Fusion of NFT Music & Art – Can Artsan

TOPIC: FUSION OF NFT MUSIC &ART

Participants:

• Nadja Bester (CEO & Co-founder of AdLunam)

• Can Artsan (founder of Non-Fungible Albums)

Alright, let's kick things off. Hey, web3 world. This is Nadja Bester from AdLunam, and you are listening to The Future of NFTs, the show that looks beyond current NFT use cases and dives into what Non-Fungible Token technology is evolving into. All of this is seen through the eyes and built by the minds of the fascinating guest speakers that we will be speaking to each week. A little bit about us, AdLunam is building the industry's first engaged IDO Launchpad with a Proof Of Attention allocation mechanism. Our investor profiles use dynamic NFTs that allows allocation fractionalization. That's a mouthful, but it rhymes. We are especially passionate about the future possibilities that NFTs and this technology around it has to offer. Now, today is a very special day because it's the first episode of this new show that we are hosting, The Future of NFTs.

We'll be doing this live every Tuesday from now on, and you'll also be able to find it on your favorite podcast platform. Mine happens to be Spotify, so shout out to them. On Thursdays, same time, you can tune into our existing show, diving into crypto for a broad range of web3 topics. Join us each week as we speak to thought leaders and change makers in this game changing industry. Now, today, really excited, we are going to be talking about the fusion of music and art with Can Artsan, a very special guest whose name you should memorize because he's one of those brilliant minds you just have to follow if you want to remember why. The world is a very interesting place. So I'll be opening it up to questions at the end, and at that time, you can either put in a speaker request or you can message your question to the AdLunam Twitter handle, which is at AdLunam Inc.

All right, so let's do this. As I said, today is the day that AdLunam births its new show. When we decided to launch the series, Can was the first person that came to mind. I knew I wanted to kick things off by having him on the show. So he's a humble fellow. I'm going to brag on his behalf. He graduated with high honors from the Berkeley College of Music in Boston, in the USA, which happens to be the largest independent college of contemporary music globally, and is also one of the most prestigious music colleges in the world. He even introduced Lionel Richie on stage, so he's definitely had his pedigrees collected. More recently, he's been making waves in the NFT space, which is why we are having this discussion today. If you want proof for how highly multitalented today's guest is,get a load of this.

He is the founder, musician, music producer, 3D artist and story writer of Non-Fungible Albums, the project we'll be talking about today.

So very warm welcome to you. We are super excited to have you with us today.

Wow, what an introduction. Thank you so much, Nadja. How fortunate it was that we met in Istanbul in Marcus's event. Yeah, life is good sometimes. Thank you so much.

Life is really good indeed. I was just thinking about it today. I'm leaving Istanbul this week and I'm so happy that we got to wrap things up by me speaking to you before I leave the country. So really awesome. Synchronous disease abound. So before I hand on this to you, I just quickly want to tell the audience why they should absolutely stay tuned for this episode of the Future of NFTs. So, as you just mentioned, we met at an event in Istanbul, Turkey that AdLunam co-sponsored with Algorand. Yeah, just a side note, shout out to all of the crypto fans in this beautiful country. Also, shameless plug for tomorrow's Diving into Crypto episode, we'll be speaking to a prominent Turkish KOL in the crypto space. Focuses on the turkey market. It's just mind blowing to see all the references to crypto here. Every time I drive somewhere or walk somewhere, there's always some other reference to crypto, which is really awesome.

But speaking of this event where you and I met, so I actually mentioned this on another episode that I did name Communities Across Borders because I was incredibly impressed by the Web3 community in Turkey, especially the NFT crowd. It was amazing to experience how at this event, you guys were all championing each other's work to me, instead of talking about your own work. I mean, this is really beautiful support that you don't often find in many industries. I think this used to be the case in crypto in general, but very much so still in NFTs. The thing about you and your work, what you do, absolutely stood out for me. I was just blown away by this concept of Non-Fungible Albums because I think this is really what this technology is really all about. Experimenting with what is possible, bringing your creativity to life.

I think that's exactly what you've done. I am super excited to have you on the show. I think what you do is quite difficult to pin down, difficult to define, because it crosses the boundaries of everything we tend to think about NFTs, because we think about NFTs as existing in this sort of siloed way. There are art NFTs, there are music NFTs, even books are being made into NFTs. What you've done is you've somehow managed to bring all of this together, pull it together into a single product project. And I absolutely love that. It's the kind of creativity that blows my mind, gets my heart raising, and yeah, it just makes me so freaking excited for the future. So, without further ado, please make my day, blow the audience's mind. We want to hear who you are, what you do, so I'm going to hand over to you. Again, very warm welcome Can.

So tell us about you, your background and what makes you tick.

I have to thank you first for all these kind words you said. I have to also first say, yeah, the Turkish community is really tightened and for example, we have Raza Jan Kumar in the audience. He's one of the four, five most prestigious photographers in the whole NFT space, in the whole world. His support gave a huge power for us and he's a great representation of the Turkish NFT community. I wanted to say that first before getting into your first question. So, yeah, I had a bachelor's degree at Berkeley College of Music studying contemporary writing and production, which is mainly music production and arranging at the same time, even though it was a production and writing major. I had a lot of wonderful performance roles during my time at Berkeley and after graduating in Boston as well.

Before Berkeley, I got an industrial design degree in Istanbul, actually. And that was when I had my foundation for 3D art and also where I met my friends who are great creators in the NFT space like Kariagar, Duigu, Namurius and Matt. You also asked me what makes me tick. I think I'm motivated to be on my way to becoming the best person who does what I do. I mean, best version of myself. You can interpret it as well with the highest creativity and quality of execution possible and becoming someone with power and someone who uses his power to support a healthier, more idealistic world, in this case, the NFT world. And starting next year, it's hopefully will be both the NFT world and the music world.

Yeah, Can, that is spoken like someone with a lot of wisdom accumulated over many years. Although I've met you, so, you're not that old, so wisdom seems to have come to you at a young age. I'm curious, with the music background, what was a very prominent start of a music career? How did you end up getting into NFTs?

After graduating from Berkeley and staying in the US for a year, I came back to Istanbul, but I worked in the production, I worked in the kitchen for other popular music artists, but that didn't really make me as happy as with the things that I was doing in Boston. After the pandemic start, I decided to move back to my hometown to see things and I just thought that I should focus on myself and later start focusing on my own solo career as a solo artist because in Boston, at Berkeley, I was in the lead in most of the projects that I was in. It was late, it took a while in Istanbul that I realized that I missed that and I didn't do that. Yeah, Pandemic was an opportunity and moving back to my smaller, much smaller hometown than Istanbul, I thought it would be possible for me to build a music studio here.

The process would be long and it is long. I decided to use my time during the construction and get back to 3D modeling to support my future musical identity visually. 3D art became a passion by itself too in this time. Then one day while watching a Blender tutorial, I learned about NFTs. And coincidentally, while sharing this with my friends Kariagar and Duigu, I learned they were interested in NFTs. Actually, Duigu was interested, but I think we talked about it with him first. So we all joined the NFT space and we became a part of the Turkish NFT community and made some really great and brilliant friends. And we are still meeting great people and yeah, whenever it's possible, we try to help them and the communities really helped in so many ways.

Of course. Imagine musicians and bands that have never existed in the real world because they are fictional. They are our creations. There are creations that live in our parallel universe and that parallel universe is of the 80s and the 90s.So they are so different making music in a wide range of musical styles. And I use my ability, education, experience to make their music in many genres here, to make them as colorful and as vibrant as possible. They even have magazine and even radio interviews that we fabricate and produce. All of them are on our website and their production continues always. New material comes and it might have in our nostalgic universe with the escapism of the cassettes and CDs and later it will also be the vinyls. And a part of our project that we love is the album covers collection which will launch right after the cassettes and CD start and last series in September.

And in this Album covers collection, leading visual artists will be the creators and they're very different from each other. There are photographers, there are illustrators, 3D artists, traditional painters, and very rich variety. And the income and royalty holders will be them, also in that collection. So, yeah, their wide range and diversity will further strengthen our project and we will end up having a strong creator community with this as well. It won't be my personal project or my project. Our co-founder, Martin, will build and develop a creator group, a creator community. I don't want to use this word community so much because these days, it's overused for not always the best reasons, but I believe I do use it sincerely because having a creator community in a project that was initially my vision, I'm proud that we are building this for this reason.

Listening to you again, I'm just reminded of why I got so excited the first time that you told me about all of this. I just really am blown away by how you've managed to take a fictional world that exists in your head, which is created in your head, and to bring it to life in a way that incorporates this nostalgia that some generations have because they were there. Like myself or the younger generation. The kind of retro vibes that maybe you weren't there, but you like the feels of it. So really kind of envisioning how this evolution of art, that as I said earlier, existed in Silos, whether it's music or whether it's art or literature, but combining them into this project that then not only is your baby, but then this create a community that you envision, where people really become shareholders in this process.

It's really awesome to see this kind of thing come to life. I'm very excited to see what it leads to and what it evolves into. Which leads to my next question. We all know, and we all have our own opinions about what the state of NFTs are as it stands today. What do you think are the future of NFTs and how will it evolve from the way that it is being used today into the future, whether it's short, medium, long term?

How they will be used. When I think about the future, I think about the problems that need to be solved first. I think I'm more focused on the function rather than the use you said. So rather than having a practical use of NFT, I think my mind sees the problems in the area of one on one art or collections that are created by artists. And I think the first problem is, for example, the AI has developed greatly, so reverse, even search systems should be implemented in the NFT platforms to prevent copy minters. I think that would be great. Freedom is a lovely thing in the platforms, but verification should have multiple levels in the NFT platforms and backgrounds of the artists should be appreciated or shown by the platforms. So for the future of the NFTs, what I hope is for the potential reasons for problems to be solved first, then we'll be able to dream of the more exciting future of the NFTs.

But function, I haven't given a lot of thought to this side of the question, I believe. Yeah, I think about problems much more and think about ways to bypass those problems or solve those problems. Of course, I'm not running a platform, but I just have hopes about things related to this.

I think this is a very level headed approach, because people in the Web3 space are often accused of this utopian thinking where everything is going to be absolutely wonderful as soon as there's mass adoption and as soon as we all kind of hold hands and sing Kumbaya and the whole world is going to be on the block. Unfortunately, that's not how anything in the world gets done. I think that progress has always been as a result of blood, sweat and tears and here it's no different and it's a fresh approach in some ways. I think that a lot of people in this space, because we are the champions of this technology and this industry, we tend to be very optimistic about it and kind of glaze over all of the problems that we face right now in order to get through mass adoption. In that sense, I want to ask the next question.

What do you think is hindering mass adoption of NFTs and even progress in general apart from the issues that you just mentioned?

Yeah, on the collector side, the big problem is people prefer to be followers, not leaders. Even when they love a project or a multi-edition piece from an artist, they want to see someone else buy first. Because of this, a project with a really low and on contrary level of interval like that ,unfortunate quality of execution can reach high volumes if the team organizes, creates a scheme and make the project look successful with their fake group of collectors. People don't question this, just join the Hype train and yeah, also people jumping on these Hype trains make the NFTs uninteresting for people who are not in the NFT world yet. I'm not talking about derivative projects that are created meticulously, I highly respect them. There are a ton of not so high quality about our projects out there and yeah, we are living in the digital renaissance.

I believe that too. The level of intellect is for the majority, not there yet. In the long run things have to get better about this, I believe.

Absolutely. I mean, I think this whole concept of Hype in the space, on the one hand we enjoy it because it gives us those hides. But unfortunately that's also like the Trojan horse where you can hide a lot of nefarious sort of intentions because it's under the guise of hype and everyone's getting swooped up with it. It's a double edged sword. I think .It helps the project get along, but at the same time, it can really hide a lot of dark sides to a project. Speaking of this idea of community and fans in the music NFT space, a lot of it is at the moment based around fandom and fame. Do you think that this is why Music NFTs haven't sort of bloomed as much as 3D Arts or CGI, illustration, photography, et cetera? And I'm also curious, how would you classify a project that is as cross sectional as Non-Fungible Albums?

It's so unlike most NFT projects. You can't pin it down and say it's this kind of NFT or that kind of NFT. Because unlike so many of the projects out there, you've created this whole fictional world. You are creating music, you're creating art, and you’re creating radio interviews. I mean, there's just so much there. How do you position this project in this space?

Yes, I'll answer the first question first and thank you so much for the kind second half of the question. For musicians, I think a big disadvantage is the experience of discovery. I want to compare this with a visual artist. It takes a second for us to decide if you want to click and view a visual after seeing a thumbnail and see it with a higher resolution. For music, not only a visual thumbnail is not a direct representation of the music, but also the time necessary to decide if you want to engage with a piece of music is much larger than a second. So the musician is really disadvantaged in this situation and so external factors other than the music itself is too big or too big. I believe there are other reasons that Music NFTs are not at the level of healthiness of visual Arts NFTs.

For example, a very famous rapper would sell out the additions of track releases immediately, regardless of the content.

Although, and I don't know how sustainable this will be in the future or how much they will increase in value in the future, meanwhile, when I have more power, I will of course support Music NFTs and I hope more independent artists get into the space. It's an opportunity, a great alternative. It's a great alternative for the extremely challenging system of the music industry for the artists. Nobody can say I'm going to release my music and from the royalties from Apple Music and Spotify I'm going to live off. That's not really possible. But yeah, our project, we want to create something that can one day have its own classification, as you said, and different from the current model of Music NFTs. And then, I believe that I would be creating the music, the megahits of our parallel universe of the 80s and 90s, results ended up sounding realistic.

Intriguing, and I'm looking forward to seeing more about what exactly that's going to look like. Yeah, I think it's so important that you highlighted about the plight that musicians face both in the traditional music industry and even in this new world. I said earlier, Spotify is my favorite podcast platform or music streaming platform in general. I think it's so different as a consumer of music where to me it's very convenient and it's plug and play, I pay one subscription a month and get access to all of these trucks. The difference is that as a musician, if you look at the statistics in general, I think musicians get only up to like 50% or something of the revenue of their music. I know the statistics for Spotify and platforms like this is really shocking. I mean, they make very little money on these platforms, even the top musicians.

I think it's very important to then, as you say, realize that for a musician entering into the space, it's not as if the headlines say, oh, Music NFTs are going to be the next best thing, but also understanding like those processing differences you mentioned between a visual artist where as a consumer I look at it and in 1 second decide if I like it. It takes a lot more time and energy investment for me as a listener if I listen to a music chart. So, yeah, it sounds like musicians have their work cut out for them. At the same time, I think with a project like yours that merges, kind of fuses the visual and the music world, I think there might be an easier entry point into NFTs and into web3 in the future. So you've got a lot of responsibility resting on your shoulders, but I'm sure that from the sounds of it, you are going to do a fantastic job of it.

I'm curious about this. You have this focus on the 80s and 90s and I'm a child of that. I don't know what decade I'm supposed to count, but I was born in the 80s so I definitely have an affinity as well with these nostalgic decades. Grew up with cassette, grew up with CDs. I mean, now it's all digital. I'm very curious, we live in this highly technologically advanced world where we have streaming services. Why did you choose cassettes and CDs as the face of your company? Why did you take that direction?

Additionally, yeah, cassette, CDs and later vinyls add to the expression to our project, like our fictional record labels all being named after crypto coins, BTC music, ETH records, soul Record Company. Cassettes can see these graphic designs allow us to organically implement these two. We are kind of fusing different times as well in that way. Mostly I think the passion of nostalgia led me to make this decision consciously and subconsciously, I believe.

So on that note, because I'm a bit of a fan gal, I have listened to all of the tracks that I was able to on Spotify and I'm very curious because I could hear the title tracks of the albums in the videos and the cassette CDs on music platforms like Spotify. What about all the other tracks in the album? For example, on Christina Jameson's Album, you have a title track. I think it's keeping me up. There are also other track names that are shown taking A Walk, what is the other one? Seems like it, I think, will we ever hear these tracks instead of just seeing it visually? What are in the works?

So the plan about this has naturally developed and we'll announce it after the launch of the vinyls. The title tracks of the albums are practically the three special editions of the music. I mean, the title tracks, music and the three additions being the cassette, the CD and the vinyl. There are 15 albums plus 15 titled tracks. All the other tracks in the albums are nine tracks. There are ten tracks in all the albums and nine tracks are not title tracks. So there are many music NFTs to release from the world of Non-Fungible Albums that are not title tracks. I mean, multiply 15 and nine, 135 music NFTs there can be. We'll take this as an opportunity to build a greater community of musicians that I kind of mentioned before, and said it was going to be a surprise, but since you asked the question so there are 135 music NFTs that are hidden in the world of Non-Fungible Albums.

We are doing this greater community with visual artists in the album covers and we hope to do that with musicians as well. They will have at least 95% of the income and the royalties, just like the visual artists of the album covers. And these NFTs would be more traditional music NFTs and would be five or ten editions. Because we have to keep the original collections, which are cassette, CDs and vinyls, being a tad more special and, yeah, we are developing a system and in the system, when a new collection launches, the old collections don't become old news, but their value increases, how much is paid to them and every collection complements each other.

Really exciting things up ahead. I think this is going to be a very fun and also very collaborative journey, which is, I think is exactly what NFTs and this NFT Space is all about doing serious things, but in a fun and enjoyable way and taking a whole lot of people with you for the ride. Whether it's people that are already in the space or whether it's onboarding new people into the space, it's a fun place to be. So, final question from me before I open it up to the audience for questions. You had your second series public sale on July 3 so what is next in store for Non-Fungible Albums?

So, Non-Fungible cassettes and Non-Fungible CDs will have their third and final series in early September. So 15 albums will be complete with 15 cassettes and 15 CDs. Then the album covers of these 15 albums will launch again as one on one editions. So far the artists, the visual artists that we have announced are Bolsha Pagan, Doroth Seyman, Kotai Jandoan and Andre Piera and we'll announce eleven other amazing artists, prestigious visual artists in the NFT space. And after the Album covers it will be Non-Fungible vinyls and they will be the vinyls of the 15 albums again as one on one additions. There's a game about collecting vinyls. If a holder has bought the cassette and CD of an album before the announced snapshot date they will get the vinyl of the Album via Airdrop and the other vinyls will be up for sale.

Yeah, they are not seeking every opportunity to have more income but they are seeking opportunities for our collectors to connect more with the project and have more fun. So yeah, maybe we would. I mean, the vinyl will be 0.4 Itz each and I would encourage if the cassette and CD holder of the album are friends, I would encourage them to keep before the snapshot , the cassette and CD in one of their wallets so they will be able to share the vinyl together but not buy in the public sales. So, I mean, these kind of little things help the project to become a classic one day. If you seek every opportunity to get a little more income I don't think things will be really legendary in the long run. I try to have that kind of a mindset. And after the vinyls launch yet the trio of cassette, CD and vinyl of the title tracks, music NFTs will be complete and we have a PFP project after that.

Awesome, thank you so much, Can. It's been an absolute pleasure listening to your journey and your insight. I'm going to open it up to the audience now. If you have any questions for Can, go ahead and request to speak. Or you can also direct message the AdLunam Twitter handle at AdLunam Inc on some of the questions. I'm going to give it a few seconds so we can quickly check the incoming questions. Alright, so we have a question. How far back do you think music should go to be enjoyed in an NFT form? Sorry, there's more. Could it be 50s music? 40s music? How far back would people of today still enjoy listening to music from previous eras?

I think that's a wonderful question. There must be people exclusively listening to the music of 20s and 30s too. But I think if we say majority, 80% of the people, I think mid-70s or early 70s would be. I mean, I think I'll answer this question this way. A TV show uses music in the scenes to support the emotions of that particular scene, for example. They have to not really get so much attention, but be current in complementing the emotion that wants to be conveyed in that particular scene. I think that's why I thought about mid-70s. That's the beginning era of majority of the public really still finding feeling in a popular 70s. I think.

Awesome. And then we have one more question. What advice do you have for a musician who's new to NFTs wanting to break into the space?

Okay, I think definitely because of the discovery difficulty, discovery challenges of a musician in the NFT space or Instagram, you have to make people click first and they see something and then click. Visually, things have to look really interesting and neat and whatever visual content that you are using has to represent the audio content, the music that you are doing. So, yeah, care about the visual arts aspect just as much as the music because you have to make people click on what you are presenting first and then they're invited to join your world. Your communication would start, your connection would start with them.

Can, thank you so much for sharing your time, your experience and your expertise with us today. And of course, for your valuable contributions to the NFT space. We'll definitely be keeping a close eye on what's next for you and for Non-Fungible Albums and definitely look forward to what's to come. Yeah, audience, that is all the time we have today. If you'd like to learn more about what Can is doing, follow him and the project on twitter. All of the links will be available on the podcast show Notes, so look out for the release of that tomorrow. Yeah, on that note, thank you for checking in. First historical episode. Very happy to have had such an amazing case speaker on. I hope that you find this episode insightful and you are walking away with a new AHA moment or two. I definitely am. Look forward to seeing you next week for another episode of The Future of NFTs, brought to you by AdLunam.

Cheers.