it. And that's, that's a big deal.

Jon Radoff: Yeah. So we just looked at it through the lens of the artist and also kind of the collector. There's other reasons that like a shirt like this, for example, is valuable to someone. So as I think through it, like I'm thinking back to when I got it. So fortunately, I'm not quite old enough to have been to a Led Zeppelin concert. But I went to the Rock & Roll Museum in Seattle and they had the shirts there. And it's like, okay, I want to get this shirt for a couple of reasons. One is I'm a fan. And when I wear this shirt, I want to be identified as a Zeppelin fan. And that'll be a great conversation to start with people. And it's about personal expression, I think. And then another aspect is the story of it. Like as I wear this shirt, I'm remembering the time I visited the museum and the stuff that I did there and the fun that I had and the group that I was with. So I think an additional tool that some of you watching might want to bring into your tool chest of the metaverse about how to approach these things is also just how valuable personal expression has become through our digital presentation over the last couple of decades. Games and online world social networks. I think that's trained all of us to try to in sconce ourselves in a bunch of things that say things about who we are, what we're interested in. And what could be more powerful than going to the virtual merch table at the concert that you actually attended in the metaverse. And then you walk away with something that's interoperable and you wear, T-shirt is kind of an example, but there will be way more creative like versions of it. So you can get tattooed with it. Like you could have an animation. Like, well, it reflects on my personal expression.

Guest: And another thing that I think that professionals in the space, that adult professionals in the space need to keep in mind is that there's a huge generational mindset shift as well in terms of in terms of digital, analog creation, digital creation, analog worth and digital worth. I grew up, you know, I grew up when I was a teenager and when I was in college, I grew up in an analog world. Right? The internet was just starting to hit when I was in college. And moans were just starting to be a tool for the wealthy when I was in college. Right? That's my formative experience. My formative experience in terms of being a fan and being a collector's analog. My kids formative experience in being a fan and being a collector's digital. And for them, the worth of something digital and the worth of something analog, depending on the asset, depending on what they have, it's fungible. It goes back and forth. I have a story that I've told a couple of times that I love as an illustrative example. We did a show with Billie Eilish. And, you know, I, one of my friend's daughters is in the running, it's stiff competition, but she's in the running for biggest Billie Eilish world's biggest Billie Eilish fan. Right? It's stiff competition. She's in the running. And I made sure that, you know, I told my buddy and made sure that she was in the show and got to see the O's of Virtual Reality broadcast, made sure she got to see the show.

Unknown: And she was, my buddy told me this the next day.

Guest: He and I talked about it for a while. She was the cool kid at school the next day because she went and saw Billie Eilish show in VR. And in her brain, the first show that she went to see was Billie Eilish. And kids came up to her and talked to her about the show and wanted to know about it. She was, everybody's had this experience of being the cool kid or seeing the cool kid. You were in the concert. We were at the show.

Jon Radoff: You were at the show.

Guest: She was at the school the next day. She was at the show and she was the cool kid. Right? And I was like, well, how about that? And that's a generational, that's a huge generational shift and generational mindset shift. So everybody that's that has any kind of gray in their in their hair needs to think about that. It needs to think about how you approach digital and how your kids approach digital. How the next generational approach digital. When you think about NFTs, when you think about blockchain, when you think about digital collectibles, you may look at the board. You may look at the board apes and go, are you fucking kidding me? Why am I going to pay? I'm going to pay what for that? Are you are you high? But your but your kids are thinking differently about it. In the generation. Yeah, you can give them that reaction.

Jon Radoff: They're not understanding how important digital identity, digital expression and also as you are pointing out, digital experience. I actually don't like to talk about like real versus virtual.

Unknown: I like to talk about virtual versus physical.

Jon Radoff: Because I think they're both equally real from an experience from from a relationship standpoint, everything else.

Guest: I almost, you know, it's funny. I've struggled with the wording for that. Because physical versus virtual doesn't work for me either. Because I am still having a physical experience. Right? And so this is imperfect. But I've cycled between lots of different ways of expressing that. And in person versus remote, I think is the closest I can come to it. Because that sort of communicates the fundamental of, am I having an experience where I am connected in the same physical location to a performer or am I remote from the performer? And that to me is, and then that's sort of the foundation. And then from there I can build the technology of, okay, how am I experiencing this? Is this the YouTube stream of the R stream?

Unknown: And my what's going on?

Guest: Right? So anyway. Yeah. But, you know, and also I would venture to say for everybody who's, who's, who's an NFT, denier or NFT naysayer, I would, I would venture to say, think about this. Everybody here that's watching this is already a digital collector. You just don't know it. You take pictures on your phone and share them. You, do you share memes? Do you collect memes? When you see something funny on the internet, you stick it in a folder. And then do you have a friend group that like, you're the person that, that shares a specific type of meme and is known for sharing the funny things? You're a collector. You already have, are a digital collector. And you already have things in your possession that have intrinsic digital value to you. This is just the next generation of that.

Jon Radoff: That is awesome. And, and that's a great explanation going to on this whole talk. I, I hope that this has been really interesting to people. My advice on all of this metaverse stuff is that people just approach it with some humility, with some curiosity, with some imagination. Because this is really a starting point. And there's a lot that we're going to be able to do with this. When it's real time, socially connected, our identities are important, the way we express ourselves. And there's going to be whole new types of experiences.

Unknown: It's not just going to be a digital mirror all the time

Jon Radoff: of something that we're already accustomed to. It'll be that. And then we'll take it to a whole new level with the abundance that the space offers with AI, with, with all this stuff we've talked about. So, really amazing stuff, Lucas. And wanna thank you for, for being here. And by the way, we will put something down in the, in the show notes here so you can find Lucas's company. And check out the work that they do. Which is really awesome. You heard about some of the artists, Lucas, who's been working with. So, super special treat to have been able to spend the last hour. So, with you talking about this stuff. What would you like everybody to know about music in the metaverse that hasn't been said or that you want to reinforce?

Guest: My, my overall message is, is never stop being a learner. Never stop being a learner. Always try to always be humble. A humble may not even be the right word. Try to always recognize that there's a constant stream of new information coming at you. And be a learner that you never know when, if you're a music fan, if you listen to music, a cool new experience is gonna hit you. And try it a couple of, don't just try it once.

Unknown: Try it a couple of times and see what resonates from you.

Guest: Take leave what you don't. But be a learner. Don't, don't, don't, don't never have the, never have the default reaction of, of poo pooing a technology just because it's new, just because the cool kids are using it. There might be something there for you.

Jon Radoff: Excellent.

Guest: And John, thanks so much, thanks so much for inviting me. I always, as you can tell, I like to talk and I always enjoy having, having geek conversations with similar-minded people.

Jon Radoff: Yeah, this has been a lot of fun. So yeah, everybody, be a learner, go experience music in the metaverse and start imagining the way it's going to become over time as well. Music is going to be one of the most important things that we do in the metaverse because it's one of the most important things we do as human beings.

Guest: And John and I are both on Clubhouse more than we should be. So if you want to come talk to us in person, join us on Clubhouse.

Jon Radoff: Yeah, join us there. And by the way, subscribe down below and you'll keep seeing more conversations like this with thought leaders from the metaverse, from music, from art, from game design, from the technology side. We've got a lot planned and coming up. So glad you could be here and listen to this. And if you put through the last hour or so of here in me and Lucas talk, really grateful for your time because you can spend it a lot of ways on the internet, in the metaverse, and everything else in your life. So with that, thanks again, Lucas. This has been a hell of a lot of fun, great conversation. And I hope everyone's inspired coming out of this.

Guest: Thanks everyone. Take care. Bye.