Public Pressure: Reimagining Music Distribution

Public Pressure is an established online Music Magazine that will soon be launching a new Music NFT Marketplace on the Moonriver blockchain. Might you be excited about this new development in the Dotsama ecosystem? Let’s take a brief dive into this project to find out.

Project Ethos

Public Pressure, like other Music NFT projects, aims to address the structural problems created by the widespread consumption of music as an on-demand disposable resource, in which mediators such as streaming services (e.g. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube) are valued over artists and their audiences.

In their whitepaper: Vision for a new music distribution framework, they begin by referencing a well known quote from Frank Zappa to support their broad aim ‘to leverage disruptive technologies to create a sustainable economic model that will remodel the music industry from the ground up.’

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.-Frank Zappa

My own personal favorite Zappa quote speaks to his particular brand of norm-breaking surrealism:

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

I find it more than symbolically reassuring to read a Web3 whitepaper focused on Music NTFs that is foregrounded by the voice of a musician. After all, musicians are not your typical users of technology.

More often, musicians are explorers of the edges and breaking points of both technologies and cultures, and it seems sensible to have them guide the way when attempting to disruptively reimagine our relationship with recorded music.

So, who are the people doing this reimagining?

Core Team

Public Pressure is the brainchild of entrepreneur and business strategist Sergio Mottola, fashion director Giulia Maresca, fashion designer Francesca Versace (yes, that Versace family), and electronic music producer Alfredo Violante.

Mottola has a particularly notable background in ‘blockchain regulation and adoption at the Republic of San Marino Innovation Institute, a private company owned by the "Serenissima" Republic of San Marino and incorporated to guide the Parliament and the Government on innovation policies’ where he served as Chairman, CEO and Director of the Scientific Committee (more info here).

The four founders of Public Pressure are currently supported by a team of 17 other individuals with a broad set of skills. Music-making is inherently interdisciplinary, often at its best when intertwining technical, social, visual and sonic sensibilities. Thus, it is great to see a diversity of knowledge and experience represented in the Public Pressure team.

Public Pressure Artists?

While the longer-term aims of the project appear to include the move towards a more decentralized model of music curation, in the short term we are likely to see artists on the platform selected by the project team. I suspect a look through previous artists featured in Public Pressure’s magazine may shed some light on the type of musicians they will initially promote. Let’s have a listen to one example:

Yung Lean ft. FKA twigs← video link

Public Pressure’s online magazine recently featured Swedish rapper Yung Lean in a beautifully Baudrillardian piece by Alex Mazey. I have followed Yung Lean’s melancholic and ethereal variety of hip hop for some time, but I only became aware of his most recent album Stardust after reading Mazey’s article. The video link I’ve included above is from the first track on the album, a captivating and surreal collaboration with FKA twigs (chandelier headlights and text messaging via excel spreadsheet for the win!).

I can’t say for certain which musicians (if any) from Public Pressure’s magazine will appear in their NFT marketplace, yet it is worth noting that the featured artists in their magazine run the gamut of weird and wonderful genre-bending sounds and visuals, from noisecore post-punk to dark-electro experimental. If such cutting edge musics are any indication of what’s to come, Public Pressure should fit in well with the radically open and creative ethos of the Dotsama ecosystem.

Collecting over Consuming

Most people today primarily listen to music streamed by large centralized companies who generally take more than their fair share of subscription fees – but it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the growth of the streaming model over the past 15 years, it was much more common for people to listen to music that they actually owned. Building a personal music collection was for many a joyously dedicated process and a source of great pride. With the loss of this sense of ownership, our engagement with music recordings has arguably become more detached.

The key proposition of Music NFTs is a shift away from music being passively consumed to a type of ownership that is both similar and different to the experience of music through older forms of tangible media (e.g. vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs). An important similarity here is the investment of time and money in the active collection of musical objects that encourage repeated engagement and a closer connection with the music. A healthy independent music scene can be built through this kind of participation.

However, Music NFTs and associated marketplaces of the type being developed by Public Pressure also offer several possibilities beyond what was available in the pre-streaming world of music distribution. This includes the possibility to form more immediate relationships between artists and their audiences, with all the social and financial benefits that come with closer forms of interaction and exchange. For example, the trading of Music NFTs can give artists access to revenue through secondary markets. They can also provide NFT holders with a range of new benefits – from backstage passes at concerts to airdrops of remix albums, as well as countless other yet to be imagined use cases based on the cryptographically verifiable provenance and ownership of NFTs.

Super Fans and Micro-Scenes

In his now famous 2008 essay 1,000 True Fans, Kevin Kelly outlines the role that the internet would play in putting creators in direct communication with their fanbase, and how the removal of traditional gatekeepers and middlemen would allow for more artists to make a good living with as little as 1,000 dedicated fans ($100 per fan annually = $100k). Public Pressure cites Kelly’s work in their whitepaper, but I would be tempted to go further and claim that their NFT marketplace model may be closer to the one outlined in Li Jin’s more recent article: 1,000 True Fans? Try 100. Kelly himself has publicly endorsed Jin’s work, and we are already seeing this play out in platforms such as Patreon.

I suspect that a Web3 initiative like Public Pressure could also increase the viability of smaller musical subcultures and micro-scenes (like-minded people connected across geopolitical boundaries through the platform), thus benefiting artists and fans alike.

For a deeper dive, including info on the $JTP token and ‘Art to Earn’ model and how these will enable decentralized governance as well as ‘Fan Staking’ and ‘Patron Pools’, I recommend having a read of the Public Pressure whitepaper and checking out Jay Chrawnna’s excellent extended interview with Sergio Mottola.

To keep up to date on Public Pressure, join their Discord server and follow them on Twitter.

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This article was made with support from WagMedia, an open and decentralized network of participants telling the story of Dotsama.