Abstract
This paper examines the hesitancy of Australian musicians towards embracing the music non-fungible token (NFT) as a commodity. Drawing on the concepts of cultural autonomy and the digital disruptive sublime, the study argues that the overtly economic nature of NFTs challenges the ideology of creative independence in the hegemonic ‘indie’ music scene. Through interviews with nine Australian musicians who participated in our project, the research finds a cautious curiosity towards the technology, with technical barriers and a perceived cultural disconnect between the NFT ‘community’ and traditional music scenes contributing to hesitation. The paper concludes that attempts to engineer disruption in the music industry through web3/blockchain technology have thus far failed to attract sustained interest from musicians, as the cultural norms and practices associated with NFTs do not align with the values of the existing indie music ecosystem. The findings highlight the difficulties in planning and engineering cultural change within the music industry.
Introduction
Promises from proponents of blockchain technology to unlock new digital music distribution systems have simmered since 2015 when U.S. entrepreneur Benji Rogers (2015: n.p.) claimed that ‘no new technology encapsulates the potential for positive change for this suffering music industry more than the Blockchain’. While there have been many attempts to apply blockchain technology to the music business, the most high-profile manifestation of a functioning web3 innovation in the commercial creative sector has been the sale of digital assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
In 2021, the market for NFTs received substantial press coverage promoting NFTs as an alternative, potentially lucrative, avenue for musicians, producers, and labels (Rennie et al., 2022). Much of this coverage suggested NFTs could address poor remuneration of artists from streaming (Chow, 2021). Notable superstar artists like Steve Aoki, Grimes, The Chainsmokers, Deadmau5, The Weeknd and Snoop Dogg achieved impressive results. For example, Grimes sold 388 NFTs for a fixed price of $7.5k USD each in Ethereum cryptocurrency, grossing $2,910,000 (Grimes, 2021). However, several commentators and scholars also raised concerns about the ecological impact of blockchain technologies, a demonstrated potential for exploitation by organised criminals and scammers, and the rejection of regulatory oversight or consumer protections (cf Diehl et al., 2022; Gerard, 2017; Golumbia, 2016; Korhonen and Rantala, 2021).
In 2022, we undertook a pilot study on the experiences and attitudes of Australian musicians towards (Rogers et al., 2022a) explored the experience of Australian musicians releasing recordings as NFTs. We funded, and collaborated with, nine artists to distribute recorded songs as NFTs.
In interviews, we found that ‘the sentiment of the majority was one of cautious curiosity, and a willingness to experiment’ (p.20). Despite their interest in learning how to distribute and monetise recordings using the blockchain, the vast majority of participants were unfamiliar with the technology, reporting difficulty creating an NFT. Participants were unable – or perhaps unwilling – to learn how to complete the minting process themselves. They needed assistance from the research team to complete production and did not put any noticeable effort into marketing their NFT releases after production. As of late 2024, none of the NFTs have been purchased (see Rogers et al., 2022a for further details). In a discursive context where web3 technology was typically framed as either revolutionary or hazardous, our participants were keen to experiment, but reluctant to invest the necessary time to proceed much further. We describe this cautious but curious approach as cultural hesitancy.
This paper builds on our published research exploring the theoretical reasons behind this cultural hesitancy. In our analysis, we argue that web3 distribution does not fit easily into legacy concepts of ‘independent/indie’ or ‘DIY’ music scenes. While ‘indie’ and ‘web3’ both capitalise on an authenticity of resistance and perform similar flavours of autonomy, the two fields contain discrete, sometimes conflicting, cultural norms. For example, participants’ hesitance around web3 can be linked to potential negative impacts on an artist reputation within ‘indie’ status quo communities. This article will present a theoretical account of why eight of the ten curious musicians who participated were so cautious despite their enthusiasm for NFTs as disrupting, democratising, or disintermediating the music industries. 1
The four mythical D's: moral metanarratives of righteous disruption
Narratives of decentralisation, democratisation, disintermediation, and disruption underpin the rhetoric of web3 and music NFTs. This techno-utopian discourse of autonomy for artists through new technology emerged long before the promises of blockchain technologies and has resonated strongly with recording artists who are often poorly remunerated for their work. Due to entrenched logics of overproduction (Negus, 1999), preselection (Hirsch, 1969), and the ideological insistence that stardom is a natural phenomenon (Marshall, 2013), ‘the majority product of the music industr[ies] is not success but failure’ (Jones, 2003: 148). The modern recording industries are optimised to output hits, stars, and rare wealth, something captured by a small number of musicians and firms (Elberse, 2013).
As a consequence of this optimisation, western recording industries have failed to provide a sustainable livelihood to more than a small percentage of commercial authors, performers, and producers, in favour of stability for the non-creators whose labour provides intermediary infrastructure to support their creative endeavours. Though not necessarily any less ‘just’ or ‘fair’ than previous systems of distribution and remuneration for recorded work (Hesmondhalgh, 2021; Nowak and Morgan, 2021) streaming has not substantively addressed this structural status quo. This provides an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs and startups to position their offerings as potential solutions to disparity, and web3/NFT projects take full advantage of this by promising a morally superior digital music experience marked by four similar types of arguments.
To briefly summarise, music NFTs promise to
Disintermediate business systems by automating payment systems and reducing the reliance on institutions and intermediaries that currently process revenue from the usage of digital recordings, often with the implication that those stakeholders are corrupt or acting in bad faith. On the master recording side, this means record labels, aggregators, and streaming services. On the song/composition side, this means publishers (often ultimately the same firms as the record label), performing rights organisations (PROs) and copyright management organisations (CMOs), as well as the streaming services again. Decentralise the reliance on rights databases operated by national music rights organisations, digital aggregators, digital retailers, merchant accounts, payment systems and other distribution intermediaries (Gough, 2018). Disrupt the status quo political economy of music industries where record labels and digital platforms charge money for catalogue usage and control much of the value chain due to their consolidated power and market position. Democratise outcomes of economic success through a marketplace that is not dominated by the incumbent powers.
The heart of these claims is that a music NFT distribution ecosystem is based on consuming (or collecting) a new category of artificially scarce digital objects, with creators and/or rights holders of musical copyrights able to receive part of the revenue from resales (Gough, 2018; Mogis, 2021; Rethink Music Initiative, 2015; Rogers et al., 2022a). NFTs are often called a new form of digital asset and are compared to a digital form of collectable merchandise. For example, the Australian platform Serenade refers to their NFTs as ‘Digital Pressings’ (Serenade.co, 2024). The various promises covered in these four metanarratives make bolder business-to-business (B2B) claims by implying that blockchain is one of several ‘steps that can be taken to achieve a more transparent and fairer music industry’ (Rethink Music Initiative, 2015: 25).
Moral metanarratives like these imply that the replacement system will empower both composers and recording rights holders, though typically the term ‘artists’ is used. This reflects the confusing standards of these debates where ‘artist’ is a powerful rhetorical device for gaining public support, rather than an accurate description of who is remunerated for the use of intellectual property. In these rhetorical arguments, there is typically a framing of the musician (usually ‘artist’) and audience as benevolent actors and ‘industry’ workers and intermediaries as solely economic, often unnecessary, and/or in need of better incentivisation. This often involves the framing of the work of intermediaries and professionals as mundane (Caves, 2000; Handke, 2020) or non-creative (Bennett, 2018; Morrow, 2018); or applied research arguing that status quo system friction benefits intermediaries (Rethink Music, 2015). This obfuscates or denigrates the role and labour of workers and intermediaries in favour of portraying the economic success of stardom as a purely cultural phenomenon. Marshall (2013: 584) terms this ‘the ideology of creative independence’. This ideology drives a considerable amount of the rhetoric of NFTs as agents of digital disruption, even though NFTs are ultimately a new digital commodity to be sold. NFTs are selling users (producers, intermediaries, and audiences) the ideas of autonomy and disruption/democratisation/disintermediation/decentralisation as a new digital business model, rather than a new distribution format offering new aesthetic affordances.
In Australia, MODA DAO and Serenade were two higher-profile startup firms promising a future where fans could sell recordings in a new format that simultaneously disintermediates traditional recording and publishing industry value chains, while still supplementing the concept of the music industry. Australian trade blog The Music Network reported that MODA DAO ‘promises more democracy to the music industry, and greater power to musicians by allowing them to bypass traditional middlemen – including streaming services’ (Eliezer, 2021: n.p.). The specific details of how future music NFT systems might improve the payment process between rights holders and streaming platforms could vary considerably by national location due to different systems for copyright revenue collection, and these systems are typically not well-understood by the public. While it would be naive to claim that musical culture in the age of mechanical reproduction has not constantly changed due to the impact of technological innovations and the commercialization of popular songs (Suisman, 2009), NFTs have yet to significantly alter the form or aesthetic of commercial music.
Evidence: making Australian music NFTs
The study was conducted in 2022, shortly after lengthy lockdowns in Australia due to the Covid-19 pandemic decimated the local music industries (Brunt and Nelligan, 2020; Strong and Cannizzo, 2021). The pandemic saw increased coverage and mainstream investment in cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and what was termed web3 technologies. In a 2022 study, Rennie et al. described this moment's web3 as ‘an online ecosystem based on blockchain technologies…characterised by peer-to-peer transactions and an ability for users to decide who they share information with’ (p.7), before reporting on early adoption by experimental and freelance artists/creators in Australia. This interest during 2021 and 2022 was also related to the increased amount of time people were spending at home online trying to find new ways to be social, expressive, and creative during the pandemic. Couched with idealistic language familiar within DIY music cultures, claims by blockchain-based startups and evangelists pledged to remove greedy middle-men/institutions, to provide more direct earnings, and build ‘fair’ ecosystems for music creation and consumption. 2
In particular, the potential to circumvent incumbents and empower ‘independent’ musicians and intermediaries is a refrain familiar to those who experienced the launch and demise of first-generation internet music firms such as MP3.COM, eMusic, and Napster – or watched firebrands CDBaby, The Orchard, and Spotify go on to become the type of established industry incumbents they had once promised to bypass (Galuszka, 2015). While the failures of tech startups and music companies are legion, the winners have not ushered in a radical new era of ‘fairness’ or equity (Pilati et al., 2024), and it is important to differentiate between an expansion of opportunity and better market conditions. As of this writing, it is still too early to claim that the music NFT format will ultimately fail, but it is safe to say that the initial hyperbolic wave of reporting on the disruptive potential of the NFT subsided in 2023. While many would quibble with this, the history of blockchain reveals longer patterns of bloom and burst, suggesting to the authors that entirely dismissing the music NFT is unwise at this time. In addition, musicians have an even longer history of resuscitating and redeploying ‘old media.’ It may well be that the music NFT is simply in a fallow period.
Participants 3
As part of the practice-led side of the project, the authors worked with musicians contributing music from the following nine artist brands
4
:
Beatrice (Electronic) Charm Garden (Vaporgaze) Dundo (Electronic) Electric Self (Unknowable) Maltese Well Monster (Hip Hop) SLOE JACK (Alternative/Indie) Tape/Off (Indie-Rock) Too Birds (Experimental) World Sick (Nu-Gaze)
The genre descriptions above reflect how the musicians chose to brand their NFT release. With the exception of SLOEJACK, all had years of experience and established niche audiences in Australia. There were some commonalities here: all of the musicians had released music in a commercial context and were already acquainted with releasing digital music where income and profit are possible, if not always the direct goal. Most currently work with, or have worked with, artist managers. All are experienced performers who have played concerts outside of their hometowns, developed diverse income streams, hired or collaborated with professionals to help promote and market their recordings, and could discuss the impact of streaming and other technologies on their practice. Many have been awarded grant funding from local, state, or federal public funding. At the time of the interview, all participants either fully controlled or expected the return of their master recording rights after a licensing period.
While their artist brands are not household names a number of participants claimed to earn a large portion of their annual income from their music practice. Three participants stated that their main profession was as a musician. The rest held other forms of primary employment. Most participants described the reality of making a living primarily from music as being extremely difficult (often citing the size of the Australian market). It is important to note that the majority of our participants claimed that intrinsic motivations rather than financial gain were the primary drivers of their music creation and release, but these were all musicians who took the commercial side of their activities seriously.
We spoke with two members of World Sick, bringing the total number of interview participants to ten, from nine projects. The gender skewed male, with seven men, two women, and one non-binary participant. We were surprised at the difficulty we found in recruiting musicians more familiar with releasing NFTs and had to expand our initial recruitment. Two of these musicians who were already experienced with releasing NFTs (i.e., early adopters) were identified through another research project on Blockchain in the Australian Creative Industries (Rennie et al., 2022), and the other was sourced by asking an RMIT undergraduate class if they were familiar with any musicians releasing NFTs.
A lack of NFT experience, but a broad understanding
Many of the musicians we spoke with had a moderate understanding of blockchain technologies, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs. The two early adopter respondents (SLOE JACK and Dundo) had been active in web3 since 2021, while the remaining inexperienced musicians still had a broad understanding. Beatrice had a sister abroad who works in an NFT art gallery. Charm Garden had explored web3 as part of university training. Ben from World Sick – one of the less enthusiastic participants on the whole – came from a coding background, and owned a hardware crypto-wallet. The balance of participants varied, but it is noteworthy that no one treated the prospect as fictive or nonsensical. Those musicians who did not have crypto-wallets were shown how to use one and each of them could produce a wallet address (a means to transact) by the end of the project.
At the interview, we collected information about how musicians viewed web3 and music NFTs. Responses varied, but a common theme was that of new audiences emerging out of web3, and this being a distinct potential market. There was a sense that the NFT was not just a new form of commodity to sell to existing fanbases, but a potential vehicle for drawing in new listeners from a different scene. This was indicative of a concept that NFT collectors were a different group of people than the audiences and listeners these musicians were typically reaching. Also noteworthy was the level of confusion (and scepticism) regarding what the NFT technology could offer outside of the context of being a collectable release or a new category of merchandise. Despite this, there was some interest in using audio-video as the token imagery, rather than a static image with sound, as well as a general interest in experimenting with various types of ancillary recordings (live recordings, demos, remixes) and ‘b-sides’ as the sound material.
The two early adopters in this space were quite happy to share their stories of finding economic success through selling music NFTs, and each of these two examples is distinct from the overall sample in ways that are telling. SLOE JACK is represented by Dreams Never Die, a US-based record label and management firm heavily involved in web3. SLOE JACK was arguably one of the highest-profile Australian artists in the web3 space, and it is interesting to note that his career is directly linked to a US-based music firm in Los Angeles. The other earlier adopter was Dundo, an experienced technology professional who had been active in blockchain for years. Both musicians engage in typical music scene practices such as playing live shows and releasing singles, and both could probably function sufficiently outside of web3, and yet both have a high degree of technical skill with web3, and a lengthier background in blockchain applications (Dundo) or worked with a music management company that was focused on commercial web3 strategies (SLOE JACK). In short, they had a head start.
We asked each participant if they could name Australian music NFTs or local musicians working in the space. Outside of the early adopters, no one could. These musicians – the majority – were completely unaware of a single person working in music web3. In Australia, where one of the central drivers of music practice is hobbyism (see Rogers, 2012), web3 remains at a complete social remove from the musicians we spoke to. As such, it seems that these musicians were loath to become more involved themselves despite their cautious experimentation. The strongest evidence for this is that none of the NFTs have sold. At present, our evidence indicates that making music NFTs is simply not something the average independent Australian musician does.
Analysis: cultural hesitancy and Australian music NFTs
These musicians came to the project with a range of attitudes towards blockchain and web3. Eight were not early adopters and can be said to share a degree of reluctance that we ultimately describe as cultural hesitancy. Though they were familiar with the (meta)narratives concerning the space, claims about environmental impact or fraud were insufficient to deter them from continuing. They had heard the criticisms and evangelism, but our analysis is that claims (pros or cons) were demoted in urgency. Participants wanted to learn more and experiment, but ultimately NFTs did not feel right in some way.
Most participants did not consider NFTs as a potentially significant revenue source in 2022 despite the hyperbole, but they were open and curious to explore what the format could do to diversify their income streams. While they expressed interest in potentially reaching new listeners, several were very cautious of brand damage if they were directly associated with NFTs (or cryptocurrency in particular). This section will discuss different theoretical elements of their cultural hesitancy.
Web3 music communities
A term heard frequently in discord servers and at NFT events we attended was ‘community’. In practice, this was how project operators referred to people who were buying their NFTs. It is notable that a need to ‘provide value’ to this ‘community’ outside of simply selling them ownership of a digital asset was stressed. Providing ‘value to the community’ typically incentivised NFT owners to promote the project externally and for users to engage with each other through contests to obtain ‘gifted’ NFTs or other rewards. One example is an airdrop, whereby community members are rewarded for their efforts to support a NFT project through the disbursement of more NFTs for free. The social capital element of this is interesting. These activities are designed to increase a project's visibility and ultimately its economic value, but framed as gifts or prizes they stress a social angle that de-emphasizes the financial incentive. Whether an observer views the activities in these communities as crass capitalism or as a fun way to leverage social networks into value-generation depends largely on the music industry experience, where the economic nature of all ‘cultural activities’ is more apparent, as well as the need to conceal this economic nature from the public in favour of a cultural narrative.
This overt economic intention within the social/cultural activity of displaying or otherwise conspicuously consuming an NFT might at first seem typically anathema to music (and artistic) scenes which stress the importance of non-economic motivation for creating and engaging with music, part of the ideology of creative independence (Marshall, 2013). Another useful framework is the need to perform a disinterest in overt economic motivation in order to pose as autonomous (Banks, 2010) while operating within an economically interdependent reality. It may also be seen as a more honest framing of how performative cultural consumption and articulation have become within music scenes this century. NFTs can be said to be a form of conspicuous cultural consumption more openly linked to economic value, rather than older ideals of art versus commerce, or the more recent trend of bifurcating economic value as opposed to cultural value.
NFT communities are also clearly engaging in cultural activity with some form of intrinsic benefit, not just an economic purpose. However the actual practices of these NFT ‘communities’ are tangibly different than scene norms in the hegemonic world of ‘indie,’ where Marshall's ideology of creative independence still applies. Put another way, though popular music is always both art and commerce (Frith, 1981; Negus, 1995), the music NFT community does not make the same effort to conceal its economic focus that the hegemonic world of indie does. We posit that it is this more transparently economic nature of the NFT community that drives the cultural hesitancy, as ‘independent musicians’ are more accustomed to framing their activities as strictly cultural. Community activities designed by NFT project owners might involve creating fan art or writing fan fiction that was shared on social media. NFT collectors frequently talk about being OGs (early adopters, derived from the rap term ‘original gangsta’) and owning NFT images from early NFT projects such as Cryptopunks or the Bored Ape Yacht Club. They use POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocols) to track when they attended events. These are just some of the new scenic language and forms of social capital that can be observed within Discord servers and on X (formerly Twitter), the primary sites where NFT consumers from around the world discuss their collections. These NFT ‘community’ practices and discourses are based on a form of fandom or participation in a musical culture that is in need of better documentation and exploration, as a variant of existing popular musical scenes with distinct values and norms.
We argue that the differences between legacy independent/DIY scenes is where cultural hesitancy actually originates, in the ways in which consumption-based music scene fandom norms such as wearing merchandise or collecting rare and valuable records are different from the more transparently economic behaviour designed to increase the economic value of collectible NFTs. While the economic/cultural distinction might be tempting to rely on here, to stress the difference between the two ecosystems, it is also important to emphasise that we do not argue that ‘indie’ is actually any less economic of a cultural concept. It is merely taking more effort to obfuscate and de-emphasise the economic structures involved in the generation of value, and being ‘independent’ is no longer a subcultural or underground phenomenon.
The hegemonic status quo of ‘indie’ music
Many of the concepts proposed by blockchain proponents sound exciting in that they offer technically complex narratives of self-empowerment through learning how to create, distribute, and invest directly in their own digital creations. This is certainly in line with the much-beloved narratives of a ‘DIY’ or ‘alternative’ musical culture, now most commonly referred to as ‘indie’ music. However, these ideas of alterity and resistance – which once provided a relatively dependable idealistic currency for generating counter-cultural credibility – are now much more transparently seen as the standard marketing language of hegemony (Frank, 1997; Heath and Potter, 2005; Hesmondhalgh and Meier, 2015; McGuigan, 2009). Hegemonic incumbents have long understood the value of performing independence in music industries. On the one hand, a perception of cultural autonomy in musical culture still clearly matters (Klein, 2020; Klein et al., 2017). It matters to musicians, audiences, and yes, even to music business workers and intermediaries. However, to what degree these concerns are authenticated as genuine or more cynically as pose, or performed disinterest, is a matter of which theoretical lens one prefers, and to what degree the analyst is familiar with how musicians and workers perform their identities in interview contexts – research or otherwise.
This journal has published a recent study that argues commercial and artistic autonomy were the central motivations for why the musicians interviewed engaged with NFTs (Venema and Wijngaarden, 2024). While our samples and positionality are different, we observe more of the concept of ‘autonomy as pose’ (Banks, 2010: 257–259) and point to how our participants were more sceptical of the claims of artistic or creative autonomy being promised by NFT evangelists, though they proceeded regardless. While the theory of performing autonomy in order to generate a form of alternative or subcultural capital could be applied here, a helpful recent lens is what Hodgson (2021) termed ‘creative ambivalence’ in reference to musicians interviewed about the impact of streaming services: ‘Most artists recognise that claims of “democratisation” made by these streaming platforms are deeply flawed and that the unequal power dynamics of the old music industry persist’ (p. 2). ‘Musicians (or “creators” as they are now often called in the tech world) interact creatively with these platforms in ways specific [to] their own financial and social interests’ (p. 14). This sort of ambivalence within music scenes is far more appropriate than trying to argue that these participants (even the early adopters) wholeheartedly believe that NFTs will deliver on the mythical narratives they promise.
A similar theoretical lens comes from Everts et al. (2022: 7), in a study of Dutch musicians whose central goal was a sustainable career. ‘[M]usicians continue to feel dependant [sic] on the traditional career path that the music industry offers, in part because they perceive a lack of economic opportunities outside the music industry, indicating that power dynamics have remained unchanged’ (p. 7). These three theories all reflect how commercial musicians and intermediaries acknowledge a reality of economic interdependence with music business intermediaries beneath the narratives of independence and autonomy but with varying interpretations of how genuine (as opposed to strategic) the performance of autonomy ultimately is. These theoretical approaches all reflect a sophisticated understanding of commercial music norms, where musicians and intermediaries who claim to value autonomy above all are performing the roles of an independent artist (or perhaps an independent record label or other variation of intermediary role) – if they are legitimately driven to have a sustainable career working in the music business, they will need to depend on the labour and economic inputs of many other people, firms, and structures, though the narrative that must be performed to generate value is one of autonomy and independence.
If part of performing the role of an independent musician or intermediary means obfuscating economic interdependency in favour of performing autonomy, the hesitancy of these musicians to promote and sell their NFTs points towards their concerns of peer or audience judgement. Selling NFTs was too brazenly economic for eight of these ten musicians to promote them. Concerns about the possible negative impact on an artist’s brand reputation from getting involved with NFTs were enough to motivate several of these musicians to only experiment using their side-project or alter egos. ‘I don't know why, I knew this subconsciously, [but I am] more interested in doing this with a project where there is very little chance that anyone will buy it’ (Electric Self interview). This reluctance to associate the primary artist brand identity with an NFT encapsulates the sentiment we call cultural hesitancy: There are a couple of things that I think are iffy. I guess how it plays into the whole capitalist project, and that way of thinking. That's the iffy part that I'm not completely sure of yet…but on the other side of it, I think as an artist, I think that's a discussion that maybe doesn't happen enough. People who actually want to make a living or earn a living from their art should be talking about how they can earn money, earn a living from it. And if this is part of that discussion, then I think it's great. (anonymised interview)
Most approached our project and web3 pragmatically – as a new distribution form which they might adapt if it became a format embraced by the hegemony of independent music. Autonomy was important to them – in terms of how best it can be performed in order to be authenticated by peers and audiences, not an actual ideal state that could be attained through the technology. This perceived importance of performing autonomy is also why the word ‘independent’ continues to generate value, economic or otherwise. In Australia (and likely across the Anglo/Eurosphere), popular music culture continues to place a value in the artist’s critique of business.
On the other hand, ‘the “artist critique” has been co-opted into the logic of capitalism’ (Gu, 2023: 2). Given that independent commercial music is now easily seen as the hegemony, it is also much more difficult to take claims steeped in the discourse of the four mythical D’s as any form of serious resistance or alterity in the political economy of recorded music. Despite widespread knowledge that cultural autonomy is a highly debatable construct linked to theoretical beliefs, whose shifting boundaries make it difficult to define or measure, and whose very essence might always be inherent in a cultural product (Banks, 2010), these narrative claims of an insistence of autonomy above all else continue to generate value. In contrast with Venema and Wijngaarden (2024) who argue that a search for (creative and artistic) autonomy remains a central motivation for NFT experimentation by their participants, our findings are that musicians were more compelled to point to ambivalence and uncertainty than any promises of creative (or artistic) autonomy would actually be delivered by the new technology. While the two early adopters were keen to discuss how the technology was potentially empowering in a structural sense, the hesitant portion was mainly focused on the idea of digital limited editions and collectibles.
To apply some specific terms from a survey of EU musicians about the potential strengths of music NFTs (Peters and Cartwright, 2023), these participants were interested in the technology's perceived strength in generating scarcity and authenticity (of ownership), while less convinced (or unaware) of the potential applications for royalty and resale management, fractional ownership, or interacting directly with their audience through the NFT ecosystem. ‘There's a huge market for people that are into Limited Edition stuff. Guess if your project is broke, it's a good way to earn some revenue’ said one participant, an excellent distillation of the attitude that results in cautious optimism but cultural hesitancy due to the brazenly economic nature of NFTs. While the two early adopters spoke about the mythical D's as ideals they had faith in, the other eight were already absorbing NFTs into traditional recording industry strategy as a new form of collectible merchandise they were unsure would be more than a passing fad, rather than approaching the technology as a ground-breaking distribution format that might deliver a more sustainable economic future. While most remained polite about their lack of conviction, occasionally their scepticism was easy to spot: ‘If we can create another revenue stream? That's awesome. But like, who's the sucker that's gonna pay for a photo of my guitar?’ (World Sick interview).
It is this niche of negation or resistance of the incumbent recording industry power base into which web3 and NFT music aspires, and while there is clearly some degree of economic value to be attained in this approach, it leads to the construction of new binaries where the status quo is the hegemony of ‘independent music’ and NFTs are a more transparently economic ecosystem that aspires to deliver more autonomy, but fails to align with the Romantic cultural norms of obfuscating economic structures. We propose that our participants are all heavily involved in the hegemonic status quo ecosystem in which performing (and recording) independent/indie music is expected as a norm, rather than an underground concept. This status quo locates musical independence in a post-countercultural context where producers are often expected to perform (or sell) critique of capitalism in order to generate economic value (Heath and Potter, 2005). In this hegemony, the economic inputs required for career sustainability are obscured in favour of constructing a narrative of stardom as a purely cultural phenomenon (Marshall, 2013).
In contrast, web3 ‘communities’ are performing a critique of the hegemonic indie status quo, overtly seeking to disintermediate and disrupt this system through language and activities that directly acknowledge the economic structures of distributing recorded music. It is the overtly economic nature of NFTs that disturbs the ideology of creative independence, even if the performed intention of selling NFTs involves the narrative of disrupting and disintermediating the incumbent power structures in the broader recording industry to create a decentralised and democratised future. These interviewees are sceptical of those myths, and prefer to think of NFTs as a new form of a recording industry collectible that can be sold as merchandise.
Conclusion: on the planned disruption of culture
The potential to circumvent incumbents and empower ‘independent’ musicians and intermediaries is a utopian ideal in musical (counter)culture which digital firms such as The Orchard, CDBaby, Artists Without A Label (AWAL), Kobalt, Bandcamp, and Spotify have all exploited in order to build their brands. These companies have all been absorbed into the recording industry value chain as powerful stakeholders. While these techno-economic firms certainly all can be said to have tangibly changed the cultural practices of musical circulation to various degrees, were any truly successful in disrupting a political economy? Certainly, it has been well-argued that even the most noisy of these innovations, the peer-to-peer protocols and infrastructure of firms like Napster, Kazaa, and uTorrent, ultimately led to an economic consolidation of power by record labels and publishers even as they expanded access to music and arguably enabled a more listener-friendly ecosystem (Arditi, 2015; Rogers, 2013). Similarly, though Spotify and other streaming services have clearly consolidated power and control over digital distribution, this seems to have come at the expense of other intermediaries and distributors, while dominant record labels and publishers have seen their revenues soar. It would seem that the argument of economist Ruth Towse's (2016) study of the UK music publishing sector's historical evolution can be applied here: Rather than leading entrepreneurially (the current view of dynamism in the creative industries), publishers ‘followed the money’ and adapted their business models only when new streams of income from new forms of exploitation through sound recording, broadcasting and film became available as a result of exogenous technical progress. (p.403)
What these examples show us is that it is not the direct attempts to decentralise/democratise/disintermediate/disrupt musical culture that succeed in creating new business models. It is the exogenous factor, the application of something unexpected that is needed to truly impact the culture because that is what actually makes it culture: a fundamental change cannot be engineered, planned, or programmed. Additionally, this reminds us of something very important about musical culture in the digital age: the most seismic recent changes have happened when people use technology in unanticipated ways, not when firms and investors seek to engineer a cultural disruption. As with file sharing and other technological disruptions of the music industries that promised revolution (Carter and Rogers, 2014; Rogers, 2013; Sinnreich, 2013), blockchain has thus far failed to attract a sustained interest, much less to disrupt the political economy of the global recording industry. Blockchain technology has been lauded and criticised by different stakeholders, with its limited adoption thus far driven by economic as opposed to aesthetic or cultural perspectives. The economic benefits have led the argument for experimentation and/or adoption, though there are also very interesting potential applications within web3 outside of the NFT-as-collectible framework (Peters and Cartwright, 2023; Rogers et al., 2022a).
What cultural expressions will become useful, meaningful, and ultimately valuable cannot be easily developed or planned in advance. These recent web3 attempts demonstrate the failure in trying to engineer a new musical ecosystem that is not sufficiently engaged with the participants, and while it has sufficient appeal and use value to attract certain enthusiasts – some of whom clearly derived great benefit from web3 – it is not intuitive or enticing enough to convince musicians that it provides a good infrastructure for distributing their music. The more overt role of the economic structure in NFT distribution is indicative that there is a cultural difference here, and this leads to the cultural hesitancy of our participants to get more involved. This is not just a technical issue of the musicians’ ability to learn how to create and distribute music on the blockchain. It is due to a cultural hesitancy where the concept of a community in the web3 space does not fit into the hegemonic modern concept of indie, where this economic nature must be obfuscated in favour of portraying stardom (or success) as a strictly cultural phenomenon.
This paper has developed a theoretical account of why most of our musician participants were curious enough to create an NFT in collaboration with the investigators, yet seemingly reluctant to invest more effort into overcoming the challenges necessary to repeat the process on their own or to promote the releases once they were created. Our interview evidence verifies that some Australian musicians were benefiting from selling NFTs, while our analysis argues the majority viewed the ‘web3’ community as distinct from their concept of a music scene/ecosystem/culture. This hesitancy is based on theoretical concepts explored in our analysis section, in particular: (1) the manner in which the NFT/web3 concept of ‘community’ differs from collectivist notions of subcultures/scenes/ecosystems; (2) how the notion of an authentic cultural autonomy in the music industries fuels a paradoxical approach whereby musicians seek to release ‘independent music’ reliant on powerful institutional intermediaries such as digital platforms and record labels, and (3) the fatigue and cynicism of popular musicians and workers in industries who have been hearing how digital technologies will revolutionise and democratise their business sector for decades.
In addition to this theoretical contribution, our analysis suggests that the shifts promised by web3 evangelists and entrepreneurs to improve an economic position for musicians in the commercial recorded music ecosystem are outcomes that cannot be planned and easily engineered. NFT music has more in common with the failed attempts to create new digital recording format ecosystems (LiquidAudio, eMusic, RealAudio) than with influential recording innovations such as the wax cylinder, phonographs, cassettes, and MP3s, none of which were originally designed for the distribution or sale of music.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council for Arts, in conjunction with APRA AMOCS, the Australasian Performing Right Association and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (Digital Futures Initiative G-22-351893).
