Can You Share Your Steem Music Experience? (Seeking Quotes For Upcoming Music Blockchain Platforms Mega-Article)
Hey y'all,
I'm working on a big article right now for Steemit.
You see last year one of my first big successful Steem articles was called Blockchain Music Distribution 2017: Four Platforms to Watch -- it still shows up on Google searches for "blockchain music" and related phrases, and has received over 1,000 hits in the last 9 months.
That's awesome! However, three out of the four platforms in that article are no longer in my "top tier" of blockchain music platforms. Thus it is time for a serious update.
My Best Steem Post Of All Time
The new post is going to be epic - I want everybody who stumbles onto it from anywhere, be it Google or a citation or whatever - to immediately stop in their tracks and go "wow!"
Thus I've been interviewing people - including @djlethalskillz, ambassador to Musicoin, Steem legend @steevc, and Tom Zarebczan, the community manager from @LBRY. And I've been commissioning some exciting all-original artwork from the wonderful @atopy.
interviewees and collaborators so far
Now this post is almost ready to launch.
But first, before it does - I need some more quotes from active Steem musicians. Can you share your experience from Steemit so far with me?
Your Steem Music Interview
Please answer the following three questions for potential inclusion in the article. All appropriate comments on this thread will receive upvotes to the best of my ability btw - probably 50% votes worth about $0.40 given current prices.
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(Q2) Why do you think Steem is useful for musicians?
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(Q3) Whats the one most important piece of advice you would give to somebody who is about to sign up for Steem?
Please answer with no more than 1-2 paragraphs per question. Answers may be adjusted for proper grammar or slight contextual rewording but original meanings will be maintained to the absolute best of my ability.
If you are included in the article I will send you a message on Steem Chat to let you know ahead of time :-).
Thanks and I look forward to reading your experiences with Steem!
Q1) I first discovered Steemit in the Summer of 2016 and was introduced by my friend @quantumanomaly to the platform. He encouraged me to use it as a platform my music, and after much persuasion, I joined in October 2016, and I quickly discovered it was exactly that. A perfect platform for undiscovered or underrated musicians.
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(Q2) It gives musicians an opportunity to “make a living” without “making it,” and giving “making it,” an entirely new paradigmic definition. As a gigging musician, blogging on Steemit, and working a 40-hour a job...it was tough. Now, between the support of the Steemit audience built over time, I was actually able to quit my job last August and focus completely on my creative endeavors. Since then, I have recorded, published and am about to digitally release an album. That wouldn’t have and couldn’t have happened without this platform. Period. Whether it be literally from the upvotes of token support, or the moments of encouragement in the comments section of blog posts have kept me going and kept me writing and playing when I didn’t otherwise have the motivation.
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(Q3) Write your passwords and keys down (Musicians forget a lot of stuff typically), and remember that it takes time for most people to experience any level of success anywhere. Hard work is required in any sense. Sure, we see “celebrities“ pop up every day, but the real people out there grinding for their art are the middle guys and for so long, those middle guys (or gals) have been overlooked because their subscribership wasn’t to the levels it needed to be (or downloads, etc.), but Steemit allows you to earn cryptocurrency out-the-gate, per se. However, it is about quality of content, and engagement.
You have to be willing to engage yourself with your audience as much as they’re willing to engage with your music. You can’t just post and run. It doesn’t work like that here. You can truly develop a fan base of people who truly believe in what you do and why you do it, if you take the time to get to know who is listening to you..and Steemit allows us to do that in a very intimate way.
Q3) addendum:
Join the #openmic community and embed yourself there. There are more positive and encouraging musicians hanging out around that tag than arguably any other tag on this platform.
Thank you very much Jess :-)
Fantastic. Goooo Jess. I totally understand all that you wrote. I will check you out. I play guitar a little if you like guitar :)
Cheers.
The "it takes time" thing is the one that I find the hardest to get across. Most musicians have no time and don't really understand how this can help them. When they see $0.01 against their first few posts they often give up.
We almost need to give new musicians a welcome bonus top get them motivated!
Q1 I first found steem while talking about cryptos in a local coffee shop. We discussed a Justin Suntron live stream and what he said, saying Facebook owns all our content and how all they care about is $$$$. Someone next to me mentioned Steemit, then I went home and checked it out.
Q2 I think steem could be really helpful to musicians because it takes out the middle man. It takes out the greed were everyone wants a piece of any action. With spottify pillaging artists earned income, there is a huge need for a market that rewards creativity . As musicians we need to not give up our intellectual property so easily.
Q3 my advice would be don’t look at steemit with $$ signs. Look at it as a way to network and explore the new platform. Comment on people’s work, try to engage other like minded folks. Be genuine and you will be rewarded.
THANK YOU!
NP, by the way ,,, you are the drummer in the steemit band lol....outoftune and i were talking about what if we all added parts to a song.... here.
ahh lol sounds fun but I'm in a lot of bands already :-P
All good!
(Q1) How did you first discover Steem?
I saw a Facebook post from Grant Cardone that said you could earn cryptocurrency from social networking. I was sold immediately. I’ve never really been much of a writer but thought I’d do it anyway until then I found the open mic competition and it was pretty much a green light for posting other media.
(Q2) Why do you think Steem is useful for musicians?
Steem is pretty great for musicians because people can support you with almost 0 cost to themselves. Nobody is searching for loose change to throw into your guitar case, they just click the upvote button and it’s done. If you’ve never heard of it before you should check out the ‘1000 true fans’ theory - Steem could make this a real thing.
(Q3) Whats the one most important piece of advice you would give to somebody who is about to sign up for Steem?
This might be two things but here goes:
Don’t expect magic to happen because there’s money/crypto up for grabs, you still need to do all the work you’d do anywhere else. It’s a social network so do as much networking as you can, otherwise it’s likely that you’ll be disappointed.
Nice nice! Thanks dude. I'll be in touch.
So I can't really help with you on this as far as being a musician on steemit goes because I have not really started putting my music up on steemit yet. I have however been following and investing in blockchain based music projects since 2014.
I think you are doing some good work here but I do worry you are over looking the potential that is Muse. Muse will do to streaming what steemit has done to blogging. It is based off of steemit's code but modified to reward attention instead of upvotes and pay artist for streams. This is a far better solution than what lots of these other crypto projects are doing. Trying to create music specific token and get people to pay for music will not work. Streaming has spoiled everyone and there is no going back. Plus since Muse is based off of Graphene blockchain technology like Steem it will be able to actually handle having a large amount of users. We all know that it just takes a just a few kittens to clog ethereum. You can find out more if you check the FAQ section at museblockchain.com
Also you can find one of the founders right here on steemit. This is a link to the latest update by @cob
https://steemit.com/muse/@cob/january-muse-news
I know you are working on the musicians guide to steemit and I think that is amazing work. I am 100% for anything to help bring more power to the artists and financial freedom for them to create music. I am working on some math rock infused sludge songs that I hope to be able to share on here soon along with some ambient soundscape projects I have. Keep up the good work dude and I always look forward to your posts!
Cool thanks dude! I have done a little bit of research on Muse and am open to learning more. Are you currently using Muse to distribute/promote/monetize your music?
looking forward to some math-sludge ;-)
Currently waiting for peertracks to launch. That will be the equivalent of steemit to the
Steem blockchain. Beta testing will start soon. Once that is up and running people will be able to start using it. It will also have a rights management portal so you can use a smart contracts to split the funds between band members or song writers. All the meta data will be stored in the blockchain and allow the Muse blockchain to split the funds accordingly and then distribute them based off the smart contract conditions.
1 - My brother put me onto it. I thought I'd turn it into a bit of an experiment and see how the model would fit the music writing industry.
2 - I think a lot of it is tied up in potential. I really need to see how those SMT 2.0 work for an entity outside of Steemit. We've got a lot of publications moving away from comment threads on their websites - reasons generally falling around the pains of moderation, plus enthusiast audiences tending to have a slightly poisonous nature when clumped together on the internet e.g. gamers are literally one of the worst audiences I have come across and I absolutely distance myself from that term - and I've generally noted that Steemit offers pretty little in terms of being able to address that. Gaming the reward pool, invulnerability through SP - these things need to be addressed before you see websites start to pick it up.
For musicians, dSound is good, dLive is good - I've got major concerns about their ability to control copyright. There is no delete, no moderation - as alluded to above - so there is nothing really stopping someone making a mint by uploading, let's say, a catalogue of vinyl only stuff with a "I do not own this material" disclaimer. Especially if the user is fundamentally flag proof. A record label isn't really going to be interested in the concept of collective moderation, they're going to want to point a finger at a person and say "take this down, you're earning money off our work". Other blockchains currently offer good solutions, the ability to remove music that breaks copyright, contractual mechanics to offer measures around licensing. Clever things. Also, in reference to another comment about cutting out the middle man, a lot of musicians don't have a middle man - the are the marketing, record label and talent rolled together. They absolutely don't want to see someone raking it in off their intellectual property by acting as some sort of blockchain music aggregator.
The idea that a musician could run a blog and get content, post tour updates, that sort of thing, and get money for it, is a good concept. I see that appealing. Again, I think I have noted another blockchain out there that specifically caters for that sort of need.
How well Steemit performs will be in terms of adoption. If it becomes the standard, then it will become a valuable tool. If it fails to address its housekeeping issues and structural flaws, it could see the specialist blockchains steal a march as it tries to be a jack of all trades.
3 - Find appropriate people and follow them. Find out who they value and follow them. Interact with them and build up a network. If all you have are the tags, Hot and Trending, you're going to have a dry and un-engaging time as you wade through the awful chaff.
Awesome answers thanks dude! I'll definitely use some of this.
Also to address one small point, "they're going to want to point a finger at a person and say "take this down, you're earning money off our work". -- this is true on a blockchain level, but they could at least demand that DLive, the website, block access to private materials. The same way you can DMCA YouTube, you can DMCA DLive/DTube/DSound - you just can't censor the blockchain itself.
This is what I’ve been trying to get my head around. There certainly needs to be a takedown mechanic above just flagging, and I’ve not really seen any concern to address it, just a hope. We’ll see how this develops over time.
(Q1) How did you first discover Steem?
A musician friend of mine introduced me to crypto and it eventually led me here.
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(Q2) Why do you think Steem is useful for musicians?
I run a website for independent musicians, AtomCollectorRecords.com, which I originally developed to help people get their music heard as I was struggling myself.
One of the musicians told me about this "blockchain" thing and I was intrigued. Eventually it led me to realise that I could actually help independent musicians earn a living from their music!
I added Musicoin to the site and I am now introducing more and more of our members to Steemit and have started a video series:
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(Q3) Whats the one most important piece of advice you would give to somebody who is about to sign up for Steem?
For musicians - add a track a day to the awesome dsound and use the every changing checklist I have here: https://www.atomcollectorrecords.com/beta/checklist.asp
If you ever want to interview me then just let me know, I would be happy to oblige!!
Looking forward to the article!
Thanks mate! I'll be in touch
Im a music producer, check out my channel...however Steem, for a newbie like myself I'm having an extreme slow start. But at the same time I'm loving the concept. For years I've been wanting to express myself musically and this platform has bought me out of my shell. The Steem Communities are Awesome!!! Well hopefully the world will hear my sound soon!!! Awesome Article, keep'em coming...
Cool Cesar thanks for stopping by man.
I'm not looking for inclusion in your article because I just don't have anything valuable to say here really, especially for questions one and three, but hopefully you'll get some great responses to this.
The one thing I will say is that Steemit/Steem has been pretty inspirational for me, without it I never would have set up my @junkyjeff account to document (and fund) my attempts at becoming something resembling a professional musician, haha.
Looking forward to reading this mega article.
Sick! Thanks dude. I followed yer new account to catch those updates
Sorry for the late reply, I've not had much time to spend online over the last few days. Thanks for the follow, I hope you'll dig what I'm trying to do. I'm probably going to make a post about my current recording set up later today, so keep an eye out for that. I need to finish writing up a fairly lengthy Music from the Underground post about a pretty cool new band I found a few days ago first. Although, I've already written over 900 words and have barely mentioned the band, haha, so we'll see how well that goes.
Thanks again man, you are probably one of the main reasons I finally decided to set up this account and actually do something that might eventually (hopefully) help me take the first steps towards making a living as a musician. I'm glad our digital paths have crossed on this blockchain in it's own little corner of the internet.
Crushed with work in the studio right now, mostly because of steemit based procrastination. After two months of full on immersion and the kinda time one only has to dedicate to this sorta thing when stuck in a van for eight hours ... I think I can definitely contribute to the article but will need a little time to whip something up ... hit me up on discord, homie. drumoperator#7551
This is just great what you offer to the music community
thanks etemi, I appreciate that.