Hi everyone ❤️,
I’m really excited to announce that I’ve released my first solo NFT for a song called There Used To Be Four.
There Used To Be Four is a song that honors my father who passed away in 2016. I wrote this song about wanting to remember what it was like when he was still alive. He was a photographer who took pictures and video of EVERYTHING growing up. So this song is about flipping through his old pictures like a retro slideshow - to feel what it was like back then. Before everything happened. It’s about nostalgia, grief, honoring his life and art, and love for my family.
As a nod to him, I weaved in audio samples from about 40 hours of his home videos, so those voices you hear are my dad, mom, and little me. I barely scratched the surface of all the footage he has, but these samples feel like they were the ones meant to be in this song. The sections I sing feel very rooted, like life on earth. In contrast, the samples weave in and out of an electronic soundscape that feels more heavenly. So in a way, the song feels like a conversation with him that bends the confines of space and time - to find peace with his passing and a way to accept goodbye.
I released There Used To Be Four back on streaming services and made a music video for it last year. But I’ve recently discovered the power of NFTs - and how they treat music as fine art. So when deciding what song to make my first NFT, I decided that There Used To Be Four felt right. It felt like an introduction to who I am on a personal level. It also felt like a way to simultaneously make an artistic statement while creating an authentic relationship with collectors. I want to create a community bigger than just me or any one of us. Something that lifts all of us up.
If you’re not familiar with NFTs yet, you might be wondering, what is an NFT?
What is an NFT?
An NFT is a digital collectible in the way that lithographs, paintings, vinyl, or even sneakers can be physical collectibles. Sometimes they can be scarce and there is only one edition ever (called a 1/1) and sometimes there can be infinite editions - and everything in between. Sometimes how rare it is can affect how expensive the NFT is. The price of the NFT can also be affected by what special perks the artist is offering (called utility) and how much demand there is for the NFT (hello capitalism). Artists will also put out (called minting) free NFTs sometimes as a thank you to their community. Sometimes they will also send a free NFT to their previous collectors (called an airdrop). If you’d like to learn more about NFTs, let me know, and I’d be happy to write more about it.
WHY AN NFT?
As an artist, one of the many things that excites me about NFTs is that music is valued like fine art. If you aren’t aware, a lot of musicians and songwriters are having a hard time living off of streaming royalties. This day and age we live in is AMAZING because making and releasing music is so accessible. But the flip side is that artists make .004 cents USD for every Spotify stream. That means it would take 1 million streams for an artist to make $4K off of a song. Alternatively, artists would have to sell roughly 100 NFTs to make about $4K.
In addition, there is a secondary market for NFTs. So after you buy one, you can sell it on a site like OpenSea. Artists make a small percentage, typically anywhere from 0% - 30% off of each secondary sale. So NFTs can become a way for artists to make career-sustaining passive income in the form of NFT royalties, while collectors can also make money as an artist’s career and community expand by selling their NFTs. In other words, NFTs create a community around an artist that creates revenue opportunities for the artist AND the community members/collectors.
I also think NFTs are a way to create value and give to collectors/supporters in a meaningful way. For my There Used To Be Four NFT, there are only 44 editions (20 of which are already sold at the time of writing this). I’m offering a 1:1 call with every single collector as a thank you and as a way to get to know you better. I’ve also created a chat in Telegram that is only for collectors called The Rose Garden.
I see this little Rose Garden community as a way to create something bigger than me. I’ll be sharing demos and previews of stuff I’m working on, and would love to hear the things that excite you and that you’re working on, so I can support you too.
IF YOU’D LIKE TO COLLECT
If you’d like to purchase the There Used To Be Four NFT, I’d so love to have you in The Rose Garden community as a collector. I tried to price this NFT really low to make it accessible at .02 ETH. At the current market value, that equals around $26 - $32 each. If you don’t have one already, you’ll need a digital wallet (such as Metamask or Coinbase Wallet) and some ETH to purchase. You can purchase ETH on a crypto exchange, such as Coinbase. I think NFTs and the decentralized communities forming around them could be the future, and I’m really excited to experiment with them more… especially with the new music I have coming out next year :) (This isn’t financial advice).
You can purchase the There Used To Be Four NFT a platform called Zora HERE, while supplies last.
Sending you so much love,
R
