Audio creators, Verzuz, social currencies, and in(ternet)dependence
March 12, 2021 Edition (#46)
Month 12 of pandemic. Month 11 of Trillium. Correlation, causation—one never knows. Welcome back. In case you live under a rock, the much-hyped Beeple NFT auction at Christie’s has concluded. The winning bid: $69,346,250. What have you done lately?
“How do you like the standing throne?“
Opte Project: Visualizing the Internet
I was fascinated by this data visualization project authored by Barrett Lyon (of the Opte Project). The project “seeks to generate an accurate representation of the breadth of the internet” through different visual graphics that make it easier to parse the global impact of the technology. In the video below, which spans 1997-2021, you can identify different zones of network growth based on colors: white for backbone/infrastructure, blue for North America, red for APAC, yellow for Africa, and green for Europe. Pleasantly reminiscent of a Windows screensaver in the mid-90s.
It’s interesting to watch the Asia Pacific growth, condensed around a smaller number of primary network nodes, as other regions come online. Is it too soon to wonder what an NFT version of this would fetch? Just a bit of harmless speculation, of course…👀
Audio Creators in the spotlight
Recent years have been The Golden Age of Podcasting, with numerous prestige shows (from Serial to The Daily and beyond), household names (Joe Rogan), and a spate of acquisitions (catalyzed by Spotify’s strategic decision to double down on non-music audio content). In 2020, thanks in part to pandemic-enforced time at home, Clubhouse and other social audio products emerged as the hot new thing in the tech world (#BeforeNFTs).
Count me in the rapidly-shrinking but resolute camp of those who aren’t yet convinced that live, unedited, participatory audio products can serve as the foundation for a large-cap tech business. I understand the appeal of Clubhouse and its ilk—again, I spend one to two hours daily listening to podcasts while being force-marched around my neighborhood by The Trillium Canine—but continue to feel that the audio format makes most sense as one creative content type amongst many. In a sense, this is the logic behind Twitter’s Spaces project: it augments the palette for Twitter users, but isn’t a standalone business.
This week, the NYT’s Taylor Lorenz wrote a great piece on Audio Collective: a new company that launched recently and describes itself as “a hybrid live-audio creator community, production house, and ambassador group.” The group has some big names attached, and purports to “help individuals and organizations expand their impact on and off Clubhouse.” [Ed.: We happily do not qualify as target customers.]
You know a trend is gaining steam when it spawns its own cottage industry. As Lorenz writes, the group will also provide services that Clubhouse’s own Creator Pilot Program does not (yet) and can, through collective leverage, advocate for needed policies and features. It’s worth reading the entirety of Lorenz’s piece, partially for the direct quotes from various “audio influencers.” I’m unconvinced that “Clubhouse will create the most powerful and impactful influencers of our time,” as one influencer claims, as visual formats (photo or video) lend themselves much more readily to a wider variety of influencer activations.
It’s true that one forms a different sort of relationship with speakers to whom one listens frequently; but, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those speakers will be more influential when it comes to commercial partnerships. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how Audio Collective and its peer-set evolve, and whether they are able to meaningfully impact Clubhouse’s platform experience. It is worth noting that Clubhouse’s goal of building creator monetization features from the jump is precocious relative to the other major “Web 2.0” content platforms. In those cases, growth was more organic, giving way to a realization of how fundamental creators were to platform success and resulting in late-stage creator features being built.
Elsewhere in audio news, The Verge has early screenshots from Mark Cuban’s Clubhouse competitor: Fireside. The app ostensibly provides more editing/production functionality than Clubhouse—taking inspiration from Anchor, the mobile podcast creation tool that was acquired by Spotify in 2019—as well as standard social features, built-in monetization tools, and the ability to record conversations. Note that the app bills itself as “the future of podcasting,” which is interesting relative to Clubhouse’s self-definition as “drop-in audio chat,” and Twitter Spaces’ “live audio conversations” positioning.
Verzuz and…Triller?
Triller has acquired Verzuz: the early-quarantine IG livestream phenom that has become a legitimate media franchise in its own right. (Billboard) To refresh your memories, Triller is an American TikTok clone/also-ran that has been in the news for a variety of delightful things: suing TikTok’s parent company (ByteDance) for patent infringement, reportedly overstating its download figures by 5X (though Apptopia later withdrew this allegation), and briefly enjoying a moment in the sun when the Trump Administration’s looming TikTok ban thrust its main rival into a moment of profound existential doubt.
Months later, spoiler alert: the ban didn’t happen and TikTok is still very much A Thing.
I’ve also written previously about Verzuz co-founders—Swizz Beats and Timbaland—and provided hard-hitting reportage on the somewhat perplexing outfits that the two wore in a summertime GQ shoot. The short-sleeve/shorts leopard print ensemble was alluring, apparently, because the two (along with all 43 Verzuz performers to date) now have a stake in Triller (which somehow has a $1.25bn private market valuation after raising a $100M round in October 2020). (Reuters) It doesn’t seem like this was a financially meaningful acquisition, but details are scarce. And, it’s worth celebrating the main quirk of this deal: at least on paper, all Verzuz artists participated economically in the exit.
This seems like a case where Swizz Beats and Timbaland built a brilliant creative concept—but openly admitted to never developing “monetization,” business, or technical plans—and leveraged their extensive networks with other talented artists. Their early IG partnership evolved into a relationship with Apple Music (and Twitter), and now seems to have become a commitment to Triller.
I’ve enjoyed most of the Verzuz content I’ve seen, and believe that it will certainly stand out as a bright spot from the early days of a scary period in global history. I’m just not sure what this partnership will bring, particularly as the competitive landscape facing Triller has only gotten more complicated. There’s talk of Verzuz expanding into new verticals (sports and comedy) and new geographies (Africa and Asia). It’s possible that, with Triller’s tech platform and monetization offerings, the franchise’s content could evolve into a full-fledged media operation. At first glance, though, this feels like an odd fit—particularly since it doesn’t sound like Verzuz content will become exclusive to Triller. That said: it’s still better than Square acquiring Tidal.
Creator Commercialism
According to Axios's Sara Fischer, Facebook is “significantly expanding the number of options for creators to get paid directly by fans.” [Ed.: shout out to Royal Reader RD for the tip.] The expansion comes in the form of updates to “in-stream video ad eligibility,” such that creators can monetize videos as short as one minute in duration, and the introduction of a new type of “sticker ad” within Facebook “Stories.” Further, Fischer writes, the company is rolling out paid online events and fan subscriptions to a longer list of countries.
These announcements represent yet another meaningful corporate acknowledgment of how important creators are to the health of today’s most-established consumer internet apps—and an undeniable affirmation of the idea that, to retain creators and increase their engagement, one must provide a suite of ways for them to make money. Interestingly, Facebook also reports that, from 2019 to 2020, “the number of content creators earning $1,000 per month grew 94%.” Creator-centric competition, both in the form of new products and dedicated monetization features, is accelerating amongst big tech companies. Meanwhile, Roblox’s recent direct listing generated a ~$40bn market cap, largely on the premise that the company’s virtual world represents a platform for 3rd party creators and developers to produce and sell digital goods and experiences.
Increasingly, creator commerce is expanding beyond the more conventional landscape established by today’s largest tech companies. Original Reader MP—largely to blame for Trillium’s tenuous existence—sent us an article from the NYT that feels algorithmically personalized: “For Creators, Everything Is for Sale.” [Ed.: this article also represents the second Taylor Lorenz article cited this week. To quote Elder Statesman DJ Khaled: “Another One.”]
This article covers ground that will be familiar to the Trilliuminati, starting from the conceit that the market for digital creators (and their work) is heating up, and that algorithms cannot be trusted to reliably generate traffic and income. As a result, Lorenz writes, creators are “devising new, hyper-specific revenue streams.” I recommend spending some time with this article, and not just because I get a massive affiliate fee every time I send traffic to the NYT. [Ed.: Not so much.]
No, this recommendation is so that you can read about startups like NewNew (a self-described “human stock market”) where “fans pay to vote in polls to control some of a creator’s day-to-day decisions.” I find everything about this premise horrifying, and akin to a version of The Truman Show, updated for the wondrous era in which we live. Do you want to determine whether your favorite creator eats eggs or pasta for dinner, plays dodgeball or catch, or names their hamster? I do not.
Reading about teenage creators asking fans whether they “want to control [their lives]” in exchange for money is honestly one of the most dystopian things I could imagine, and I have a very active imagination. Just look at this quote: “‘Sure, it’s fun to control a famous influencer…but it’s honestly just as entertaining to control someone you go to school with.” Let’s move on…
Lorenz talks about how creators are using NFTs to fan-fund projects and touches on some recent influencer experiments in creating their own individual social “coins,” using crypto protocols. All of these instruments, in one way or another, use crypto-related instruments to change (and typically “financialize”) the relationship between creator and fan. In some cases, like obviating the need for a record label through NFT pre-sales or stock-like token issuance, these innovations are exciting and potentially disruptive (in a positive sense). In others, like outsourcing IRL decisionmaking to people who have “invested” in you as a “human stock,” I wish there was a tad more consideration of the ramifications. But, I suppose this is part of the natural evolution that occurs in the early days of any new behavior, as a technological innovation meets a wave of early adopters.
For more on “social currencies,” and how celebrities like Terry Crews are using them to mobilize and monetize their fan communities, I recommend this article by TechCrunch’s Megan Rose Dickey. Dickey’s piece touches on one particular startup, Roll, that has raised $2.7M to date and enables creators to mint their own social tokens and use them to reward and incentivize their communities. This sort of self-sustaining community mentality, powered by its own dynamically-priced token, is represented well by things like Friends With Benefits, a private Discord server created by Trevor McFedries (creator of Lil Miquela) that requires aspiring community members to own 55 $FWB tokens in order to join. It’s early days, and some of these experiments will certainly fizzle for one reason or another; but, there’s the seed of an interesting new dynamic here.
In(ternet)dependence
The movement of creators taking greater control of their livelihoods, and building their own independent businesses outside the bounds of walled garden apps, is happening both in crypto-land and back on the internet that most users have been familiar with for the past 10+ years. Because I care deeply about you, I’ve put together another round-up of related and recommended reading.
First, the BBC’s David Molloy has a piece on popular YouTubers who are building their own websites to hedge against what they perceive as platform (and algorithm) risk. As YouTubers, and other digital creators, grow side hustles into full-fledged businesses with real revenue (and payrolls to support), the need to diversify and insulate oneself is magnified. I’m reminded of many conversations with creators in which they’ve expressed to me their fears that platforms will simply “disappear”—as happened with MySpace, for instance—and that all their work to produce content and develop community will evaporate into thin air. It is this spirit, I think, that animates the interest in social tokens and decentralized creator products (e.g., decentralized Web3 Audius instead of centralized Web 2.0 Spotify).
Second, Not Boring’s Packy McCormick recently wrote a good newsletter entry called “Power to the Person.” He touches on everything from the rise of entrepreneurship in the “creator economy” to NFTs, social tokens, digital commerce, the (new) nature of firms, decentralized finance, and more. It is long, but interesting.
Third, A16Z’s Chris Dixon wrote a piece on NFTs in the context of Kevin Kelly’s original “1,000 True Fans” essay, which suggested that the internet would enable niche creators to build sustainable businesses. I wouldn’t describe the piece as an especially balanced view of the current creator ecosystem: for instance, talking about A16Z investment Substack’s ability to help “many top writers” earn “far more than they did at salaried jobs” without also enumerating some of the trade-offs of going independent (and the difficulty for fledgling writers who don’t have the benefit of large existing audiences). But, Dixon’s piece is worth reading, particularly for his summary of how NFTs change creator economics: by removing middlemen, enabling granular price-tiering, and making users owners.
For the record: my view is that NFTs are going through an incredible moment of hype and over-optimism, to be followed by a crash and disillusionment (and many “I told you this was a scam” pieces from the mainstream media). Then, once pure speculators have moved on to greasier pastures, I expect a wave of more rational, well-architected projects that take the instrument and its surrounding market context to the next level of value and traction. If you’re interested in a longer-form project that details what the longer-term “virtual economy” could entail, I recommend this great research initiative from L’Atelier (a foresight company that exists as part of BNP Paribas).
For your ears only
This was very much a “throw a random song into the YouTube algorithm and let it ride” type of week when it came to music at Trillium HQ. There are worse types of weeks. Thanks to the enigmatic majesty of the music brain lurking at the spiritual core of YouTube, I came across an incredible song from the 1960s: “I Can’t Stay Away From You,” recorded by The Fascinations.
This version, recorded in 1967 as the b-side to “I’m in Love,” has the distinction of being produced by none other than Curtis Mayfield. The record reached #47 of the U.S. R&B charts and is a slightly codeine-ified version of The Impressions’ version of the same song.
See you all next week.
N