Andrew McCluskey

How musicto Evolved – Part 3 (2025 – )

2025-05-09T13:32:13Z

If 2016 to 2019 was a failed attempt at for-profit monetization, and 2020 to 2024 was about building community – now that we’ve transitioned to a non-profit model – how the hell are we going to survive?

Purpose

As a registered charity, our future depends upon people believing in what we do and giving us their money to support the mission. Thing is, up to this point – we didn’t have a mission. We didn’t have a purpose. For sure we connected people across cultures, nations, and generations (which is pretty awesome in itself,) but aside from publishing amazing playlists, we didn’t have a purpose or any kind of organizing belief.

It was time to establish what that was going to be.

It’s In The Title!

It was music that brought us together. It was music that was at the center of the original idea and the reason why people stuck around. But what was it about us – the musicto community – what beliefs about music did we have in common?

We noticed that the people who stayed all shared a deep enthusiasm for music – we all thought music was great. There were songs, albums, and artists we loved that we wanted to share with a wider audience. Our playlists were a great way to introduce listeners to this music – and we believed this was a good thing.

When we distilled this down, we got to a simple truth: we all believed that music can make the world better.

And this was the unlock.

There’s a big difference between “We’re a global community that makes playlists” and “We’re a global community that believes music can make the world better.”

So we now have an organizing principle, something we can communicate effectively to grow our community. Great. We also have a culture of collaboration that creates opportunities for connection and relationships to form, with a secondary benefit that it creates unique “content” that can be published and distributed across multiple platforms. Double Great.

But if people are going to give money to our organization, we need a more tangible output – something visible, something that people recognize as making a difference.

What Do We Know To Be True?

It’s 2025 and the world is feeling kinda scary. And it’s not just the sense of uncertainty and the constant, rapid change – it’s the fear that is constantly being stoked. We’re being told to dislike, to distrust, to hate “the other” – to hate people who are different from us. The rhetoric tells us that people with opposing views aren’t just wrong, they’re evil.

At musicto, we know this isn’t true.

In our global community – of all cultures, nations, and generations – we’ve found the more different we are – the more interesting our creative output becomes. It’s our differences that make our playlists so compelling and our relationships so unexpected and nourishing.

So how do we bring this truth to the world? How do we enter the narrative and begin to change the conversation around hate and fear?

Well, we have a global community with a global platform – let’s gather some data.

What Are You Afraid Of?

In the beginning of March we started asking the question “What Are You Afraid Of, And Why?”

We asked our community, we asked friends and family, we asked artists that were submitting tracks, and visitors to our website. Along with the question we also asked their generation and the continent they live on.

We hypothesize that the data will show we have way more in common than your local demagogue might like ;-p. We think the insights around age and location are going to be novel & interesting enough to catch people’s attention.

The plan is to create a compelling publication that can be distributed across multiple platforms and pitched to media outlets. We intend to use this as a calling card to enter the conversation around hate and fear, ultimately sharing how musicto’s approach to creative collaboration could be explored in other communities.

We’ve had over 500 responses in the last two months and we’re aiming for a thousand before we do the first real analysis. Please take a few minutes to answer the question – and if possible – share this page with everyone you know. While 1,000 responses would be a great start, 10,000 responses would be amazing.

What Are You Afraid Of?

Coda

This is the first “program” from the musicto community. We anticipate many more.

Now that we’ve worked out a process, we can replicate this in the future. Because we ask responders if they’d like to be informed when we publish insights, we have a growing mailing list of people we can reach out to. There are many questions we’d like to ask the world.

Sharing insights from our global audience enables us to enter different conversations and help change the narrative, however this is just one strategy. We know there will be new ideas and opportunities that become available to us as we grow and develop.

musicto is a long play, we plan to be around for decades, centuries even. We believe that millions, even billions of people believe as we do – that music can make the world better. If we grow our global community and connect a fraction of them – through music – the impact would be extraordinary.

You can support our work by making a donation here

How musicto Evolved – Part 2 (2020 – 2024)

2025-05-09T13:27:54Z

Out Of The Ashes…

While the initial business model failed, it was clear that something had been created.

By the end of 2019, musicto.com was pulling in 42,000 visits a year from organic traffic alone. That number grew to 74,000 in 2020, with the site delivering over 300,000 page views. The website worked, and the playlists, even though they couldn’t be monetized, defined what we were about: quirky, human, and created with love.

While we didn’t have a business model, we had a brand.

Alignment Is Not Community

For the 100+ people that joined in the first 3 years, we had over 500 curator applications. We reached out to about 150 candidates and offered them a 30 minute Zoom interview with a member of the core team to check alignment. If the fit was good, they’d create their own 10 track playlist, sign a curator agreement, and we’d give them a paid seat in the slack channel which we referred to as our “community”

We offered help with design, developed training videos and email sequences, we established best practices for social media management and how to respond to artists, we helped them build their own email lists and distributed the playlists across the major streaming platforms, as well as producing analytics and KPIs – all to empower the individual to grow their audience.

And yet within 6 months to a year, close to 90% of curators put their lists on hold and left.

In conversations, the overwhelming response was that the playlist was taking up too much of their time. What we were requiring them to do – in order to be on our platform – was just too much. With no likely monetization in sight, it made sense that people would turn their attention elsewhere.

It was clear we had two problems:

1/ Our positioning was offering people something we couldn’t deliver

2/ We didn’t have a community, we had a network of people who were aligned towards a common goal

Once we wrapped our head around this, we changed the language on our join page to de-feature the monetization aspect of musicto and played up the idea of community.

We also set out to build one.

Our strategy?

Investing in People

While most curators moved on, some didn’t. Early collaborators like Chris and Jon were soon joined by curators like Matt, Maria, Jorge, and Jane – people who felt part of the project and were already volunteering their time to help out.

We offered mentoring and internships to community members – we taught digital marketing and coached them on project management and communication skills. We got approvals from NYU and Liverpool University’s music departments to offer internships, and worked with music business students on playlist marketing and audience development.

While the change in language on our join page significantly reduced applications (aside from the Covid spike,) we started attracting a different kind of person. The arrival of Andie, Otis, Jenna, Molly, Sky, Nuno, & Lindsay, enabled us to develop a social media team, a community nurturing team and a systems development team.

Outside of these volunteers, we still had long standing curators like The Hoof, Ben, Lyris and others who were still showing up and publishing, along with new people joining the community and contributing their love of music to the mix.

Yet even with this new approach, community remained elusive.

Creative Collaboration Creates Community

The core team continued to grow & strengthen but community members had little reason to connect and learn about each other. As Slack got too expensive we moved to Facebook Groups and tried to develop community there with little success.

We bit the bullet in 2021 and hired a community consultant to help us with our next move. On their advice we moved to a dedicated community app called Circle, where we still run the community today, she helped us with architecture and gave us some ideas to generate connection. But none of it really created the traction we were looking for.

And then – by complete accident – we found it.

Two community members decided to make a playlist together. In that process, they learned things about each other, recognizing they had more in common than they’d thought. While they built this great playlist, they actually built a better relationship.

When we saw that, it clicked: if community strength reflects the number and type of connections between members – this mechanic – this simple process of collaborating together to make a playlist – could create stronger connections between our people – and do so in a way that was rewarding and fun.

In 2021, we made collaboration the north star metric of the community. We redesigned the front page to feature our collaborative playlists – we changed our join page language and onboarding process so that new potential community members had to make a collaborative playlist with an existing member before they gained access to the community.

Attrition went from 90% prior to Covid to less than 50% afterwards and now with 40 active community members and a core team of 10 people working in the organization – we’re in good shape for the next phase.

Finding the Business Model

And then there was the money.

Running musicto isn’t free – there’s software costs, design costs, development costs, migration costs, – all the costs 😉 At times we’ve experimented with paying people during which everything accelerates, but without a revenue stream or visible business model on the horizon, it becomes unsustainable pretty quickly.

This period saw a significant investment in infrastructure. We migrated the website to a professional WordPress environment (thank you Jon!) – we invested in systems to improve artist track submission, upgraded our community functionality, invested in design and development to improve the look of the website and upgrade the brand – as a result, traffic continued to grow and we had options.

The biggest revenue stream open to us was (and still is) to charge artists for submitting their tracks. Charging a single dollar per submission would have brought in hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month. Nobody on the core team wanted to do it. We kept – and will always keep – track submission for artists free.

We had labels and distributors who wanted to take advantage of our traffic and visibility – they were offering to pay for write ups and reviews and playlist placement. Again – none of it felt right – if we were receiving money to place one artist over another – then we’re just perpetuating the same old system of haves and have nots which was antithetical to the underlying ethic of musicto and the core team.

Not least – the minute you know a playlist or a person can be “bought,” they lose their integrity – their authenticity – and pretty quickly their brand dies.

So, if we couldn’t monetize our playlists, refused to take payola or charge artists, and if the world isn’t yet ready for a DAO with a mature token economy, the only model left to us was non-profit.

In 2023 we successfully applied to become the musicto Foundation, a 501 (C)(3) registered public charity.

How musicto Evolved – Part 1 (2016 – 2019)

2025-05-09T13:26:05Z

Let’s start with what we are today – a purpose driven global community that believes music can make the world better. No longer dependent on finding a monetization strategy, we are a program of the musicto Foundation, a registered 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization.

Although still relatively small, musicto has a global community of around 40 people who actively contribute every month. We use the creation of collaborative playlists to identify culture fit and establish connections between community members, we publish those playlists to attract the attention of artists and listeners alike.

Our website at musicto.com receives around 10,000 visitors a month, we publish playlists 2 to 3 times a week, and we receive over 150 new tracks a week submitted to the community by artists looking to get their music on our playlists.

While on the face of it – this doesn’t sound terribly different from where we were a few years ago – the reality is we are fundamentally different in both culture and aspiration. This document is for the hundreds of people who came through musicto and contributed their time and talent. Thank you – we would not be here without you.

What We Thought musicto Was (2016 – 2019)

The original idea was simple: grow audiences for individual playlists and monetize the audience.

There was real belief and indicators that this would work. At one point we had 50 active playlists and were publishing 100 tracks on musicto.com every month. Curators were sharing tracks out to 60,000 social followers with over 10,000 subscribers to our playlists. Our growing visibility meant artists were finding us for track submissions. Playlists like burn a million miles, fight evil, and write an essay to were driving streams for the tracks they featured, and for a while – it looked like the whole thing might work.

What Broke

While social presence was important, the key metric for artists was number of streams inside Spotify. If a track generated a certain number of organic streams in a certain period of time, it was picked up and moved onto the algorithmically generated playlists like discover weekly and release radar. If the track did well there – i.e. – people liked it, pushed it onto their own playlists, etc, it could then be picked up by Spotify’s own human curated country or genre lists, ultimately aiming to arrive on the holy grail of lists like Rap Caviar or Todays Top Hits. What musicto offered new artists was the initial spark to get them noticed by the algorithm.

Having spent its first decade nurturing the independent playlist curator, in April 2018 Spotify rebranded the app, de-featured the independent curators that had championed the platform, and replaced them with Spotify branded playlists. And so began the enshittification of the platform.

The effect on musicto curators was demoralizing. Running a playlist takes time – time to listen to loads of music in order to find a great track, time to write a paragraph or two about the track and give context around why someone should listen to it, time to source an image and send both off to be published, time to take the published post and share it out across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

This was OK so long as the platform was growing, subscriber counts were going up and the dream looked attainable. When it became clear that subscriber growth was slowing dramatically and that, while still feasible, it would take 5 years or more to grow a potentially monetizable audience, most curators put their list on hold.

Sycophancy in Leadership and Collapse: A Historical and Modern Survey

2025-03-06T16:18:03Z

Andrew note: I’ve been looking to try out GPT’s Deep Research function - after the last week of the Trump presidency I had an idea. Here is the prompt that I used:

“So, I'm watching the Trump presidency and something's really, really nagging me and it's the requirement for sycophancy. It's a requirement for obsequiousness. You know, watching Zelensky in with Trump and everybody, you know, the right wing is saying, well, you've just got to butter him up, you've got to be nice to him, you've got to flatter him. And that's the thing that's doing my head in, because it just feels wrong. It feels absolutely wrong, and I have a gut feel and intuition that if we look at history, that there are times in history when, where sycophancy was required by the prince, by the leader, what happens?

My gut feels it has to fail. What I'm looking for is deep research across history, across recorded human history, of when strong princes arrive, and leaders and, you know, whatever, executives. We can see this in the business world too, where they created this culture of ego where the leader needed to be flattered, where you needed to become an expert in sycophancy, in obsequiousness, in order to get what you want.

I want to know what the implications of that, and does it match my hypothesis that a requirement for sycophancy in a political structure or a business structure is ultimately a road to ruin.”

The above title and the following essay were the result. I then worked with it to produce a more manageable blog post.

Sycophancy – the excessive flattery and unquestioning loyalty toward a leader – has been a toxic element in many regimes and organizations throughout history. When leaders surround themselves with yes-men and silence honest feedback, decision-making suffers. Below, we examine cases from Ancient Rome, Renaissance and early modern Europe, 20th-century dictatorships, and corporate boardrooms where a culture of obsequious loyalty led to disastrous outcomes. For each, we consider how flattery influenced governance, the mechanism of failure (collapse, overthrow, or implosion), and whether sycophantic culture consistently predicts failure.

Ancient Rome: Emperors and the Perils of Flattery

Roman emperors wielded immense power, and some succumbed to the allure of divine adulation and total loyalty. In these cases, sycophancy warped imperial judgment and hastened their downfalls:

Caligula (37–41 AD): Initially welcomed as a benevolent ruler, Caligula’s reign quickly degenerated after he demanded to be treated as a living god. The young emperor basked in worship “from the sycophantic senators who surrounded him,” who flattered his ego and indulged his whims - alexandermeddings.com. Caligula’s insistence on absolute deference led to erratic rule – he arbitrarily executed those perceived as threats and even appointed his horse as a priest and senator, according to lore. His alienation of the Praetorian Guard and political class led to his assassination by his own officers in 41 AD, illustrating how a court full of flatterers provided no protection when backlash came - alexandermeddings.com. The regime’s collapse was swift once his inner circle turned on him.
Nero (54–68 AD): Nero’s early reign was guided by sensible advisors like Seneca, but as he grew confident he became “susceptible to flattery and manipulation by others.” He pushed away independent counselors and filled the Roman Senate with “sycophants and those too fearful to speak out against his excesses.” - historyskills.com - historyskills.com Surrounded by yes-men, Nero made a series of catastrophic decisions – including costly extravagances and violent purges of any perceived critics. This climate of fear meant no one dared restrain his excesses. The result was mounting public and military discontent. Nero’s isolation from reality proved fatal: rebellion erupted in 68 AD, and having lost the support of all segments of society, the emperor was forced to commit suicide as his regime collapsed into civil war - historyskills.com. Here, sycophancy directly undermined governance by removing honest counsel and sowing fear, leading to revolution.
Commodus (180–192 AD): The son of Marcus Aurelius, Commodus surrounded himself with favorites and lived in a fantasy of his own greatness. As emperor, he became increasingly “divorced from reality” - history.com – styling himself as the god Hercules and renaming months of the year after himself - history.com - history.com. The Roman elite were alarmed by his madness, but “few dared challenge him publicly” because those who did risked execution - history.com. In Commodus’s court, telling the truth meant death, so flattery was the norm. He indulged in gladiatorial spectacles and neglected state affairs, all the while hearing only praise. This lack of corrective feedback led to administrative chaos and conspiracies. Eventually even his inner circle had enough – his mistress and top officials poisoned Commodus and had him strangled in 192 AD - history.com. The mechanism of failure was an internal coup, triggered by the emperor’s own courtiers when his sycophant-fueled misrule became untenable. Commodus’s demise marked the end of the Antonine dynasty and ushered in political instability.

In each of these Roman cases, sycophancy played a pivotal role in poor decision-making. Flatterers encouraged delusions of grandeur (even divinity), and critics were eliminated or silenced. Deprived of honest counsel, emperors like Caligula, Nero, and Commodus made reckless choices that alienated the army, Senate, and people. The end result was often violent overthrow or civil war – a direct collapse of stability caused by leadership insulated in an echo chamber of praise. Roman history thus provides early clear examples that a cult of flattery around a ruler is a dangerous “plague” on governance (as advisor Machiavelli would later note - litcharts.com ).

Renaissance and Early Modern Europe: Court Sycophants and Downfall

Absolute monarchs and popes of Renaissance Europe often maintained lavish courts filled with favorites and flatterers. This produced insular decision-making that, in several cases, led to political disaster:

Henry III of France (r.1574–1589): The last Valois king surrounded himself with a coterie of young favorites known as the mignons. These courtiers were derided as effeminate “inconsequential sycophants” by contemporary observers - historytoday.com . Henry III’s reliance on this clique alienated many powerful nobles – especially the ultra-Catholic League led by the Duke of Guise. While the king indulged his favorites, France drifted further into the chaos of the Wars of Religion. Eventually Henry III’s failure to build broader support proved fatal. He provoked a backlash by having Guise assassinated, and in 1589 Henry himself was stabbed to death by a fanatical monk. His death ended the Valois dynasty. Mechanism of failure: internal instability and factional revolt, exacerbated by perceptions that the king heeded only flattering courtiers instead of addressing the kingdom’s crises. Henry’s downfall shows that a leader who prefers sycophantic companionship over inclusive governance can lose legitimacy in the eyes of both elites and populace – in his case, fueling a dynastic collapse.
Charles I of England (r.1625–1649): Charles I’s reign demonstrates how “clinging tenaciously to a few intimates” can undermine a ruler’s position - britannica.com. Shy and convinced of his divine right, Charles placed great trust in a small circle of advisors and favorites. Chief among them was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham – a man whose influence “consolidated his grip on government” despite being deeply unpopular - britannica.com. Charles persistently defended Buckingham (and later, listened to his equally distrusted Catholic wife Henrietta Maria) against all criticism, dismissing or ignoring dissenting voices. This sycophantic bubble led Charles to govern autocratically without parliament for years. He remained stubbornly oblivious to legitimate grievances, insulated by courtiers who told him what he wanted to hear. The result was a steep breakdown in relations with the English Parliament and people. Eventually, the kingdom plunged into the English Civil War. Charles’s forces were defeated, and in 1649 he was executed by his subjects – a nearly unprecedented fate for a reigning monarch. Mechanism of failure: armed revolution and regicide. The king’s preference for flattery over frank counsel (what his opponents called rule by “evil counselors”) left him politically deaf until it was too late. Charles I’s fall underscores how a culture of sycophancy at the court contributed to catastrophic miscalculations and the loss of the crown (and the king’s head).
Spanish Habsburg Court (Philip III, r.1598–1621): In Habsburg Spain, sycophancy manifested in the form of royal validos (favorites) who effectively ran the state while the king remained passive. King Philip III was well-known for delegating almost all power to his favorite, the Duke of Lerma. He “drastically limited daily access to himself, granting it almost exclusively to” Lerma - en.wikipedia.org - en.wikipedia.org. Lerma in turn filled the government with his own allies and relatives, monopolizing influence. Before long, “the apparatus of the Spanish government was packed with Lerma’s relatives, servants and political friends, to the exclusion of others.” en.wikipedia.org This extreme favoritism meant that merit and honest advice were sidelined; only those who flattered Lerma (and by extension, the king) advanced. The consequences for Spain were serious: corruption and neglect of duty proliferated. Strategic failures abounded (such as costly wars and economic decay), yet Philip III remained blissfully detached, hearing only Lerma’s rosy assurances. While Spain did not “collapse” overnight under Philip III, it suffered a steep decline – marked by financial bankruptcies and the loss of its status as Europe’s preeminent power. The mechanism here was a slow internal stagnation: a once-great empire hollowed out by maladministration and sycophant-driven complacency. This pattern contributed to Spain’s long-term downfall in the 17th century. It illustrates that even without an immediate revolution, a flattery-filled leadership culture erodes the foundations of a state.

Across Renaissance Europe, thinkers had begun to identify this pattern. Niccolò Machiavelli warned princes to shun flatterers, calling flattery a cancer that breeds “self-deception” in rulers litcharts.com. He advised that a wise ruler must encourage honest counsel and make it safe for advisors to speak truth, lest the prince be lulled into mistakes by constant praise. The experiences of Henry III, Charles I, and others validate Machiavelli’s warning: courts full of “yes-men” leave leaders out-of-touch and prone to ruin. Whether by sudden revolution or gradual decline, sycophancy made these regimes brittle and ultimately led to failure.

20th Century Authoritarian Regimes: Cults of Personality and Collapse

In the modern era, many authoritarian leaders have deliberately built cults of personality, demanding unwavering adulation and punishing dissent. These regimes often appeared strong, but history shows sycophancy frequently sowed the seeds of instability and collapse:

Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1933–1945): Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship cultivated fanatical loyalty and silenced all opposition. Within his high command, generals learned not to contradict the Führer. Over time Hitler purged independent-minded officers, surrounding himself with compliant figures like Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel – who was derided even by colleagues as Hitler’s habitual “yes-man.” en.wikipedia.org By the final years of World War II, this echo chamber had dire consequences. Hitler was shielded from inconvenient truths about Germany’s failing war effort. Advisors and commanders, afraid to anger him, fed his delusions or stayed silent. For example, even as Allied armies closed in, Hitler issued orders for nonexistent divisions to counterattack, and few dared tell him these plans were fantasy. This climate of flattery and fear drove biased decision-making at the highest level, contributing to catastrophic military blunders (such as refusing retreats or wasting resources on “last stand” orders). The Nazi regime ultimately collapsed in 1945 under the weight of Hitler’s miscalculations and the Allies’ onslaught. In the end, Hitler retreated to his bunker, still barking unrealistic commands to loyalists while reality crumbled around him. The mechanism of failure was total military defeat, accelerated by the fact that Hitler’s sycophant-filled command structure could not correct his errors. The fall of the Third Reich is a prime modern example of how a dictator insulated by flattery became grossly overconfident and led his nation to disaster insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu.
Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania, 1965–1989): Ceaușescu’s communist regime demanded extreme personal loyalty. He created one of the most pervasive cults of personality in the Eastern Bloc, taking on titles like “Genius of the Carpathians” and basking in propaganda that exalted him and his wife Elena cato.org. For decades, officials and media in Romania dared not criticize Ceaușescu; instead they showered him with praise and even altered facts to please him. This sycophantic atmosphere led to wildly impractical policies – notably, severe austerity measures and grandiose building projects that impoverished the populace. Dissent was suppressed by the secret police, so Ceaușescu remained convinced of his people’s devotion. In reality, resentment was quietly boiling over. The breaking point came in December 1989. When Ceaușescu held a mass rally to denounce unrest, for the first time the crowd heckled and booed him on live television. The event had been carefully staged to show support, but the people’s spontaneous anger shattered the illusion. Ceaușescu was visibly stunned and confused, unused to any sign of dissent worldhistorycommons.org. This moment of truth exposed the regime’s fragility: “everyday Romanians saw the reality of the weakness of Ceaușescu’s regime,” and within 48 hours he was fleeing the capital, his power evaporated worldhistorycommons.org. The dictator and his wife were captured and executed by year’s end. Here the mechanism of failure was a popular revolution, triggered in part by the leader’s own miscalculation in believing his cult invulnerable. Ceaușescu’s fall underscores that a leader who tolerates only flattery may be blindsided by explosive backlash. His decades-long rule built on fear collapsed in a matter of days once the spell of the cult of personality was broken.
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1971–1979): As an African example, Idi Amin ruled Uganda through terror and patronage, styling himself “Conqueror of the British Empire” among other grandiose titles. Surrounded by sycophants, Amin made erratic decisions – such as the expulsion of the Asian business community – that wrecked the economy britannica.com. His inner circle constantly flattered him, concealing the regime’s growing weakness. In 1978, Amin’s delusional overconfidence led him to invade neighboring Tanzania, expecting an easy victory. Instead, the Tanzanians counter-attacked, and Ugandan rebels rose up. Amin’s army, hollowed out by years of nepotism and purges, collapsed. The dictator fled into exile in 1979 history.com - apnews.com. In this case, a combination of war and internal revolt unseated the sycophant-driven regime. Amin’s downfall highlights how rulers who only hear praise can grossly misjudge their capabilities – in this instance, leading to a war he could not win.
Other Cults of Personality: Many other 20th-century autocrats show similar patterns. The Soviet Union under Stalin enforced a strict “no bad news” rule; officials were so afraid to report contrary information that in 1941 Stalin initially refused to believe warnings of Nazi invasion, nearly causing a total Soviet collapse in WWII’s first phase. In Mao Zedong’s China, flattery reached such extremes during the Great Leap Forward (1958–61) that local cadres falsified grain reports to please Mao, contributing to a massive famine. Although Stalin’s and Mao’s regimes survived these crises, the human cost was enormous – a direct result of leaders being shielded from reality by obsequious subordinates. Moving into the late 20th century, regimes like Francisco Franco’s Spain or the Shah of Iran avoided honest reforms due to self-congratulatory circles, ultimately facing stagnation or revolution. Time and again, authoritarian systems that prize flattery and loyalty over competence enter a downward spiral. Either they implode from within (as infighting or succession struggles erupt once the “infallible” leader is gone), or they explode in crises that the deluded leadership cannot manage.

In sum, 20th-century history reinforces the lesson that a cult of personality built on sycophancy is a predictor of regime failure. Whether through war, uprising, or economic collapse, these dictatorships could not sustain themselves. The pattern is consistent: leaders drunk on adulation become overconfident and make fatal mistakes, and because dissent is gagged, corrections come only in the form of collapse. As one observer quipped about a modern cult-like leader, “You don’t bring bad news to the cult leader.” vanityfair.com In the end, reality brings the bad news in the form of regime failure.

Corporate Failures: Yes-Men in the Boardroom and Company Downfall

Sycophantic culture is not limited to politics – many businesses have collapsed due to leaders insulated by corporate yes-men. In companies where dissent is discouraged and executives are surrounded by flattering subordinates, strategic blunders often go unchecked until disaster strikes. Several high-profile corporate failures illustrate this:

Enron (Bankruptcy 2001): Enron was a Houston-based energy trading company that became one of the largest corporate frauds in history. A key factor in Enron’s collapse was its “culture of arrogance” and blindness to risk money.cnn.com. CEO Jeffrey Skilling hand-picked an inner circle that would always agree with him. In fact, one Enron executive later observed that Skilling “surrounded himself with 'yes men.'” digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu This culture meant unethical practices went unchallenged. Enron’s risk management department, rather than providing independent oversight, “were yes men with no real veto power.” eaglepointcap.com They rubber-stamped increasingly dubious deals and accounting tricks instead of raising alarms. With no one willing to question the leadership’s aggressive tactics, Enron’s financial situation spiraled out of control behind a facade of success. The company reported inflated profits and hid debt, and executives remained overconfident due to the constant positive reinforcement from subordinates. When reality finally caught up – through whistleblower revelations and failed deals – Enron imploded virtually overnight. It filed for bankruptcy in December 2001, wiping out $60 billion in market value and thousands of jobs. The Enron scandal vividly shows how a “yes-man” culture leads to biased strategic decisions and overconfidence, as studies have confirmed insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu. Without honest internal debate or bad news filtering up, the company’s leadership drove straight off a cliff.
Theranos (Liquidation 2018): Theranos was a Silicon Valley biotech startup that claimed to revolutionize blood testing. Founder/CEO Elizabeth Holmes cultivated a highly secretive, cult-like corporate culture. Holmes was charismatic and was compared to Steve Jobs – and her staff treated her word as gospel. She tolerated no dissent: employees were warned never to question the company’s technology or her decisions. A former employee-turned-whistleblower, Erika Cheung, testified that “People were very scared of upsetting Elizabeth Holmes and…scared of losing their jobs.” ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu This climate of fear and sycophancy meant that even as Theranos’s blood-testing devices failed internal tests, employees and even executives hesitated to speak up. Holmes’s inner circle (including her second-in-command, Sunny Balwani) reinforced her false narrative that all was well, while dissenters were fired or silenced with legal threats ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu. As a result, Theranos for years misled investors and partners, and Holmes continued to believe her own hype that the technology would eventually work. The mechanism of failure came when investigative journalists and regulators finally pierced the veil. With no truthful voices internally to course-correct, the company had charged forward on false data until external scrutiny revealed the fraud. In 2018, Theranos collapsed, its multi-billion-dollar valuation gone to zero and Holmes later convicted of fraud. The Theranos saga underscores how a “toxic culture of fear” eaglehillconsulting.com can doom a company: bad news was suppressed to please the CEO, so problems festered until they became fatal. Had Holmes fostered an open culture (or heeded her scientists’ warnings), the outcome might have been different.
WeWork (Failed IPO 2019): WeWork provided shared office spaces and saw breakneck growth under CEO Adam Neumann – until its near-collapse in 2019. Neumann’s leadership style was often described as cult-like. Former executives noted that Neumann reacted poorly to criticism and would surround himself only with believers. “You don’t bring bad news to the cult leader,” one ex-executive quipped of Neumann’s management vanityfair.com. In the years leading up to 2019, WeWork’s internal culture became increasingly sycophantic: fantastical goals (like expanding to Mars or a $10 trillion valuation) were met with cheers rather than skepticism. This unrealistic optimism, reinforced by Neumann’s inner circle, led WeWork to greatly overextend itself – signing leases and acquisitions at a pace that far outstripped revenues. When WeWork filed for an IPO, the prospectus revealed huge losses and alarming governance issues (many stemming from Neumann’s unchecked authority). Public investors balked, the IPO collapsed, and the company’s valuation plummeted from $47 billion to under $10 billion vanityfair.com. Neumann was forced out. In WeWork’s case, the company survived after drastic downsizing and leadership change, but the episode cost thousands of jobs and billions in investor capital. It demonstrated that even in the modern “startup” era, a CEO who is treated as infallible and “larger than life” can lead a company into a bubble of denial. The lack of internal dissent at WeWork meant warning signs (unsustainable spending, governance red flags) went unaddressed until the brink of collapse.
Other Examples: The early 2000s saw multiple corporate scandals tied to insular leadership. Boards that prized conformity and punished dissent – as in Tyco and WorldCom – enabled massive fraud and subsequent collapse emmerichfinancial.com. In such cases, directors often acted like yes-men to celebrity CEOs, rubber-stamping risky mergers or fraudulent accounting. When reality hit, these firms imploded (WorldCom in 2002 with an $11 billion fraud, Tyco’s CEO convicted of larceny in 2002 and the company broken up). Even established companies have suffered from a culture of obsequiousness: at General Motors in the early 2000s, management famously developed “GM Nod” – everyone would nod in agreement at meetings, but problems (like design flaws) remained unspoken. This contributed to GM’s stagnation and bankruptcy in 2009. In the Boeing 737 MAX crisis (2018–2019), investigators found that a culture of silencing engineers’ safety concerns in order to appease executives was a factor in two deadly crashes. These examples confirm that in business, like in politics, a yes-man culture is “downright dangerous.” haas.berkeley.edu Flattery and fear lead to unethical or imprudent decisions, and eventually, the market, regulators, or disaster catch up with the company.

Patterns and Implications: Sycophantic Culture as a Predictor of Failure

From ancient emperors to modern CEOs, the pattern is strikingly consistent. While the contexts differ, the dynamics of sycophancy-driven collapse share common elements:

Isolation from Reality: Leaders surrounded by sycophants become insulated from accurate information. Flatterers filter out inconvenient facts and tell the leader what they want to hear. Roman senators showered a capricious emperor with divine titles; modern executives received only optimistic forecasts from subordinates. This creates an echo chamber where the leader’s views (however unrealistic) are constantly reinforced.
Overconfidence and Poor Decisions: Bathing in praise, leaders grow overconfident and arrogant insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu. Without critical voices, they make high-stakes decisions based on wishful thinking or ego. Caligula felt invincible enough to provoke anyone; Charles I refused all compromise; Hitler overestimated his military genius; Enron’s executives took reckless financial gambles. Sycophancy acts as fuel for hubris, warping the decision-making process at the top. As Machiavelli cautioned, flattery is a “plague” that feeds self-deception in rulers litcharts.com.
Suppression of Dissent Undermines Capacity: In a sycophantic culture, competent advisors either become yes-men or are removed. This hollows out the institution’s ability to respond to crises. Nero purged talented generals and officials and replaced them with toadies historyskills.com. Ceaușescu’s regime promoted loyalty over expertise, resulting in absurd economic policies and a security apparatus that could enforce silence but not solve problems. In companies, whistleblowers and critical thinkers are sidelined, preventing early fixes to issues. The organization loses adaptive capacity, becoming brittle.
The Tipping Point – Reality Strikes: Eventually, reality pierces the bubble. It might be military defeat, popular revolt, financial insolvency, or public scandal, but a breaking point arrives that the flattery-blinded leadership fails to see coming or lacks the credibility to survive. Because sycophantic regimes have usually alienated many stakeholders (e.g. generals, nobility, investors, consumers), once cracks appear, collapse can be rapid. The fall is often dramatic – assassination (Caligula, Henry III), revolution (French Revolution partly against out-of-touch courtiers, Romanian Revolution), bankruptcy (Enron), or other downfall mechanisms as detailed above.
Aftermath – “House of Cards” Collapse: The aftermath of a sycophant-driven collapse often reveals that the stability under that leader was illusory – a house of cards. When the fear or awe holding underlings in line dissipates, the regime or company can unravel very fast (as seen in 1989 Romania or WeWork’s valuation plunge). In contrast, leaders who encourage honest feedback may avert disaster or at least manage a softer landing.

Given these patterns, it is fair to conclude that sycophantic cultures are indeed a consistent predictor of failure – especially when external pressures rise. Flattery can prop up a leader’s ego for a time, but it is a poor long-term strategy for governance or management. History’s successful rulers and CEOs tend to be those who actively seek out constructive criticism and diverse viewpoints, precisely to avoid the trap of yes-men. The fate of those who did not – from the Roman emperors to modern corporate fraudsters – serves as a cautionary tale.

Implications:

Promoting a culture that values truth over flattery is crucial for stability and success. In politics, this might mean institutional checks and balances that empower frank advisors (as Machiavelli advised: “make men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you” deepstash.com). In business, it means strong corporate governance and a climate where employees can question decisions. Modern research in leadership science reinforces this age-old wisdom: studies have found that high levels of flattery and opinion conformity “increase CEOs’ overconfidence in their strategic judgment,” leading to biased decisions and performance declines insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu. Thus, beyond the anecdotal historical cases, there is empirical support that an unchecked ego surrounded by yes-men is bad for organizations.

In summary, the survey of cases from Ancient Rome, Renaissance courts, 20th-century dictators, and corporate boardrooms reveals a clear through-line: leaders who demand extreme loyalty and flattery create the very conditions of dysfunction that often lead to their downfall. Sycophancy might offer a short-term ego boost or an illusion of unity, but it comes at the cost of long-term resilience. The broader historical pattern is that regimes and companies built on servile praise and suppressed dissent are brittle – they lack the internal corrective mechanisms to adapt or self-correct, and eventually they fail, often spectacularly. Great leaders, by contrast, find ways to hear the hard truths. As the proverb goes, “Better to have wounds from a friend than kisses from an enemy” – the wounds of honest advice can save a kingdom (or company), whereas the sweet kisses of sycophants may destroy it.

Sources:

History Skills – “Emperor Nero’s Worst Murders” (on Nero’s purge of advisers and filling the Senate with sycophants) historyskills.com - historyskills.com; describes how fear and flattery isolated Nero, leading to revolts historyskills.com.
Alexander Meddings, The Emperor Caligula’s Unlikely Role Model – notes that Caligula accepted “worship as a god from the sycophantic senators” around him alexandermeddings.com; highlights his assassination by his own guard alexandermeddings.com.
History.com – “Was Commodus the Worst Emperor?” – details Commodus’s erratic behavior and detachment from reality, and that few dared challenge him publicly under threat of death history.com; describes his assassination by close officials in 192 history.com.
Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 23 – warning to avoid flatterers and encourage honest counsel, lest a ruler fall prey to the “plague” of flattery litcharts.com.
History Today – “The Court of Henry III of France” – notes Henry’s mignons and that contemporaries dismissed these favorites as “inconsequential sycophants” historytoday.com.
Britannica – “Charles I – Slide to Civil War” – observes that Charles “clung tenaciously to a few intimates” (like his Catholic wife and Duke of Buckingham) at great political cost britannica.com, contributing to his isolation and eventual downfall.
Wikipedia – “Philip III of Spain” – documents how Philip III gave almost exclusive access to the Duke of Lerma en.wikipedia.org and that Spanish government offices were filled with Lerma’s allies “to the exclusion of others.” en.wikipedia.orgThis favoritism led to an unpopular, ineffective administration.
Cato Institute – “Rise and Fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu” – describes Ceaușescu’s extreme cult of personality, with titles like “Genius of the Carpathians” cato.org.
World History Commons – “Video of Ceaușescu’s Last Speech” (1989) – provides an account of how the carefully orchestrated rally went off-script as the crowd heckled, leaving Ceaușescu confused and exposing his weakness, “moments [that] explain why, a mere 48 hours later, Ceaușescu was attempting to flee.” worldhistorycommons.org
Northwestern Kellogg School of Management – study on CEO overconfidence: high “flattery and opinion conformity” toward leaders results in overconfident, biased strategic decisions insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu (supporting the corporate pattern).
Seattle Post-Intelligencer via Seattle Univ. Law Review – notes from an Enron executive that Jeff Skilling “surrounded himself with ‘yes men.’” digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu.
Eagle Point Capital – “Lessons from Enron” – discusses Enron’s internal culture: the risk management team were yes-men with no veto power, so checks and balances failed eaglepointcap.com.
Distractify (via Erika Cheung’s account) – reports that at Theranos, “People were very scared of upsetting Elizabeth Holmes…scared of losing their jobs,” highlighting the fear-based, flattery-filled culture under Holmes ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu.
Vanity Fair – “Inside the Fall of WeWork” – quotes a former WeWork executive: “You don’t bring bad news to the cult leader.” vanityfair.com, referring to CEO Adam Neumann’s aversion to dissent, which contributed to WeWork’s near-collapse.
Emmerich Financial (The Emmerich Group) – commentary on corporate boards, noting that companies like Tyco, WorldCom, and Enron had boards where conformity was prized and dissent punished emmerichfinancial.com, leading to governance failures.

Getting a Community to Pivot

2025-02-16T21:48:24Z

In order to course correct our community, the leadership decided on a 2 email strategy. Here are those two emails:

Time for Something Bigger – Part 1

For eight years, musicto has been about playlists. For the last five, it's been about collaboration. While our playlists have brought us together, helped us connect, and built relationships that span the globe, they are the glue - not the goal.

We are proposing that musicto becomes a purpose-driven community. As a program of the musicto Foundation, we are organizing around one core belief: music can make the world better.

This is an invitation to be part of something bigger. If this resonates with you, brilliant - keep an eye out for tomorrow's email.

- Andie, Andrew, Jacob, Jane, Jenna, Lindsay, Maria, Matt, Molly, Otis

Let's Do This - Part 2

Let’s publish a book of our fears. Let’s publish and distribute what we are afraid of. Let’s see what a global community - one that doesn't care about culture, nation, or generation - has in common when it comes to what keeps us up at night.

Fear is universal. By publishing our fears, we give someone a chance to recognize themselves in a person they never imagined they had anything in common with. We think that once you see someone’s humanity, it’s much harder to hate them.

The link below takes you to a form. The more open & honest you are, the more powerful the project will be. You can submit your response anonymously and in your own language. We do ask for a little demographic information—just enough to draw some top level insights.

What Are You Afraid Of & Why?

There may be an edit in that second email - the first has already gone out - but it’s pretty close.

If you’re a Farcaster reading this - please feel free to click through and answer the question - the more input we have the more interesting the results.

What Are We Doing Here? Why musicto Needs a Purpose

2025-02-10T00:12:41Z

musicto ‘s nearly ten years old.

What started out as way to make money, evolved to become a way to make community. The musicto “community” now has 30 to 40 active people every month - this os cool ;-p

The musicto Foundation

Last year we created the musicto Foundation. We’ve kept it relatively low-key, running small experiments, testing ideas, and seeing what resonates.

After a year of refining our vision, we’ve landed on a simple, guiding statement:

The musicto Foundation exists to make the world better through music.

We do that in two ways:

Connecting people through music. This has always been the core of musicto. The collaborative playlist model has brought together people from different cultures, nations, and generations—building relationships and sparking conversations through shared music. With hundreds of playlists already created, this is something that clearly works.
Changing the conversation around ideas that matter to us. This is where the foundation expands beyond playlists. As a global community, we have the ability to gather diverse perspectives, and create something that can shift the way people think. By putting a spotlight on certain topics, we can influence conversations, challenge assumptions, and offer insights that wouldn’t exist without the collective input of our members.

The foundation isn’t just about connecting people —it’s about working with the relationships that arise from those connections, to engage with the world in a deeper way.

Where Do We Start?

If our purpose becomes making the world better by producing meaningful insights, then what do we focus on first?

Hate is a thing we’re against. We perceive it to be increasing and we’d like to stop that - or at least - combat its rise. We spent many weeks looking at how we we could work with hat and it lead us to fear.

We can’t ask you “what you hate” or “who do you hate” or “who have you hated” - which would be fascinating things to read - but we can ask you - “what do you fear’ - fear and hare are close friends ;-p

Our Ask To You

We’re starting with a simple but powerful question:

“What are you afraid of right now? “

We’re not talking “I’m scared of spiders” or “I don’t like heights.” We mean deeper, existential fears—the things that keep you up at night, the worries that shape how you see the world.

By collecting these responses, we believe we might be able to see patterns, draw insights, and create something tangible: a publication that reflects the collective fears of our time. This isn’t about solutions. It’s about recognizing what we share and starting a broader conversation.

Why Should You Get Involved?

This is a shift for musicto. We’re evolving beyond playlists into something more meaningful. And we don’t know exactly how this will play out—this is an experiment. But by participating, you’re part of shaping what this community becomes.

Here’s why it matters:

Visibility. The more we create, the more eyes we get on musicto. More community members. More artists & track submissions. More listeners discovering our playlists. You know - the whole big is better thing ;-p
Community. musicto is about music and connection. This project strengthens that connection in a whole new way.
Impact. By contributing your thoughts, you’re part of something bigger. You’re helping document and shape a conversation about what it means to be human right now.

This is our first real collective project. We’re inviting every member of the musicto community to contribute. No wrong answers, no judgment—just an honest reflection on what’s on your mind. Let’s see what happens when we put it all together.

So, what are you afraid of?

M&Ms and Store Visits: What Van Halen Can Teach You About Running Retail Stores

2025-01-29T15:53:00Z

There’s a true story about Van Halen that has become legendary in business circles. In their tour rider—the document that tells the venue what they need for their stage setup and dressing rooms—they famously demanded a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. To outsiders, this looked like classic rockstar excess, but in reality, it was a brilliant safety check.

Think about what it takes to set up a live stage show. The weight of the stage, the electrical setup, ticketing, security, food preparation, allergy considerations—hundreds of moving parts need to be aligned to ensure a smooth performance in front of 20,000 fans. Van Halen knew that if they walked into the dressing room and saw brown M&Ms in the bowl, it meant the venue hadn’t read the contract carefully. If they missed something as small as an M&M request, what else had they overlooked? Faulty stage rigging? Inadequate safety measures? That one little detail was an indicator of the entire operation.

Now, let’s talk about retail. If you’re managing a chain of department stores, you have just as many moving parts as a stadium concert—staffing, culture, merchandise, display, customer experience, security, promotions, and so on. The question is: how do you, as one person, ensure that everything is running smoothly across multiple locations? What’s your version of the brown M&Ms test?

The Power of the Daily Walkthrough

I was trained in retail. I started in recruitment sales but transitioned into retail management and spent my twenties working as a store manager and buyer. No matter where I worked, one ritual remained consistent: every single morning, the store manager would walk the sales floor.

These were large stores, some with hundreds of staff and multiple departments, but without fail, the store manager would inspect every inch. As a floor manager, I had to walk them through my department. If everything looked immaculate, the visit was quick—check in on sales, staffing, and any concerns. But if something was off—poorly displayed merchandise, stock still being put out, a messy floor—then the manager would start digging deeper. Why wasn’t it right? What was happening beneath the surface?

That daily visit was the retail version of Van Halen’s brown M&Ms. It was a quick, tangible indicator of whether the store was running properly. If the sales floor wasn’t immaculate, there was a bigger issue—whether with staffing, scheduling, stock flow, or operational execution.

Why You Must Visit Every Store Every Day

The first thing a customer sees when they walk into a store is the merchandise and overall presentation. In less than a second, they form an impression of your brand.

As an operations or sales manager overseeing multiple locations, your number one tool for maintaining high standards is physically visiting each store every single day. You need to walk through the store with the manager, ensuring it is presented immaculately. If it isn’t, you ask why. You figure out what support is needed to fix it. And you repeat this process daily.

If you do this consistently, within two months, store performance will improve. The store teams will know that high standards are expected, and more importantly, they will understand that those standards matter. Your visits will force a level of discipline and accountability that filters down through the entire staff.

Of course, during your visits, you’ll talk about more than just store appearance. You’ll check in on merchandise, staffing, promotions, and operational issues. But none of those conversations happen if you don’t physically show up.

The Takeaway

If you want to drive sales and improve performance across your department stores, visit every store every day. Establish a high standard of presentation. When your store managers and staff meet those standards, it’s a strong indicator that everything else—staffing, merchandising, promotions—is also running smoothly.

Eventually, as your stores become more profitable, you can hire a deputy, and then you train your deputy to do the same thing. But it starts with you.

Every store. Every day.

What’s one belief you changed your mind about in the past year? What sparked the change, and how has it influenced your perspective?”

2025-01-13T05:17:06Z

That obligation is bad.

Over time the core team had gotten to a point where they felt guilty if they didn't show up - and they weren't: life got busy - other things took priority - they knew they "should" be moving the community forward but when it came down to it - they chose to do other things.

Because they felt so deeply for the community - their lack of attention morphed into guilt. The community they loved, and had worked so hard to create - was now causing them pain and the obvious solution was to disconnect.

So we adopted a guiding principal for 2024: "Remove the dread of obligation"

Everybody resonated with it. Those within the community "got it" as did those outside - the hypothesis being: if we removed the guilt for not showing up - we would show up more.

But we didn't.

Last year saw little to no leadership - no direction - no drive. The community continued to grow organically but stopped accelerating.

Absent salaries and community derived financial opportunity - it seems that obligation is necessary for community growth. Feeling that you "should" be doing something is a good thing.

This year we will embrace how we feel about the community - we won't negate the emotions - we'll examine them. It's likely that what has been missing is a lack of clarity in purpose - a misalignment between what the team can do, want to do, and are able to do.

Our feelings of obligation are a good thing - they're a reflection of how invested we are in the community and how we want it to succeed. If we can define our purpose and identify behaviors that are fulfilling rather than draining - our obligation will be rewarded.

I want to work with people who feel obligated

A Christmas That Never Ends

2024-11-22T15:40:05Z

The thing about guilt is, it doesn’t get quieter. You’d think it might fade, like the ink on an old case file, but no. It screams. It screams in the sizzle of oil from the wok downstairs, in the chatter of diners who never leave, and in the ghostly glow of the neon sign that flickers through my blinds: Golden Dragon. Open 24 Hours.

That’s my life now—Golden Dragon at all hours, the hum of the fryer keeping me company as I drink myself to death in slow motion. It wasn’t always like this. I used to be someone. A detective. A cop. One of the good guys. But the good guys don’t always win. Sometimes they just survive.

It’s Christmas Eve. My desk is a mess of half-empty whisky bottles, coffee-stained files, and a single photograph that cuts through the clutter like a knife. Rachel. Her smile’s still alive in the photo, a crooked grin she saved for me when we thought we could beat the odds. Her hair caught the winter light like spun gold. God, I loved her.

I down another shot.

There’s a knock at the door. Three sharp raps that cut through the noise of the restaurant below. I ignore it. Whoever it is, they’re not bringing anything I want.

“Andrew,” a voice calls. I freeze. I know that voice. Familiar, gravelly, full of regret. It’s Mr. Zhao, the owner of the Golden Dragon.

I open the door, and there he is, holding a plate of dumplings like an olive branch. His son stands behind him, shoulders hunched, eyes dark and hollow. The boy doesn’t say a word. He never does.

“Eat,” Mr. Zhao says, shoving the plate at me. “You look like shit.”

I don’t argue. I take the plate, setting it on the table next to the whisky. The boy lingers in the doorway, his presence as heavy as the memory that binds us.

“Something you need, Zhao?” I ask, lighting a cigarette.

He shifts uncomfortably. “Someone came by the restaurant asking about you. Said they had a case. I told them to leave.”

I flick ash onto the floor. “Good man.”

“They said it was important. Something about Rachel.”

I freeze. “What did you say?”

“I told them you’re not that man anymore. But they left this.” He pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me.

It’s a photograph, grainy and torn at the edges. A rally, swastikas glowing under the harsh light of a San Francisco winter. But it’s not just any rally. It’s that rally.

My chest tightens. I trace the edges of the photo with shaking fingers. The faces in the crowd blur together, but one stands out—a man in the foreground, his face twisted in a hateful sneer. I know him. His name is Sam Brewster, a two-bit Nazi wannabe who disappeared right after the rally.

My throat burns as I swallow. I thought I’d buried this. But here it is, digging itself up like a corpse that refuses to stay dead.

“Where’d they go?” I ask Zhao.

“They said they’d be at Pier 39. Midnight.”

I check the clock. It’s 11:15. Plenty of time to make a bad decision.

The pier is cold and clinical, the wind cutting through my coat like a scalpel. Christmas lights twinkle on the edges of the water, but they don’t make this place feel any less like a graveyard.

I see him before he sees me. Brewster. He’s older, heavier, but it’s him. He’s leaning against the railing, smoking a cigarette, his eyes scanning the water like he’s waiting for something—or someone.

I don’t give him the chance to make the first move. I grab him by the collar and slam him against the railing. “Talk.”

His cigarette falls to the ground, and he lets out a choked laugh. “Merry Christmas to you too, Detective.”

“I’m not a detective,” I growl, tightening my grip. “Not anymore. Start talking.”

He grins, his teeth yellow and uneven. “You still care about that girl, huh? What was her name? Rachel?”

I slam him again, harder this time. “Say her name again, and I’ll throw you in the bay.”

“Fine, fine,” he coughs, holding up his hands. “Relax. I didn’t kill her.”

“Bullshit.”

He shakes his head. “I was there, yeah, but I didn’t throw the rock. You know who did.”

I falter. He sees it.

“That’s right,” he says, his grin widening. “The kid. Zhao’s boy. You’ve been living above the guy who killed her this whole time. How’s that for irony?”

My fist connects with his jaw before I even realize I’ve swung. He stumbles, blood dripping from his mouth, but he’s still smiling.

“You can’t change the past, Detective,” he spits. “You’re chasing ghosts.”

I let him go. He falls to the ground, laughing through the blood.

I light a cigarette and walk away. His laughter echoes in my ears, mixing with the hum of the city.

Back at the Golden Dragon, the lights are dim, the restaurant unusually quiet. Zhao is cleaning tables, his movements slow and deliberate. His son is nowhere to be seen.

I sit at the counter, nursing a fresh glass of whisky. Zhao joins me, his eyes heavy with questions he doesn’t ask.

“You saw him,” he says finally.

I nod.

“And?”

“And he’s still a piece of shit.”

Zhao doesn’t respond. He pours himself a glass of baijiu and raises it in a silent toast.

“To Rachel,” I say, clinking my glass against his.

“To Rachel,” he echoes.

The guilt doesn’t get quieter. But for the first time in years, it feels like I’m not carrying it alone.

On Meme Coins & Community

2024-10-22T21:30:12Z

Caveat:
I know very little about meme coins. This is my perception based on where I’m at in my crypto journey,

The Evolution of musicto Community
When musicto started, the idea was simple: build playlists under a brand umbrella, attract an audience, and eventually monetize it. The issue? Most people expected to make money around their individual playlist. When that didn’t happen fast enough, they left. We had an 85% attrition rate because the motivation was personal gain first, community development second, if at all. That nearly broke us.

In 2019, we pivoted. We focused on supporting artists, building connections, and collaborating. That’s when things changed. We saw fewer people join, but those who did tended to stick around for much longer. Now, our attrition rate is under 50%, and people stay because they love discovering music, connecting across cultures, and being part of something that adds value to their lives. It’s a community built on shared values, not profit.

Meme Coins: What They Look Like to Me
Meme coins feel a lot like musicto in those early days. A group of people with a shared ideal outcome and a shared set of behaviors but little else in common. The outcome is ultimately extractive and zero-sum - some will win and some will lose and everybody’s OK with that going in, but that doesn’t make it a community.

People talk about meme coins having communities, but if there’s no utility or purpose outside “number go up”, it’s not sustainable when the number doesn’t.

Connection is Everything
A group of people doing the same thing with a shared goal looks like a community from the outside, but unless they have invested in internal connections and relationships, the “community” will fail the minute their shared goal becomes unattainable for most.

Finding a mechanism that creates connection is the holy grail. musicto found it through creative collaboration, but every community will need to find the unique “thing” that works for them.

I do see a musicto coin in the future. If we can architect it in a way that it enhances community development rather than personal gain, that would be huge. I have ideas.

musicto: A Place for Playlists on Warpcast

2024-10-18T20:29:09Z

Vision for the Channel

The vision for the musicto channel is a curated space where people on Warpcast discover and share music through the context of playlists. Starting with traditional artists, the goal is to move the focus to on-chain artists.

Why Playlists?

Good for the Listener

Music discovery has a cognitive switching cost - even if you’re in discovery mode, there’s a decision to be made as to whether you’re going to spend your time listening to a recommendation.

What I prefer about playlist over single track recommendations is that it reduces the risk of striking out when you choose to act. If I’ve switched from seek mode to listen mode, I don’t have to switch back so quickly if the track doesn’t resonate. I can skip to the next track and so on, which saves me time and cognitive spend.

Good for the Artist

New artists have little reason to be heard. Adding context in the form of a playlist informs the listener what kind of music they’re going to get. It creates an association between the new artist and the theme of the playlist, whether that’s genre, emotion / behavioral or even direct artist association.

This creates an expectation in the listener, making it possible for the artist to meet that expectation thereby pleasing and connecting with the listener in a deeper way.

Good for the Curator

Playlist curators are artists. They’re spending time to express an idea and create an experience that is communicating something meaningful. This creates opportunities to connect with others through the response to their work.

While the act of creating speaks to self-actualization, the opportunity for positive reinforcement from both listener and artist also speaks to esteem needs.

Good for Warpcast

Beyond just these roles, playlists add significant value to Warpcast as a platform. By bringing together three distinct groups—listeners, artists, and curators around a single piece of content, playlists can drive user adoption and engagement.

Warpcast becomes more than just a place for music discovery; it becomes a space for collaboration, connection, and shared experiences, amplifying the overall richness of the platform for all users.

Context for Playlists Too

I’m looking at how music is shared on Warpcast, when I see someone post a track with the text: “It’s a banger” or “check this out, it’s great” or even nothing at all, it makes it hard to choose to listen - see switching cost above.

We need to ensure we don’t do the same with playlists. Our playlist casts should always have a title, a single sentence summary plus a list of 8 artists that feature on the list. This approach creates multiple expectations in the reader / listener which can then be met.

How We Get There

Populate content from existing musicto playlists to gain attention

musicto.com has hundreds of unique collaborative playlists already formatted that can be brought across to the /musicto channel on Warpcast. They have interesting titles, single sentence summaries and featured artists along with playlist cover images and longer form descriptions that can add additional context.

We have a number of musicto community members already on the platform who can host, moderate and share playlists and tracks to the channel. This will provide a steady and consistent flow of playlists and tracks, all with interesting context that encourages followers and listeners to engage.

Channel membership & Hypersub

Channel membership will allow people to post their own playlists, increasing the amount and diversity of channel content. Early stage membership will be hand selected, potentially with a simple singed agreement around accepted behaviors (i.e.no spamming, jamming the feed, etc)

(Need to look at implications of public channel on basis of Dan’s post today)

Need to examine the logistics but if we can have a close to zero cost for gated access through Hypersub that then increases over time as desire for membership grows.

Ideally we would keep the channel sub cost the same throughout a members time in channel, i.e., if you joined the channel when membership was $5 a month, then it stays at $5 a month for you for as long as you subscribe, regardless of the channel price going up for new members.

Need to delve into basic tokenomics but if there’s a way to reward early adopters over time through airdrops - it’s something we should look at.

Shift priority and focus to on-chain playlists and artists

Once momentum is achieved and the channel is self sustaining and mods are getting compensated for their time, we move focus and reward to championing on-chain artists. How we do that is tbd but the end goal is potentially minting playlists where curators and artists all benefit equitably.

Next Steps

Create the /musicto channel

Creative Collaboration & the musicto Community

2024-10-14T05:34:48Z

I get asked a lot about why musicto seems to be working, it always comes back to the idea of creative collaboration. I wanted to write something that explains what creative collaboration means in the context of the musicto community.

A Group is Not a Community

The original idea behind musicto was to build and monetize playlists. Get a large enough audience inside Spotify and you had something of value that artists would pay for. Each playlist was essentially a blog on the musicto.com website - curators submitted a track a week with a dedicated write up, it was published on the website and they then shared the post to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The track was also added to their playlist across the major streaming platforms.

It was essentially an SEO play - at one point we were publishing over 40 unique articles a week on the website and traffic was growing.

At the time, there was no necessity for friendships or deeper connections to form as they had little impact on the core reason people were there—growing and monetizing playlists. The more people we brought in, the more unmanageable it became. Accepted group behaviors dropped off, and the cost of providing the platform got too high.

What I thought was a community in reality was a group of individuals working toward a similar goal, motivated by personal desires.

The Accidental Connection

But then something happened almost by accident. Two members of the group had a slack "fight" - disagreement over optimal strategy had led to a perceived personal attack, resulting in the kind of post that made everybody feel bad. And yet - because I knew them both and was able to moderate - they elected to listen to each other, resulting in a new level of understanding and the agreement to make a playlist together.

Through the process they started to get to know each other and—more importantly—began to respect each other’s opinions, tastes, and experiences. Through this collaboration, they discovered a shared love for certain music and similar experiences around particular tracks. They moved from a place of mutual disdain to a place where they genuinely became friends.

This was the first collaborative playlist published on the website.

Lowering the Barrier to Entry for Collaboration

What makes this type of creative collaboration so powerful is that it doesn’t require a high level of skill or talent to get started. If you’re a musician and you want to collaborate with other musicians, there’s a certain baseline skill set that’s required. Likewise, whether it’s writing an article, building something, rowing a boat, there needs to be a minimum level of competence for a collaboration to work.

But collaborating together to make a playlist, the barrier to entry is close to zero. You don’t need to be an expert or a musician, all you need is a love of music and some time.

Creating Something Unique

The beauty of collaborative playlist-making is that it requires both parties to bring their differences to the table. Your unique tastes, your experiences—things that might otherwise separate you—are exactly what make the playlist special. You end up with something new and unique that required both of you to make.

When a person from a different cultural background adds a regional track, the other counters with something from their youth, and by the end, they’ve got this crazy mash-up of genres and styles that could never have been made by one person alone.

And the best part is that it’s tangible. It exists on Spotify, on Deezer, on Amazon—it’s a real, published playlist. It’s not just some fleeting conversation that disappears. It’s a record of your collaboration, and you can always go back to it.

A Shared Experience and Connection

When someone adds a track and tells you why it means something to them, they’re giving you a glimpse into who they are—not because they have to, but because they want to. People want to connect. If a song resonates with someone personally, they’ll want to share why, and that opens the door to connection.

Suddenly, you’ve got a shared experience, a point of commonality—even if you come from different countries, cultures, generations, or backgrounds. You have this shared connection around a song, and it’s not about liking each other more—it’s about recognizing a shared humanity. And the more points of connection you find, the less likely you are to see the other person as “different” or “other.”

That’s the power of creative collaboration. When you collaborate, you create something that neither of you could have made alone. You learn about each other, discover shared points of interest, and end up with a unique product. And when it comes to something as simple and accessible as a playlist—one of the most common pieces of media out there—it opens the door to meaningful connection.

This is what’s happening within the musicto community. People from different nations, cultures, generations, and backgrounds are making playlists together—creating something unique and authentic that no algorithm could replicate. And through that process, they’re learning about each other, finding common ground, and building something that can be shared across the world.

That’s the power of creative collaboration.

How to Connect to People

2024-10-08T14:56:22Z

Saw a post on Warpcast that was making the case for “Connection” as being enough of a driver for the growth of channels - I couldn’t find theimages so went to Google trends and was playing:

It’s pretty apparent - certainly post covid - that people are looking to connect.

Organizations that operate in this space are certainly meeting the zeitgeist - has me thinking about the positioning statement for the musicto Foundation.

Thinking White Paper

2024-10-07T00:48:15Z

I’m grappling with the white paper for the musicto Foundation - I have all these ideas circling around my head - I know that ultimately there is a document (a thing) that pulls these all down and presents them in a coherent and compelling manner - but it seems so big and I don’t know where - or even how - to start.

Here’s some considerations:

Shifting from zero-sum to positive sum society

Inequality is rising - the world feels very distressed - there are great things happening in tech and tech optimists are right to believe that they may solve the problems but there’s a huge part of the planet being left behind.

When money’s involved - people get greedy - want more - it becomes a zero sum game with a few winners and lots more losers - this results in a world out of balance with itself - resulting in all the shenanigans we see today.

What to do about this - and why should we do anything about it.

Belief statement:

Change is only going to come about when people choose it - when people through their own experiences decide that a more equitable distribution of wealth makes more sense. And this can’t be forced but has to be voluntary.

I’m not advocating for Gandhi like status - one has to take care of oneself before one can help others (thank you airline safety talks) - but once you have enough - how do we change the trajectory away from accumulation to distribution?

Connection is Caring

It’s easy to not care about another person if you don’t know them - the more you know - the more you (most of the time) start to care for them - and then it becomes easier to imagine helping them.

I know - this is all sophomoric but I’m splurging out just for me.

Belief statement:

If we knew more about each other - if we had friends and colleagues and collaborators from different nations, cultures and generations - who we have learned share similar interests and desires and cares and worries etc - we stop the dehumanizing process - the hate process - and we start to create a more balanced and equitable world.

So - if the worlds a bit fucked at the moment due to the outcomes of I combined with human greed - resulting in “strong men” using FUD to harness the resources of the pissed off masses - how do we reverse that - why should we reverse that.

Should we reverse that?

Belief statement:

It’s better for humanity to move away from fascistic tendencies towards a more collaborative and connected world.

OK - so that’s the Why now piece combined with a little of the vision piece - but it’s a decent start to get it down on paper.

Next is the how piece.

Creative Collaboration Creates Quality Connections

So we’re setting out to help the world know each other. OK - nice and daunting - how do we go about that.

if we changed

I’m uninformed, not ignorant

2024-10-03T23:30:39Z

Listening to the second half of the many such cases podcast, episode three, with Ted and Johnny, and I’m so excited to hear them talk about the opportunities here—particularly as Johnny gets into how you take media out to the world. He’s like, “yeah, you have a hyper sub, then you post on Zora, then you do something else, and most people don’t think about this but for us it’s natural…” - or words to that effect ;-p And I can see the idea, I get the concept, but… oh my God, it’s so bloody hard to actually do it.

Maybe I am Ignorant ;-p

I know they reference this, but let me give you an example from my own experience.

I started by setting up a metamask wallet for myself ages ago when I was messing around with DAOs and NFTs. I participated in some of the early Water & Music DAO decisions (Oxford comma FTW!) but never looked at it as a financial application. To that point - trying to get money into the wallet was a nightmare - I ended up having our eldest kid transfer me some and I venmoed him the cash!

fast forward to this year and I realize I need a separate wallet for music2work2, my artist project - so that’s another metamask - I use the brave browser and have the extension - I can move money between wallets but I have little idea what the numbers are.

So now I’ve got money sitting in my browser wallet, which is all cool. But then there’s Base and Coinbase, and I thought, “Okay, I better have a Coinbase wallet too because that’ll let me do stuff on… I’m not even sure. I know some places want to use my coinbase wallet - hell I bought a couple of base names but don’t know how to deploy them - and now I have money in my base wallet - which wasn’t too painful to get in but then I couldn’t transfer any to my metamask wallet without waiting days and getting authorized which they made stupidly opaque.

And then I want to subscribe to sonata so I can participate on sonata.tips - and I think I bought something on hypersub - it shows that I am subscribed but I have no tips on the app and I’m guessing its my fault ‘cos I’ve got so many wallets - I think I have a rainbow one on my phone - I def have a base one on there - apparently one of them is smart ;-p (quick update - apparently i do now have notes!)

I have Zora on my phone and I seem to have spent some money on there - not quite sure but yes - I think I own some things.

I have minted tracks through Coop records but have no idea what means in respect to minting the same artist on sound.xyz.

People talk about community and it seems missing - at least to some utter neophyte like me.

What’s Missing: Simple, No-Bullshit Guides

If you’re a musician and want to get involved in the on-chain ecosystem, it’s hard. It’s not that I’m ignorant—I’m just uninformed and confused by all these overlapping platforms and terms. So, unless I find a decent guide, I’m going to write one myself: a series of simple, ABC steps on how to participate in the on-chain world.

I get that Coop Records is doing something similar with established artists, but for people who just want to get started and figure it out, we need a basic how-to. Start here, set up this wallet, talk to these people, and only then start to share what you’ve got. Listen to what’s going on, then look at what Hypersub is, read this article, check out what’s being created in the space.

What I’m Planning

I’m going to create a collection on musicto. It’ll be twofold: one, to celebrate on-chain artists, and two, to bring more artists on-chain by writing a series of basic, easy-to-follow steps on how to get involved in this ecosystem.

One last thing: I appreciate that the intent is to bring people like me on-chain, but the interface and design are still geared toward the existing crypto community. It’s just overwhelming. When I click on Hypersub, it’s like being thrown in the deep end. I wonder if it’s worth tech founders, on-chain founders, or infra builders allocating some resources to create really basic onboarding for newbies. Like, “Yo, if you’ve never used this before, if you don’t know crypto, start here.” That would be so cool, and I’d be stoked to help write it.

many such cases episode 3:

2024-10-02T13:54:16Z

So I’ve started the many such cases :) podcast, going back to the first episode in feb 23. As with the Coop records podcast I’m going to blog about what I’m learning and the insights I’m getting - so more stream of consciousness but also the development of a to do ;-p

Key takeaways from episode 3: farcaster, curation, creators, and contraction (still have 20 minutes to go)

1. Curation vs. Moderation in the musicto Community vs Farcaster channel

The episode highlighted the difference between curation and moderation. While the musicto community is still nascent and hasn't faced any major challenges yet, I recognize that we are a moderated community, focusing on behavioral norms. A musicto channel on Farcaster, for example, would need to be curated, not moderated.

Curation is more of a “benevolent dictator” approach, as Ted and Johnny pointed out, compared to moderation, which is more hands-off and community-oriented.

2. Establishing a musicto Playlist Channel on Farcaster

We need to create a musicto channel on Farcaster that focuses on playlists. It should be a place where people are encouraged to submit their playlists, but the key is that it will be heavily curated. If the musicto channel becomes known as the go-to for the best, most thoughtfully curated playlists, that’s a solid foundation. I want this new channel to embody our established curated approach, creating a space for high-quality playlists with intentional selections.

The channel should also have a clear set of submission guidelines, similar to Sonata’s best practices for how to interact. We need to write these guidelines and pin them at the top, defining the curated nature of the channel and making it clear how submissions are selected. We could have some of the musicto community members run it and keep it tightly curated, allowing paid submissions but ensuring the quality is maintained.

Action point: create paragraph.xyz channel for musicto

musicto currently has 367 playlists. We could highlight a playlist each day, feature it at the top of the channel, and pull out two or three tracks from it to add some context and commentary. That’s a year’s worth of curated content right there. This curated content could then be supplemented by new playlist submissions from the community, keeping it fresh and dynamic.

3. Onboarding Non-Web3 Native Builders

Everyone is talking about getting a billion people and a million builders on-chain, which is great, but it still feels opaque. If I were architecting this, I'd focus on supporting non-Web3 native builders coming into the space.

This ties into the hope that once musicto and the foundation gain visibility, we'll attract the right kind of people—those who may not be Web3 insiders but are interested in getting involved. Where’s the dedicated dedicated "Normie" or "Start Here" channel, making it easier for newcomers to navigate and engage with the community. I need to look into what other channels exist and figure out where we fit best.

4. Building Personal Visibility and Content Creation Strategy

It’s about time I become more visible. I need to investigate the Drakula app—not just on my phone but on Mac OS as well. If I can use it for recording while speaking to the camera, I could extract the transcripts and turn them into blog posts. This would give me content that I could repurpose across multiple platforms, from TikTok to native Drakula videos.

The Creator’s Journey

2024-10-01T14:42:09Z

This is part 4 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted.

The Inevitable Future for Artists

I was chatting with a metal musician recently—one of those guys who’s been at it for years, crafting angry, punch-you-in-the-face kind of songs. He was looking at booking shows from the East coast back to LA and was thinking about making an app that would make it easier for both venues and artists.

Having worked in music and tech and seen multi-million dollar funded apps come and go, I couldn’t help but be skeptical of the idea. I’m not one for discouraging creators but what I did do was encourage him to maybe re-allocate his resource into learning how to get his music on-chain.

I truly believe the world is moving on-chain—it’s happening. Maybe it takes a few years, maybe longer, but it just makes sense. It makes sense for artists, it makes sense for fans, and yeah, it even makes sense economically. If you’re an artist right now, this is like getting in on the ground floor of the internet or social media before anyone else really got it. That’s the level of opportunity we’re looking at. But damn, it’s hard.

The On-Chain Chasm: Crossing It Ain't Easy

The challenge is that it’s bloody difficult to figure out. It’s all tech—tech-heavy, tech-speak, tech-look. Artists, especially those not messing with digital tools like Ableton or Logic Pro, are staring at this massive wall of complexity. It’s like asking someone who’s spent their life on analog instruments to suddenly program a keyboard. The artist-tech crossover is there, sure, but for most musicians, the leap is huge.

And even if you get on-chain, guess what? The ecosystem is packed with people looking to make a quick buck—speculators, people playing zero-sum games, all in it for the money. That can be a brutal, disheartening introduction for any artist who just wants to connect with their audience and make music.

Why I’m Going All-In: My Own Creator Journey

But despite the tech challenges, the speculators, and all the rest, I believe this is the future. It’s why I’m diving back into my own artist project—music2work2—which I’ve been sitting on for eight years while I’ve been building musicto. And yeah, I’m putting it on-chain.

I’m not doing this halfway either. I’m going to learn everything about how the on-chain world works. I’ll experiment, collaborate, and share everything I learn. Why? Because I know the traditional music industry is stacked against the indie artist. It’s built for the one percent. But on-chain? On-chain gives you a real chance to connect with your audience, make money, and thrive.

So, yeah, I’m here for it. I’ll learn, I’ll experiment, I’ll fuck up, I’ll share—and I’ll bring the people I collaborate with along for the ride. The creator journey isn’t just about surviving. It’s about figuring out how to thrive, and I’m betting that happens on-chain.

A New Era for Independent Artists?

As more artists and fans join us on-chain, we have a chance to push past the rug-pulls and get-rich-quick schemes. It’s up to us to make it about the art again, about the connection between creator and fan, and about building something sustainable.

Thank You Ted & Coop

I’m 55 and I feel like it’s my first day at boarding school - arriving two weeks after term started when all the cliques and friendships have been made. I’m super grateful for the people who are building in the open, who are talking about it and creating media that someone like me can access and learn from.

I’m writing these posts as I think if I can explain it - I probably understand it. The plan being to write a simple on-boarding flow for artists and communities who have no clue about the on-chain world. I think that’s why this episode resonated so deeply with me - so yeah - thank you Ted & Coop - I hope to connect with you IRL one day!

Part 1: The Value of On-Chain Music

Part 2: Making Crypto Cool

Part 3: The economics of on-chain music

The Economics of On-Chain Music

2024-10-01T14:41:46Z

This is part 3 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted.

If we accept there's value to having music on-chain, we inevitably get to the question: "Well, what's it worth then?"

Maybe I'm old and nostalgic, but I like the idea of directly rewarding a musician for a song - giving them some of my money in payment for their time and talent. It feels fair, equitable, and just - right.

Can we get back to a world where people have a direct economic relationship with a musician (records, CDs, downloads, mints), or has music jumped the shark and become a commodity accessed through distributors via subscription?

If the mint price is 25 or 30 cents (where the artist sees most of that - I don't know how the costs break down in terms of gas and bridge fees), that sounds and feels pretty good to me.

If you don't pay for a subscription service and you listen to music, you're paying with your time to listen to ads - and that's accepted behavior. But if you do pay for music, say a $10 a month Spotify subscription, how much of a step is it to spend the same amount a month on collecting songs as well?

The idea that people pay $20 a month for music - $10 on a smorgasbord subscription and $10 where they're minting and collecting between 30 and 40 tracks a month, knowing the money is going directly to the artist - that feels pretty compelling.

Using Crypto's Technology to Accelerate Growth

It's still the same challenge though: how do you get people to see the value in minting if they can get it for free? Reducing the mint price to 25-30 cents makes it less of a burden and easier to make the case for direct artist support and the promise of future benefits - but what else?

This is where I think Coop's experience comes to the fore. He and Ted know there's a bull market coming, and they know that in those times, people are after one thing - money.

Can Coop Records come up with a way to create incentives that encourage people to get into on-chain music, but do so in a way that is ethically aligned with the artist?

I agree with Coop here. If there's a way to use crypto's strength to increase the size of the market - particularly when people are flooding in with financial motives - we can at least "Trojan Horse" them and get them into on-chain music in the process, as long as we protect the artists' interests.

I don't know enough yet, and there's a load of trial and error to be had. But as long as we're putting the artist first at the heart of the process - keeping it ethical, setting intent for music distribution first and speculative profits second - I say let's go!

Part 4: The Creator’s Journey

Part 1: The Value of On-Chain Music

Part 2: Making Crypto Cool

Making Crypto Cool

2024-10-01T14:41:27Z

This is part 2 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted.

Bringing Crypto Into the Real World

What do you do if you have a great idea and people dismiss it due to misinformation, even run screaming from it because they believe it’s a scam?

tldr: Make it cool

Get enough of the cool people doing something and the rest will follow. But how do you get them?

tldr: Bribe them for attention

If you want people to try something they have negative assumptions about, you’ll have to be compelling and tenacious.

Free Only Gets You So Far

Los Angeles is the worst for getting people to attend a gig. It’s hard to get someone on the west side to go downtown, and getting surfers to spend a school night in Hollywood is harder. I’ve walked Sunset handing out hundreds of flyers for my band’s gig at the Whisky, and people treat you like an alien ;-p

Having a good location, great entertainment, great music, and free alcohol stacks the deck in your favor. Clearly the Midnight Diner events have been brilliantly executed.

Getting people there is only half the battle - getting them a wallet and withholding booze until they get one - well that’s genius. My favorite story is the guy with a huge Instagram following making it clear he had no time for this - that he had 4 friends at the bar and just give me the wristband already ;-p. Credit to the Coop records team for standing their ground and the guy left with a wallet.

Now that the event series is successful - creating FOMO and the ability to sell tickets - its memetic spread will be linked with Crypto - that’s cool - that’s literally making crypto cool.

What’s Next?

I’m looking forward to see how the next Midnight Diner iteration plays out. Regardless of its success with wallet penetration, it’s creating an environment where artists and on-chain music are celebrated - and that’s great.

Andie, one of the node leaders at musicto, is based in the Philippines. She has a young event company, ATM Productions, about to put on their third event. This is their biggest one yet with recognized artists and she’s feeling the imposter syndrome.

I know they’ll do brilliantly - Andie’s a rock star. But could we be collaborating here? Collaboration is core to musicto - bringing people together from disparate regions and cultures through music. Is there a Coop Records template for Andie and her team? What are the cultural implications of wallet penetration outside the US - how do we tackle them?

If you’re in the Philippines, check out our spotlight on Andie and ATM productions. It’s people like her and Cece that inspire me!

Part 3: The economics of on-chain music

Part 1: The Value of On-Chain Music

The Value of On-Chain Music

2024-10-01T14:40:51Z

Just finished episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted - definitely my favorite one yet! It actually motivated me to go mint it and well, that turned out to be its own little journey.

There’s a lot going on in this episode which I wanted to unpack - I’ve broken this up into four separate articles – here’s Part 1:

The Value of On-Chain Music: Bi-directional Connection

I’m pro “on-chain” everything. Ethically and philosophically, I believe it’s the future. So, know that’s my bias coming into this.

The core discussion around on-chain is the “what’s the point?” question. Does it do things that can’t be done off-chain? Is it worth the cost? I think music is a great place to start making the case for moving on-chain, starting with the idea of control.

Bringing music on-chain gives control back to creators. There will be fewer intermediaries, fewer gatekeepers, and artists receive a larger share of the profits. But it's not just about money.

Having your music on-chain allows a direct relationship between artist and fan. Ted talks about how an artist who’s blowing up can see on-chain who bought their music early on - that is a powerful and novel idea. It’s powerful for the artist to know who has been supporting her and for the fan to know that the artist is aware and they can be rewarded for this early support.

The idea of a bi-directional connection between artist and fan, if positioned appropriately, could be reason enough to bring both parties on-chain

The Small (But Growing) Audience

The challenge is that there aren’t many people on-chain and those who collect on-chain music tend to be early adopters or speculators. Many current collectors might be in it for future rewards – farming XP or hoping for a token drop.

This pisses off the artists, like Coop’s mate Daniel who’s like, “if you can’t name any of my tracks you just bought - then fuck you,” or words to that effect ;-p.

How can we increase the audience size for on-chain music if there’s a strong case for both artists and fans to be on-chain?

The Onboarding Challenge

And this is the fun bit. As Ted says, it’s like building in hard mode. There are two major things at play. First, artists are wary of the crypto space. The idea of having their project - their brand - associated with what looks to the outside world as a grubby money-making scheme isn’t worth it for them. Second, getting people on-chain is bloody difficult.

I’m going through this process myself and I’m confused. I understand some bits but there’s clearly basic stuff I have no idea about: I don’t know how many wallets I have, what currencies (tokens) I hold, where to mint things, where to see them, it’s just not as simple as “confirm your email and see your friends.”

I’m a fan of Coop Records. They’re actively involved, doing something about it. If it takes a great event with free booze to get people to install a wallet, then that’s what they’ll do. If it’s about building an audience one wallet at a time, they’re here for it, and so am I.

Part 2: Making Crypto Cool

musicto Foundation: Bringing People On-Chain Through Music

2024-09-24T23:49:56Z

A New Way to Bring People On-Chain

So, I’ve been listening to the GreenPill podcast with Kevin Owocki. It’s the beginning of season six, episode one. They’re talking about “grants as a service.” It appears that effective allocation of grant funding is a skill - one that may not necessarily be worth it for a Foundation to develop in-house - so enter protocols like Thrive and other web3 solutions that manage the process for you.

I hear them talk about the move towards funding community driven projects and the need for impeccable metrics to be able to measure outcomes and performance along the way.

And I know they’re talking about funding crypto projects for infrastructure - but - it has me thinking that - well - musicto is a community driven project - we have a well defined community behavior based on creative collaboration - and we have metrics.

Could we be a recipient of the kind of funding they’re talking about?

Metrics for the Musicto Foundation

It got me thinking: what would the metrics be for the musicto Foundation? If someone believed, as we do, that on-chain is the future and that collaboration is a great way to form connections, what metrics would show this?

There are already so many possible metrics in musicto. Here are some ideas:

Wallet penetration: Easily trackable
Number of collaborations: Playlists published, articles written, countries connected
Community activity: MAUs, Posts, Messages, etc

These would be the baseline metrics: wallet and token counts, collaborations, and overall activity within the community.

Phase Two: Collections and Nodes

As we grow we’ve already started to see the development of communities within the community. When people identify shared interests and align around the same ideas, they can come together in Collections. Collections literally collect media around an idea and are populated by a collective - with an editor and contributors and all working together to increase the visibility of their point of view.

Here’s how we could measure the impact of collections:

How many collections are created.
The output of each collection (articles, playlists, events, etc.).
How many editors and contributors are involved.
Each collection could eventually have its own token for tracking.

Tracking the Nodes: Volunteering in the Community

Finally, there are the nodes—people who volunteer to work within the community. Whether they’re involved in distribution, connection, marketing, or nurturing the community itself, we already have a system in place to measure contribution. Node members self-assess their contribution each month, rating themselves on a scale from 1 to 4 and an agreed amount of tokens are deposited into their wallet.

Metrics for the nodes could include:

How many members are in a node.
The level they’re operating at based on their self-assessments.
Standard “external” KPIs like website stats, soc media followers, etc , etc.

Conclusion: A Strong Vehicle for On-Chain Connection

If we step back and look at the metrics for musicto, if the goal is bringing people on-chain and establishing global connections, I think we’ve got a strong vehicle in place. It’s not perfect, but the behaviors and metrics are already there, and it would be an incredible opportunity for someone to fund.

I Don’t Want To Be Loud

2024-09-06T13:35:50Z

I’m thoroughly enjoying this Coop Records’ podcast, with David Beiner from Hume & Louder. I love listening to two people passionate about the space they’re in - trading ideas and insights and I’m here for it.

I’m still too new to fully grok the utility of of the 404 - I get the idea but I just don’t have the trading chops - yet - but it makes sense on an instinctual level.

What I’m grappling with is the whole attention aspect of on-chain distribution.

Being Loud Sure Helps

I get the construct - human behavior on-chain isn’t that different from irl - being loud is a great way to grab attention - the fun comes afterwards - when you have it - what do you do with it.

Louder - to my mind anyway (apologies if I have this wrong) - is using a combination of status and access to reward both artists and fans. If I buy the token I get access to music - if I buy more tokens I get status within the ecosystem (and access to more music) - if the community decides this construct has value - the token itself becomes valuable, which in turn rewards people who bought it and a beautiful flywheel is born.

Will It Work?

Lol! Like I have any clue - or experience to answer this ;-p - bottom line is - I hope so - it will be marvelous when reward mechanisms take hold that truly reward artists.

For me - I’m personally a little wary. I don’t really understand the economics and as I wrote earlier - the whole trading is fun aspect of the current crypto narrative doesn’t work for me - and even if it isn’t trading and I’ve misunderstood the whole thing - well - that’s kinda the point ;-p

But there’s another aspect - and this is totally down to personal taste and the kind of artist I am - and that’s just - I don’t want to be loud. I don’t want to have to shout to be heard - the idea of competing against others who are naturally gifted at self promotion, with “Riz” bleeding out of their pores and good music to boot - I’m always going to lose.

On-Chain Not Ready For The Masses?

And maybe that’s just where we are - for now. On-Chain music is (as far as I can hear,) predominately EDM / Techno / Singer Songwriter - which makes sense if you look at the demographics of the space.

Music is a business. If you’re not serving the existing audience you’re going to lose. If the existing audience requires sophisticated reward mechanisms to move distribution - then maybe that’s just where it needs to be for now - the loudest person with the greatest status wins.

Soon?

But - I’m an optimist, I truly believe the world will move on-chain. To what extent I have no idea but it just makes sense to me that open-ledger will transform the world and the Arts are an obvious beachhead.

For now, I’m doubling down on my efforts to learn the space - to contribute - to share the collaborative output from the musicto community - introduce the Farcaster community to tracks they might never have heard from the web2 world and then start to collaborate around on-chain artists and on-chain native playlists.

I’ve a few more steps to go but I hope to be publishing music2work2 tracks on-chain in the next month or so - and bringing more community members on-chain - I tell you - the future looks bright!

Amanda Fucking Palmer & The Subscription Challenge

2024-08-31T17:34:10Z

I’m reading a cast from Sumit and my heart goes out to them.

It’s the thing that sits at the back of my head as a creator when looking at hypersub and the subscription model of supporting artists.

One of the early breakout stars of web2 was the amazing Amanda Fucking Palmer - she got the zeitgeist of early social media and crushed it. Her music was quirky and not overly commercial yet she gained a huge following through her sheer authenticity and very visible digital presence.

I remember early on in her Patreon days when she had to to respond to a subscriber questioning why they hadn’t received “content” for a couple of months. I was searching for it and was not surprised to find that she had to do something similar again in in 2022:

An Answer to a Disappointed Patron

And here with Sumit we see the same thing playing out in web3.

Art Is Not Predictable

I believe an evolution needs to take place when it comes to remunerating artists - particularly in the digital world when the cost of production and distribution are close to zero.

Note I say cost of production - not cost of creation. Anyone can produce and distribute digital “art” at the touch of a couple of buttons - and if that’s your game, great - go for it.

But if your art is unpredictable - if you don’t know how long it will take to create - if sometimes it takes a day and sometimes it takes a month - if sometimes you go to the well and its empty - what then for an artist who’s livelihood depends upon their output?

It’s fucking hard - that’s what.

Support > Subscribe

What if changed the nature of the agreement. What if - instead of a subscribe button, we had a support button - same mechanics but different framing?

What if we subtly changed the economic relationship between artist and supporter / subscriber / fan? What if we moved it from a transactional nature - where money is given for a tangible asset - to a supportive nature - where money is given to enable the artist the time and space to create?

And sure - as with Amanda Palmer’s example - there may be times where the relationship feels out of balance - but it I’m guessing it would go a long way to preventing the overwhelm and emotional weight that artists experience when they’re in the “Dance Monkey” role.

I’m betting it would create much more resonant art too.

On Celebrity Coins and Artist Tokens

2024-08-30T13:58:50Z

Finished episode 8 of the Coop Records podcast with Mike Demaris of Rainbow and the conversation ended on a discussion around distribution / monetization - and the idea of the artist’s token.

Coop talks about artists being wary of launching a token for all the malarkey around it and potential liability / down side if the token fails - or fails to go up. The current froth of the Celebrity coins being pumped by Solana seems transient and nothing but a cash grab for people who can leverage their visibility and brand.

Which is all well and good - but the bit I liked was where Coop talks about the token not being the main event:

Artist releases their music on-chain
Artists rewards people who mint their music with their own artist token
Artist uses income from music mints to generate liquidity / value for the token

Where this is differs (as I understand it) from the previous token model is that then - the token was the center of the universe - it was the token itself that made money for the token holder and token owner - literally spinning value out of nothing and dependent upon the status and resource input of the token holder.

Creating a Flywheel

But in this model - money is made from the creative output of the artist - there is something tangible to attach value to - a song - a visual - merch - etc - this income then funds the artist’s token - which in turn is distributed back to the people who are minting / purchasing in the first place.

It’s effectively money back - but it’s better than that - because there’s a positive flywheel to this. The more successful the artist is - the more funding the token gets - the more attractive it is for someone to mint the artist’s creative output - and you can see where this is going - token holders become evangelists as their outcome aligns with the artist’s: have more people mint their creative output.

Development for a Foundation Model

So I like this - I like it as an artist but it also has me thinking of a Foundation token - an overall musicto Token. As the community starts to mint output - a percentage of mint fees goes into a liquidity pool for the token

We build in an additional aspect of distribution in that - a percentage is allocated to those who mint - as with the artist model above - but we also allocate a percentage to those who create within the community.

The musicto token can remained closed - rewarded minters and creators alike - and even be open to external parties - much to be looked at at that point.

Trading Isn’t Fun. Trading Is Scary.

2024-08-29T16:19:01Z

Listening to episode 8 of the Coop Records podcast - I’m super grateful to the team for making it - it’s a great way into the ecosystem. Good stuff in this one too - I’m looking for a mobile wallet and Rainbow sounds pretty dope - Mike Demaris came across really passionate and knowledgeable about the product and literally at this stage of my journey - if an experienced individual like Coop says he uses it - then I’m going to try it.

Likewise - some of the alpha around what tools Coop uses like trending charts on Sound has me making notes that I need to download the Sound mobile app as part of the journey - always something new…

…but…

…and you knew there was a but coming ;-p - the conversation shifted.

The Challenge of Bringing People On-Chain

The conversation moved into what I feel is familiar territory for many on-chain podcasts: builders in the space discussing the challenges of bringing people on-chain. I personally find it fascinating because I actively want to learn how this whole thing works but damn if it isn’t opaque. There’s just so much to get lost in - points - airdrops - token farming - swaps - bridges - L2s, L3s - meme coins - what the fuck are meme coins - why the fuck are meme coins?!

Here’s the big thing—across many different podcasts, I hear the same idea:

That trading is fun.

That the way to onboard people on-chain is by developing a wallet interface that facilitates trading behavior - that makes it easy, making recommendation systems, incorporating the social graph, incentivizing wallet use - putting the act of trading at the heart of the process, etc, etc, etc, - but I’ve gotta tell you - at this point of my journey - trading isn’t fun. Trading is scary.

Trading Is Terrifying for Artists

Look at the language surrounding crypto—“rug ” is no longer just a noun - it’s a verb - it’s how you lose your money. There’s a status around having been through the process - having been rugged is almost a badge of honor and entry to the community.

As artists coming into this space, we don’t have any money to begin with. there’s a reason this graphic resonates with so many:

To me - the idea that what will get us on-chain - is essentially gambling with what little money we have - feels unrealistic.

I don’t know, maybe trading is fun, but I’ve never been in a position to trade. If that’s the only way on-chain then - it’s gonna be a struggle.

Keep It Simple: The Core Focus for Artists

For me, the whole process is still too complex - nothing that builders don’t know, for sure - but maybe there’s a different mechanic that’s sticky - what if it isn’t trading? What if there’s a functional wallet that’s just setup for the super basic user who’s goal is to just get on-chain - to distribute their creative output - what would that look like?

And sure - maybe trading is at the heart of being on-chain - maybe once we all get in and onboard we’ll recognize the utility and joy of allocating capital for economic reward - but let’s get us through the door first.

(Oh and - if someone’s built this kind of wallet already - please let me know ;-p)