Token Understanding

I try to avoid other people's trolling in this space (it's my newsletter and I'll troll myself if I want to) but I woke up Wednesday to this laugh/cry-out-loud thread from electronic producer MINT ROYALE on his adventure in a currently trendy way of transacting digital music and art that's so perfectly pitched I can't tell if he's joking or not. Which is in line with how I've felt about so much else I've read about this trend. Are the buyers real? Are the sellers real? Are the things real? Is it possible the buyers and sellers are real but the things are not? Or vice versa? Mint Royale's story is about too many currencies, too many hoops to jump through (each hoop presumably adding a little something to this), too many fees and far too little information on what's in the pot of gold on the other side of all those digital hoops: "I’ve been given no documentation at all. There is neither a smart contract, or boringly un-smart contract." I ended my day in MUSIC HQ's room inside CLUBHOUSE, where music/tech insiders SHARA SENDEROFF, ZACH KATZ and SUZY RYOO and journalist CHERIE HU were leading a discussion on musical rights and digital commerce, which could have been titled "What Don't the Record Companies Know About NFTs and When Didn't They Know It?" Rough takeaways: The number of people actually trading in these things is, for now, much much smaller than the number of people talking about them. The number of people who understand exactly what they're buying is much much smaller than the number of people who don't. Tech entrepreneurs and record executives still don't appear to have each other's phone numbers. There are some very very basic things that no one's figured out. Comms people and translators are going to be needed soon. In the middle of my day, someone in a FACEBOOK group I'm in (subject: politics) asked, "How can you tell the difference between real and fake NFTs?" Simple question. I wished I could have answered it.

Nobody Else's Money

Investment firm KKR, which owns a majority stake in RYAN TEDDER's songwriting catalog, is looking to go bigger with a new partnership with German label BMG. The two companies announced Wednesday they'll be going after master recording and publishing catalogs together, and KKR partner NAT ZILKHA told Rolling Stone they're prepared to pay $500 million for the right catalog if it comes along. The biggest sale so far in the catalog buying frenzy is the reported $400 million-ish that UNIVERSAL paid for BOB DYLAN's songs. For $500 million, you should get BEYONCÉ plus JAY-Z plus your choice of any painting currently hanging in their living room plus two or three GRIMES NFTs. KKR's other major investments include TIKTOK parent BYTEDANCE and guitar maker GIBSON (where Zilkha is chairman). Everything owns everything else... TRILLER has a new deal with the NATIONAL MUSIC PUBLISHERS' ASSOCIATION (NMPA), which has been openly critical of the social video app; it covers both past and future royalties... Trying to figure out if it was DAVID C. LOWERY or the NMPA who supplied JEOPARDY! with this rather pointed clue Wednesday night, in the category "About That Song": "43 million streams of his song 'HAPPY' on PANDORA led to only $2,700 in publisher & songwriting royalties."

Rest in Peace

CONNIE BRADLEY, who ran ASCAP's Nashville office and was a force in the country music business for more than three decades... LONE JUSTICE drummer DON HEFFINGTON, who also played with a who's who of singer/songwriters from BOB DYLAN and the WALLFLOWERS to EMMYLOU HARRIS and JACKSON BROWNE... New England house and techno DJ/producer PAT FONTES.