Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
NFTs and Music with Jadyn Violet
15 Plays1 year ago
Jadyn Violet is a Music Artist.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Laughing Otter and Guest Jaden Violet
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Laughing Otter, where we are making the world a happier place, one person at a time. I'm your host, Jeff Bogenberger, and on today's show, we have Jaden Violet, an up and coming artist that is using Web3 to its fullest. Now, I've gotten to know Jaden over the last year or so, and honestly, you won't find a more helpful, kinder soul in the Web3 world. He has helped me a ton in navigating through this new world, and it's great to have him on the show.
Web3's Impact on Artists
00:00:35
Speaker
And he's going to share a lot of knowledge with you and the pitfalls and wins that you can achieve through Web3. Welcome to the show, Jaden. Dude, what is going on? I appreciate you for even hosting this show and making people more aware about what technology is actually doing for the artist. And thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat with you and to expose this stuff to a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that
00:01:05
Speaker
you and I are both passionate about Web3 and where it can help the arts. It's really a subculture that people who are outside the space don't realize. So yeah, it's great to have
Jaden's Music Journey and Web3 Involvement
00:01:18
Speaker
you on the show. Now, I've given you a bit of an introduction, but I don't think I've done you justice. Maybe you can tell the listeners and just a little bit more about yourself, how you're approaching Web3 and how that's helping your music.
00:01:33
Speaker
Nah, dude, and I appreciate you for the amazing introduction as well, but yeah, man, I mean, honestly, I've been making music for about five years. Trying to just get my music heard by as many people as many ways that I can think of possible, whether that's through Instagram, whether that's through TikTok, whether that's through reaching out to people for getting placed in playlists and algorithm playlists.
00:02:00
Speaker
You know, nothing that really stuck. You know, I talk a lot about sustainability and longevity, and of course I had those spikes where like a song may have blown up or a TikTok video may have blown up, but nothing that could have really led to something that's sustainable for an actual artist's career to make a living off of my music alone. And, you know, fast forward a couple of months, I got introduced to this crazy Web 3 space. You know, I had the opportunity to be, I guess you can say early in many things in my life, but I never really
00:02:27
Speaker
I don't like to use the word capitalized on it, but like really executed on my awareness of being early, you know, whether that's with YouTube, whether that's with, you know, something as simple as TikTok when it first started off. If I was posting five times a day, who knows what type of community I really would have gained and what type of traction that would have led to with my music. But, you know, I could say the same thing when it came to NFTs. I got introduced to NFTs late 2020, early 2021.
00:02:53
Speaker
but I never really executed on my awareness of being early to that. I had a chance to mint a board ape or buy a board ape and for those who don't know what a board ape is, it's probably the most notable NFT collection to the state.
00:03:06
Speaker
I had a chance to buy it for $800 but I kind of got frustrated and I didn't really take the time to learn about how to go through with that entire process.
Exploring Music NFTs and Community Importance
00:03:16
Speaker
I closed my laptop and lo and behold the cheapest one now is $250,000 which is like absolutely insane and I'm kicking myself every day for it.
00:03:25
Speaker
You know, the December that just passed end of 2022, about seven months ago from this conversation, I got COVID and I was stuck in my room for about 10 days and I'm like, you know, I've been
00:03:36
Speaker
looking at all these headlines, talking about Web 3, you know, NFTs for so long. Let me actually do my due diligence. Let me actually do my hundred hours of research and learn about what this space is all about. And that's kind of when I first got introduced to music NFTs. And the first introduction to that was me seeing a song sell for $10,000 under two minutes.
00:03:57
Speaker
I was completely blown away by that. It was on this platform called Sound.xyz. And of course, as an independent artist, I've never made that much on my music from the five years I've been creating, which it's crazy to see someone else who's an independent musician make that under two minutes. So that's kind of what piqued my curiosity. But what really got me to commit to this space is individuals saying that they've never gotten this much interaction on their art before. And ever since then, man, I've been just 100% committed
00:04:27
Speaker
to use this new technology to help me with my music career. So how did you get going? Like after you've done all your research, what were the next steps that you started to do?
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah man, what I quickly realized about this entire space, entire ecosystem is that it was heavily focused on community, which was something that I was never really exposed to my entire career as an artist. You know, being from New Jersey, central Jersey, there's not a lot of artists around here. There's not a lot of avenues that you can go down to even connect with artists in real life. You know, whereas in other places like New York, that's very close to me, but it's different than actually living there and not living there. You know, people in,
00:05:09
Speaker
places like, you know, Atlanta and even places like, you know, LA, Miami, you know, they have communities where they can kind of go towards and, and really come together and co-create and just build together. But, you know, I never had that. And then I was trying to find that on social media, but still it was very hard because, you know, people on, on web two platforms kind of led with the mentality of ego, egotistical
00:05:34
Speaker
Nonsense and you know narcissism and it was very hard. So when I first you know when I entered web 3 that was kind of like the first thing that I got you know excited about is that you know, it's a community filled with a lot of genuine people and What I quickly realized is that I can't just come into the space and drop something and expect it to sell out like this is some fairy tale, you know land you still have to put in the work and
00:05:56
Speaker
And what does that work actually look like when it comes to Web3? And that's just, in my opinion, connecting with people, building relationships with people. We try to do that as artists our entire career, but are we actually doing it? And that's kind of like the thing that I want a lot of artists to question for themselves. Are these relationships that you're building surface level or are they something that are going to serve you 10 years down the line? And that's something that I kind of realized with Web3.
Building Connections in Web3
00:06:20
Speaker
The first thing that I started off is I joined three discords.
00:06:24
Speaker
I saw the first three music NFT discords that came across my eyes and I joined them and I was super active in them, not only responding to people 24-7 but actually DMing them and getting on phone conversations with them which I never did before for all the time I've been making music and honestly just providing them value, building relationships with them and
00:06:44
Speaker
These relationships have opened up so many doors for me seven months in the future. So it's really crazy, you know, just connecting with people. But yeah, I hope I answered your question. I think I won off a little on that. No. And one thing that I can echo with you is the one thing that just shocked the hell out of me when once I got involved with Web3 is
00:07:12
Speaker
It's almost counterintuitive that you don't expect this thing that's based on technology to spawn such real world relationships. I have made more connections through Web3 that are powerful and real, yourself included, that I haven't had in 20 years of business networking events.
00:07:39
Speaker
where it's just exchanging business cards and it's just bullshit. What I'm making in web three and the openness of web three that's just blowing me away is how kind and giving and open people are. And what's resulting is not only people that are helping to promote the laughing honor is I'm forming real friendships with real people who really have big hearts.
00:08:08
Speaker
And I don't know, other than Web3, how you and I from vastly different geographical and our ages are different, we're in completely different worlds. I don't know how you and I could have formed a friendship in just the regular world.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I started to formulate a different perspective ever since I started doing Twitter spaces and really interacting with people using like, you know, web three avenues and I think it's actually going to help human connection, right? You see a lot of things start to transfer to voice and you kind of saw that with the with the podcast boom in 2021 when literally everyone and their moms were trying to create their own podcast, but
00:08:49
Speaker
and that's wonderful
00:09:10
Speaker
even something as simple as Twitter spaces, which is if you're familiar with Clubhouse, it's basically like the same thing, but better. You know what I mean? And it's these chat rooms. But what you see on a deeper level is that people are actually connecting because we can actually hear each other's voices. And I think that's why we're so easily able to facilitate these new relationships, even including like me and you. I agree. We would have never been able to connect if it wasn't for this voice kind of transition when it comes to social media.
00:09:39
Speaker
So I think that's really cool. I think I'm excited about the development of social media and how it's going to help us just build more relationships, build our network. Yeah, absolutely. To illustrate the power of what Jaden's talking about, I was on a Twitter space the other day that was around mental health and wellness. And there were 100 men
00:10:10
Speaker
on this call from all over the world talking about mental health issues to the point where some of them broke down and cried and which is fine and it's actually wonderful that men are actually taking that, being able to speak out when they're hurting. But there were also, like there was a hundred people who were strangers who were supportive and helpful and were giving kind
00:10:40
Speaker
uh, kind feedback. This just doesn't happen anywhere else, uh, to that magnitude. Um, and it's, yeah, it's just a fantastic place to be. So how, and just to transition that, how are you seeing the web three community helping musicians?
Empowerment through NFTs and Real-Life Events
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, man. I think, you know, the number one,
00:11:08
Speaker
way that Web3 is really helping musicians. I mean, there's two things. I can break them down into the financial way and the community way. So for the financial way, way, way back then, before I was alive, but I tried doing as much research as I possibly can, the record labels really had a chokehold around every single musician because they needed a way to actually get heard. Musicians were on the street selling their CDs, selling their merch, selling their t-shirts, hanging up posters. Everything was
00:11:35
Speaker
existing in the physical realm when it came to a lot of you know musical artists and record labels kind of gave him that avenue to to you know gain a network you know start to collab with other musicians that are already on the radio get on the radio you know what i'm saying and artists didn't have that avenue open to
00:12:04
Speaker
them beforehand so you know they kind of leaned on the shoulder of a lot of record labels but then you know the internet came along and now any artist can basically post on the internet you know
00:12:29
Speaker
whatever they want to promote, you know, their, and that kind of solved that issue of a 10 artists still couldn't get towards the media that they wanted to take example of that, you know, a lot of artists started to go towards TV and record, take talk, and the next day it could get 20 million views. And that's completely possible because of just the development of social media. So now,
00:12:48
Speaker
record labels are losing their leverage every single day but still there's still this one thing that record labels have a choke hold on artists for and that's the finance of it. Artists could blow up on TikTok, artists could do all these crazy things
00:13:07
Speaker
but they're still not getting paid for their streams. You know what I mean? They're still getting paid 0.00001 cent per stream on Spotify. I mean, my high streaming song is 80,000 because of a TikTok video that blew up, but that got me $250. So in reality, I would have to get $250 every single week. I mean, I'm sorry, I would have to get 80,000 streams every single week just to get $250 a week, which is less than minimum wage. You know, it's absolutely absurd. So now that Web3 has came along and NFTs have came along, the technologies available
00:13:37
Speaker
for artists to not only gain attention but now take the finances into their own hands. Now they can release an NFC collection that represents their album and people who are actually their true supporters can collect it and now they have a stake in the game. It's kind of like having a stake in a company but now you have a stake in an artist and now you're gonna push the artist to actually grow because now you have some skin in the game which is something that was never
00:14:02
Speaker
never, never, never available before in our society. So it's really beautiful. And then just to quickly touch on the community aspect, like I was mentioning before, now artists have an ecosystem to actually connect with people that are genuine and not in it for different reasons, but actually in it for the love of their art. And since it's so early, people are more willing to help each other, which is really beautiful, which is why I urge a lot of people to get into this space when the big corporations aren't in here yet.
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I think one thing that gets, that doesn't get talked about enough is like from a fan perspective, you know, I'm a music fan, I'm a drummer, but not never have I done it professionally or tried to make money from it, but I love music. I am so bored with cookie cutter acts because that's what gets
00:15:01
Speaker
That's the only things that the big record labels can support because they need to know it sells. Whereas Web 3 is opening up the opportunity like it was back in the 50s and 60s and early 70s when creative art, there was an appetite for the music industry to try obscure
00:15:29
Speaker
artists and actually probably it was well I I put the the turning point when Napster came up until Napster there was an appetite and there was financial viability to taking a gamble on a unique sounding band but that's that's changed so much but now we're changing again where web 3 is giving
00:15:57
Speaker
giving opportunity to artists like yourself that you don't need to be cookie cutter and you can create music the way that you want to create it. Just to add on to that, I feel like NFTs are giving an option for artists to really create a world for themselves and I've always heard this. Every time I listen to podcasts and stuff, artists are always like, I have to
00:16:26
Speaker
you know you have to create a world around your art and it's like how do you do that you know i always told them like how do you do that like i that never made sense to me and i knew i needed to do that but i never was able to and like being in the nft space now it kind of gave me context to actually do that and execute on that vision you know so i released the nft called the violet token and
00:16:46
Speaker
You know, of course it was centered around my music and, you know, every person who's a holder gets access to my unreleased songs, you know, they get access to my videos before anyone, you know, all this exclusive content. But more than that, I created the Underground Violet Rave, which is this IRL experience that, you know, people could actually go through in real life. And, you know, without even kind of realizing it, this NFT now is creating an entire world because now I can, you know,
00:17:12
Speaker
I can kind of allocate it towards different things. You know, I can do it towards my music. I can do it towards an underground violent rave. I can literally anything you can think of, you can make possible using NFTs, which is like a really cool, cool thing to hear for someone who's actually creative, because you could be creative in more things than just your music. You know, you know, you can utilize your creativity in so many different things. So yeah, it's a really cool position that we're in right now. And it's really once in a lifetime.
00:17:39
Speaker
I think I was going to touch on this a little, uh, a little bit later, cause I know that you held this event in New York. I think that's a really important message to get out there is how web three isn't restrictive and it's really possible to transition into, uh, into the real world. So maybe you can tell people a little bit about the rave and, you know, what inspired it and how it went down and, um, that sort of thing.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yeah man, so like, you know, I guess what the underground violet rave actually is, it's basically just a lit ass rave at the end of the day, you know what I'm saying? That people can go to it and have fun, but you know, on a more deeper level, it's basically, you know, our just way of platforming underground artists for wherever city, whatever location we choose to do the rave in, you know, wherever the rave is taking place, we can platform these underground artists, whether it's DJs or performers, but then
00:18:36
Speaker
also seductively onboarding people to Web3 by introducing Web3 technology at the actual raves. So, you know, for example, the first one that we did in Brooklyn, which just passed a couple months ago, June 20th, we had, you know, we had, you know, it was held at Gold Sounds, which is a very popular underground punk bar in Brooklyn and
00:18:54
Speaker
what we did is everyone who holds a violet token which is my first ever NFT collection basically gets free entry into the rave and they get their NFTs displayed across the rave on monitors and lastly they get free drinks you know what I mean all they have to do is show that they own the NFT to the bartender and they get access to the to the free bar tab and then they get cool drinks like the violet drink and stuff like that so it's just this idea of like you know now you can get people to collect your NFT because they believe in you but not only collect it you can actually
00:19:24
Speaker
Provide them value and utilities, which is really cool. But yeah, man, you know, I think IRL experiences are the future I think bringing people together in real life is really cool The reason I never really threw events before because I could have done the underground violet rave or you know the short-form UVR anytime I wanted to but
00:19:41
Speaker
I was kind of shy, you know, I felt like no one's gonna come. I felt like in order to do an in real life event as an artist, I need to, you know, blow up and then I can have 100 people come. But like, I was just introverted and like, you know, all those things that I said were kind of just excuses and Web3 made me realize that because now I use all the relationships that I made in Web3 to give me context to hold this event in Brooklyn because now I had people from all around the world come that I, you know, that I've made relationships with through Twitter spaces.
00:20:09
Speaker
And Web3 communities, it's crazy. People from Europe, people from, you know, Alaska came, people from Brazil, you know, people from California across the country came. And it's really, really interesting to see all these people come together just because of this one thing that we have
Future Plans and Technological Developments
00:20:26
Speaker
in common. So it was cool, man. It was cool because like our purpose was to really introduce this technology to just normal people who are into music. You know what I mean? From the Brooklyn scene. And I think we successfully did that because
00:20:37
Speaker
a lot of these people to this day are in the space releasing their own NFC collections and being successful off of it. Yeah, that's fantastic. I'm finding that too, just on a more aggregate scale, the amount of Web3 NFT blockchain events that are sprouting up where people, and then you go and people are just super excited to talk about the possibilities and
00:21:06
Speaker
are really supportive of each other. You know that we're going to have to have a
00:21:14
Speaker
a ultraviolet rave in Melbourne at some point. Dude, we need to make it happen. And it's actually crazy you say that because my good friend Lalika, who does a lot of the video editing and graphics for the underground violet rave, she's based out of Australia. And she was saying the same thing. She was like, what do I have to do to make a UVR in Australia happen? And I'm like, definitely soon it will have to happen because I really want to visit.
00:21:40
Speaker
You'll have to connect the two of us and maybe we can start that ball rolling. I think a UVR rave sponsored by the Laughing Otter sounds just about perfect to me. Summer's coming here in Melbourne and so it'll be a great time to do it.
00:22:05
Speaker
I'll for sure keep you updated because that would literally be a dream come true. Even having this UVR is a dream come true. We just did the second one in Virginia actually in Manassas and this one was especially special. But this one was very very special because Manassas, for those who are in the DMV area in the United States, Manassas is kind of like in the middle of nowhere.
00:22:29
Speaker
And things like this don't really happen in Manassas. You know, it's not really a city area and people never really thought that something like this could happen. You know, and I think a lot about that from my hometown, New Jersey. I'm like, you know, no one's nothing like no one would come together here, but.
00:22:45
Speaker
like I was mentioning earlier, people just want context to come together. And like the one, the UBR in Manassas, Virginia was an experiment of that. And you know, 80 to 100 people showed up and people just vibed off of a common passion of music and new technology. And like, it was just beautiful to see, man. So like, it made me realize that we can run this event basically anywhere, just by leveraging local communities and giving people context to just come together. Yeah. And that's,
00:23:12
Speaker
I think what's really exciting as well from that perspective is you can hold events that bring 80 to 100 people together because of the efficiency of Web3. Whereas in traditional sense, to make it financially viable, you need five, 10, 15,000 people before otherwise everybody loses money because you have to put so much money into marketing
00:23:42
Speaker
and getting people there where there's a real opportunity to have all these events that you don't need thousands of people to justify them, which gives artists a real boost to get going. So yeah, that's great. So what's next for you? What's coming up in your world?
00:24:08
Speaker
man honestly i feel like it's um i feel like it's changing every day you know for anyone who's in the web3 space it moves very fast you know there's new technology basically being created every single every single day every single week every single hour and you know for those who are like there for the entire development of the internet you know imagine being born
00:24:30
Speaker
I guess imagine being aware and a musical artist before the internet really came out and imagine the possibilities that could really bring to you. When the internet was really developing and new things were coming out every single day, you know what I'm saying? Revolutionary things were coming out every single day and we're seeing something very, very similar with Web3 and blockchain and all this technology. So it's like every time something new comes out, it's our job as artists to adapt and figure out what's the new thing because
00:24:59
Speaker
what was happening seven months ago is not happening now and that's why I urge a lot of people to come into this space because you know you're gonna come when it's too late and when these big corporations already took all the pieces of the pie which you know I never would want to happen to anyone but you know for me what's what's heard of TED talks or TEDx we're basically trying to make
00:25:16
Speaker
the UVR kind of like that basically just setting up and having activations in different cities, different states, countries, locations and very very small right now of course everything has to start from somewhere but we've only done two but you know we have a couple lined up for the future we just confirmed the next UVR in October which is going to be in Ohio and the one after that is going to be in Toronto and then Miami for Art Basel Week and then hopefully Australia next year you know so like we're definitely you know we're definitely building that and we're building NFT projects surrounding that but
00:25:46
Speaker
More on the development and engineering side, we're starting to... Basically, the UVR just created a citizen developer group, which is basically a team of really, really talented devs. And we're starting to build tools for artists because what we realize in... It's a bear market right now. Ethereum's down, stocks are down, everything's down, and people are crying. But I think it's very beneficial for us because in any bear market, that's what people actually build.
00:26:11
Speaker
And that's something that I'm starting to realize this past month, which is why we created this developer team. And we're actually building tools for a lot of artists to use in the space because from my conversations, a lot of artists complain that there's not this, there's not this. And I'm like, damn, if I can put people together and we can actually create that, why not do that? So yeah, between the UVR and creating tools for artists,
00:26:35
Speaker
And just to top all that off, just man, just creating music, you know, doing the thing that I actually love because at the end of the day, the goal is still to sell out a stadium filled with thousands of people streaming my lyrics. And that's always going to be my goal. That's that dream is never going to die.
Conclusion and Where to Learn More
00:26:48
Speaker
So, you know, creating music every day for sure. Yeah, it's fantastic. And I have to admit that for a lifelong classic rock metal fan that you've introduced me to a whole genre of music that I never would have listened to. But I
00:27:04
Speaker
I do now, so thank you for that. When are you going to Toronto?
00:27:10
Speaker
What's the date on that? Jeff, it's actually funny because I started to do daily morning Twitter spaces, right? Because I realized that all my Twitter spaces are random and that's terrible for audience retention. Because when people ask me, yo, Jayden, when's your Twitter space? I have to tell them I don't know. So I finally created a schedule and I do it every single day at 11 a.m. Eastern. But these past couple of days, people are having these debates in my Twitter spaces about where the next UVR should be besides Ohio, because that's already locked in.
00:27:40
Speaker
But there's a debate between Toronto and Atlanta. Which one should we do? And half the people are saying Toronto, half the people are saying Atlanta. But, you know, I don't know if this is selfish, but I've already been to Atlanta. I've never been to Toronto. So I decided on Toronto. We don't have an exact date for it like we do for the Ohio one, but it's definitely going to be towards the end of November. Okay. Yeah. Toronto's got a great music scene.
00:28:09
Speaker
And so I grew up just north of Toronto and spent a lot of time in Toronto. I lived there for a number of years. So it's got a great music scene. And the only reason I was asking is just prepare yourself if you go there in January or February. But end of November, you should be all right. It's still a beautiful time of the year.
00:28:34
Speaker
Well, that's fantastic. I knew this was going to be a really entertaining and engaging conversation. You're so knowledgeable about the space, at least, or not at least, in particular on what it can do for artists. And I know you're as passionate as I am about where Web3 is going, where it can go.
00:29:02
Speaker
not only with the arts, but with helping the world and making a difference in the lives of people. So thanks for coming on the show and having this chat with me. Now, where can people find you? Where can they find your music? And where else do you want to point them?
00:29:18
Speaker
Yeah, man. I really, really appreciate you for even having this conversation with not only me, but I know you're going to continue this with many, many different talented, innovative people because we need this. We need documentation. We need people to spread awareness to others and onboard people.
00:29:34
Speaker
and get this conversation started in the world you know it's super super early and and this is the time when you should get in and you can actually make some noise and yeah man you know jayden violet literally anywhere uh j-a-d-y-n because everyone spells jayden wrong for me so it's uh yeah jayden violet violet like the color literally anywhere instagram
00:29:55
Speaker
TikTok, Twitter, Twitter is where I do most of my Web3 stuff because that's where most of the community and ecosystem is at. But once you go there, you can click the link tree in my bio and that'll give you access to everything. If you want to join the Underground Discord and hop in our community calls to see what we're building or help build the next UVR, definitely feel free to do that. Of course, if you listen to my music, I'm going to love you forever, forever, forever.
00:30:21
Speaker
That's always appreciative. But yeah, man. And just hit me up. If you guys have any questions, anyone listening, I'll be happy to answer. Yeah. Well, thanks a lot, Jane. You're a great guy. You've been really helpful to me throughout the last year or so. And I wish you all the luck. And it sounds like you got tons of life. Not sounds like I know you got tons of really cool stuff happening in this space. So thanks again for being on the show.
00:30:51
Speaker
I hope everybody enjoyed the conversation. Remember to visit the laughingauter.com and to find us as well on Twitter, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, for all the latest news. And just remember, we all deserve to be having a lot more fun.