#419: Justin Blau on Monetizing Creativity in Today’s World

Justin Blau, who is best known as 3LAU, is a DJ and electronic dance music producer. He has also been an early advocate for Bitcoin and digital art as well. In this conversation, we discuss how Justin became a world famous DJ, the business behind music, how he grew a fanbase organically, why he gravitated towards Bitcoin, and how he is thinking about leveraging NFT art. ======================= Digital art is here, and it's real. NFTs are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars. The only platform I buy on is Nifty Gateway, which is an official sponsor of the Pomp Podcast. They release content from the best NFT artists in the world twice weekly, and have featured many world famous artists including Kenny Scharf, Trevor Jones and WhIsBe. NFTs on Nifty Gateway are in extremely high demand, so if you really want one, make sure to be on the website as soon as it is released. Go to http://www.niftygateway.com and sign up for an account today. ======================= Harvested Financial makes options incredibly simple. They’re the first options robo advisor, where you can build and customize a personalized trading plan that gets automatically executed. Options help you speculate in capital efficient ways, diversify your holdings with market neutral strategies, and generate passive income by selling premium. https://www.harvestedfinancial.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Justin Blau, who is best known as Blau, is a DJ and electronic dance music producer. He has also been an early advocate for Bitcoin and digital art as well. In this conversation, we discuss how Justin became a world famous DJ, the business behind music, how he grew a fanbase organically, why he gravitated towards Bitcoin, and how he is thinking about leveraging NFT art. I really enjoyed this conversation with Justin, and I think you will as well. Before we get into the episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Nifty Gateway.

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Digital art is here, and it's real, as you'll hear in this episode. NFTs are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars. The only platform I buy on is Nifty Gateway, which is an official sponsor of this podcast. They release content from the best NFT artists in the world twice a week, and have featured many world famous artists, including Kenny Sharp, Trevor Jones, and Who's Be. NFTs on Nifty Gateway are in incredible demand. You've probably seen me talking about how I've been buying up digital art, and Nifty Gateway is the place to do it. So go over to niftygateway.com, N-I-F-T-Y gateway.com, and sign up for an account today. The digital art market is going to be bigger than the traditional art market one day.

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I already have laid out that argument, and I'm acting on that information. You can now too, at niftygateway.com. Digital art is here, and it's real, and Nifty Gateway is your partner to help you do it. Next up is Harvested Financial. Whether you're a seasoned veteran looking for an extra hand, or just curious why everyone's talking about options, Harvested Financial makes it incredibly simple. They're the first options robo-advisor, where you can build and customize a personalized trading plan that gets automatically executed. Don't worry about which strikes to pick, or how to handle expiration. Simply sign up and choose from an easy to understand menu to get started. You can select from model portfolios or design completely Custom strategies. Options help you speculate in capital efficient ways,

• 2:14Anthony Pompliano?

  diversify your holdings with market neutral strategies and generate passive income by selling premium. Best of all, they're financial advisors who have over 20 years of options experience. They're traders turned fiduciaries. Check out Harvested Financial because derivatives are for everyone. You can go to harvestedfinancial.com/pomp. Again, harvestedfinancial.com/pomp. They are an options robo advisor and they're here to help. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry.

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Justin. I hope you guys enjoy this.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Justin here. Dude, so excited to do this. Thank you so much for coming on.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Likewise, I'm glad you found my just buy Bitcoin tweet and it finally connected us after we have a lot of mutual friends.

• 3:43Anthony Pompliano?

  I know. I feel like it's Jeremy Gardner and a bunch of these people have been like, dude, you guys got to talk, you got to talk. And I've just been lazy. So here we are.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Not lazy, not lazy. You're busy, man. You're spreading the gospel on behalf of, you know, all of us. So we appreciate it.

• 4:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I haven't told the story yet on the podcast, but I was in a Lyft the other day and all of a sudden the driver started pitching me like hardcore, like religious, you know, God takes people out of your life because he's trying to teach you something and like, you know, not the conversation you want to have with the Lyft driver on a quick 12 minute trip. And so about halfway through, I just say, hey, man, that sounds great. There's this guy Satoshi though. And my, and my wife was with me and she was just shaking her head like, dude, shut up.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  How how often does that happen with your wife in a public setting?

• 4:33Anthony Pompliano?

  It there's two eye rolls. One is, hey, like, really shut up. And the other is just like, you're annoying. And I've pretty much now can decipher the difference. So so we're good.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Same with my my my girlfriend as well. Whenever I talk about this stuff. So

• 4:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you know, you know, the feeling.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 4:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's talk about your background. You got this crazy background. You pretty much did everything you weren't supposed to do from normal standards to become a DJ. Just tell us a story real quick.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So I went to college to study finance. I was thinking about going into asset management. All my friends were, you know, went on to go work for Morgan Stanley or Goldman or ended up in tech. So I kind of have this background in finance tech. And then, of course, my passion, which was music. When I was growing up, I decided that I would, you know, go work for a bank. And then when I'm 40 years old, I get to pursue my passion of music. And then it ended up flipping the opposite direction, where I started releasing a bunch of music on Facebook and SoundCloud back when those were the kind of main platforms for sharing music. And a couple of things went viral on YouTube. All of a sudden, some fraternities at other schools wanted to pay me 750 bucks to come play their basement. And that's how I made alcohol money in college. When I was a freshman and sophomore, just

• 5:39Speaker 02

  DJing around the country. Some more things went viral. I attracted attention of an agency, an agent who's now with CAA, which is one of the big agencies. And he helped me build my career to the next level and play festivals like EDC, Ultra, you know, Electric Zoo in New York, if you're familiar, and all types of stuff like that. And I decided my junior year of college that it would be the best decision to drop out and take a leave of absence. And luckily enough, the business school at Washington University where I went, they said that I could keep my full merit scholarship for seven years if I ever wanted to come back. My parents couldn't really say no. And when I was 19 or 20, I embarked on this journey

• 6:19Speaker 02

  as a DJ and built, you know, you use technology and social media to build my following organically while maintaining being an independent artist.

• 6:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So I read that you got this idea because you went to Sweden and when you were there, you got exposed to electronic music and it's interesting to me because my thought was always like, oh, if you have this specific genre of music that you're a DJ or performer or whatever, you just grew up your whole life and like that was your thing. That wasn't your kind of past. Maybe talk a little bit about what was it when you discovered that type of music that just was like, hey, I want to go do this.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Yeah. So I grew up singing, playing piano, playing drums, playing guitar. And I was kind of a one man band. I was making folk music in my dorm room. It's kind of what I was doing in my free time when I wasn't working on schoolwork stuff. And there were, there were a group of DJs that played our college concert called White Panda and they were jumping around making mashups. And that's when I kind of decided, well, you know, in the school budget, it shows what they got paid. They got paid 11 grand to perform. I said, huh, I should maybe like explore how to be an electronic artist. And it wasn't really that big in the US yet. And my, my friend Johan, who is now in sales and training at Morgan Stanley, invited me out to Sweden. And that's kind of when I explored this dance

• 7:39Speaker 02

  music world and learned about Avicii. At the time, you know, was one of my biggest inspirations and I was lucky to have met him. And, you know, that changed my life in the sense that I decided instead of channeling this musical effort into a band like more folk format, why not channel it into this electronic format that's growing so quickly? I genuinely love the music. So that's kind of how it all began. And it eventually evolved into, you know, me turning down a job opportunity at BlackRock to pursue the DJ thing full time. And it really took off organically. It was just the effort that I put in to learn the craft.

• 8:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. My favorite part of your story is that a professor told you to drop out, which is pretty, pretty crazy because I don't think most people think of their, you know, university professor being like, hey, man, I think you should go take a shot at this. Like, what was that like?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And he was the chair of the economics department and we are actually still very close friends today. I see him at least once a year. He's been, he's come out to Red Rocks in Colorado, which is a huge venue that I've played a couple of times. And he's been like my biggest supporter from day one. And in his mind, He saw the financials and he saw the momentum that was happening organically. And I had him sit down with my parents to convince them finally to let me do this. Because in his mind, the opportunity cost was just too high for me to not capitalize on this momentum. And the downside risk was that I would just go back to school if it didn't work out. So what, I lose a couple of years. You know, if I was to go into the banking world, so I go to the banking world when I'm 23, 24 instead of 21, 22.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  The skill set wouldn't change and it was too big, like I said, too big of an opportunity cost to not take. So finally, we did it and he's been a huge supporter since and I call him for advice all the time. And that's the nice thing about Wash U and the network that I created there. You know, it's cool that some of my friends have gone on to establish really cool companies like Open Door. I mentioned to you earlier, but you know, my friend JD started Open Door with Keith Raboy. And he was, I played in his frat basement. I think that was the first frat basement I ever played. So I've kind of always had ties to the tech world and to the business world. And I treat my career a lot like a business in that, you know, we like to utilize all the tools that technology has provided to get my stuff out there.

• 9:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you really use technology to kind of build an audience and a true fan base. Talk about that and kind of where did that idea come from? Like that was not necessarily the most popular thing to be doing, you know, a couple of years ago. And so how did you come across that idea?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is about a decade ago in this weird time in music where it was between Napster and torrenting iTunes. And then eventually Spotify kind of stole the entire market share. But in the middle, there was this weird time where just the discovery process wasn't via torrents and wasn't via iTunes. It was via music blogs and via social media. And Facebook was like the primary, Facebook and SoundCloud were the primary tools of sharing music across the internet as the social media world began to materialize. So what we used to do, what I used to do is we'd post things to my Facebook page, which at the time, if you liked, if you liked the Facebook page, you saw everything. So there was no threshold in distribution back then.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  So we would, you know, upload stuff to SoundCloud and post it to Facebook and it would grow organically. And also YouTube where like people would just share it. And because there was no threshold and you didn't have to pay to play at the time, it was so new. It just reached so many people. And one special moment, I did this mashup called All Night Long.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  And the USC snowboarding team did a trick video to it on YouTube and it like had millions of views overnight. And that's the video that some of the fraternities that eventually booked me to play their basements later. That's the, that's the video they quoted, you know, how they found me through YouTube, through the internet. And so these were like valuable tools for any artist to break at a time when otherwise you'd have to sign a really aggressive record deal and record deals are very predatory. They, you know, a record label does two things. They provide liquidity for an artist to pursue their dream and they also provide distribution. In 2020 now and over the past 10 years, that's changed. You can source capital from a lot of different places as an artist.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  And we've, I've reinvested in myself from all my touring revenue, we reinvested in content creation and whatnot. And then, so on the liquidity side, there's other tools for an artist to achieve that. Then on the distribution side, you have the internet. And platforms like yours, you know, whether it's Twitter or a podcast or Tik Tok or whatever it might be. And artists have this unique ability now to not rely on these legacy systems and to create businesses for themselves. They just have to recognize that while the creative side of the brain has to be creative and has to create. It's, it's important to maintain this logical side of the brain that says, how are we going to strategically get all this stuff out there to the world and get people excited about it?

• 12:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and the idea that a DJ is a business, right? I don't think a lot of people think of this. They think of just, oh, you get your salary and that's it. Talk a little bit about kind of how you've structured the business and what does that look like from the various revenue streams and how you think about growing the business and kind of more of a business owner type mentality?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Absolutely. You know, I think, I think because my background is from the financial world, and at least that's what I studied. I approached it that way. I don't know if everyone does, but, but there are a lot of DJs that are friends of mine. Like, like Steve Ioki, for instance, and Tiesto, that have always treated their creative space as a business and that ultimately helps them reach more people. So the idea first is that I run a team, right? Any startup has a team, you know, the, the most challenging part of any startup is finding people to help you build your vision that are the best people at what they do. And so building a team is, is as an artist and as a musician is probably the most important thing you can do when you have any momentum. So like step one is find a way to get momentum, which is, it's really hard to pass level one for a lot of people, but a lot of people do pass level one. They have a viral Tik Tok video. They have

• 13:32Speaker 02

  something that performs well on the internet. After that, it's picking the right people to work with. And having that entrepreneurial mindset to see who can create value and where is extremely important. So, you know, one of the people that I brought on early in my career, Kevin, he runs my social platforms, you know, but it's a collaborative effort. It's not like he just, it's not like I give it to him to run it. No, like we work on the messaging, we work on the content, we work on it together. And it's, he's become a really close friend of mine. We worked together for seven years. So in that sense, you know, I have to deal with teams. And then I have him interacting with my management team, which is comprised of two people, a day-to-day manager and then a strategic manager who's also a music lawyer. And they kind of are the glue of all these different concepts that we have, whether it's a song release or a performance or a brand partnership.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Right. And so I put these teams together and we all brainstorm how we execute these different parts of my business. So it is, I've always said that being an artist is very similar to being, you know, not just a business owner, but actually being a startup. Cause you have to scale really quickly and you have to, you know, you have to look at all these different ways that you can monetize. And then in my case, I reinvest all that money in content creation and production, like lasers and fire at my shows. It's really expensive to do that stuff. Our last tour, I mean, our last tour costs, costs mid-six figures just on the actual production and the lights to create these experiences for fans that they'll never forget. And so in order to, you know, produce those kinds of shows, I need to continue to find other places to monetize to reinvest in the business.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  So it's really, you know, being a DJ is kind of unique in that there is this high cost of, like, the performances are really expensive to put on these like big light shows. And it's a little bit different than a band where it's more about the sound experience and less about like the crazy lights and the LED screens and whatnot. Though that is shifting a bit these days, there's a lot of crossover there. But yeah, so I've always treated my career as a business and I try to separate the creative mind from the business mind so that I, I can still make stuff that people enjoy.

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then how do you think about like, obviously the music, I think people would say, okay, you make music that there's like streaming platforms, there's the IP around the music and you can go touring. But it's also this weird thing of like, there's a celebrity factor, there's kind of other things that you can be doing. Have you kind of thought through where the line is for a DJ? Like, is a DJ still a DJ and that's all they can do? Or does it kind of blend into more of like, you're a creator, you're an influencer, you're, you know, whatever your kind of label de jour of the day?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  It's a really interesting question. I've always had the perspective that a DJ in 2020 is a musician, a producer, and a personality. I don't, I don't love the word influencer because my, my following is mostly on Spotify. It's not on other platforms. Why? Because people listen to me. They don't necessarily care as much about products that I promote and like taking selfies and doing things like that. No, like the, the way that people interact with me creatively is through my, you know, through my music, which is my form of messaging. There are a lot of artists that have built like huge brands, like Marshmallow, for instance, who is purely, you know, influencer, figurehead, icon. But a lot of DJs are more like, they have huge followings that are really dedicated,

• 16:42Speaker 02

  but they don't have the biggest social platform. So an example of this is Rufus De Soule, who, you know, headlining Coachella, we're supposed to this year, they did last year, I forget. Rufus De Soule, huge electronic artist. They only have three million monthly listeners on Spotify. They have like less than a million on Instagram, and yet their fan base is so dedicated. And so as an artist, it's about balancing, like, there's something about being a musician that's different than I think any other type of influencer. In, it's, it's in the connection that you build on a very deep level with your fan. And so that's where you see a lot of like artists that may have smaller numbers. Like, I don't have a huge Instagram following. It's like 300 something thousand, which is big, but it's not that big. Whereas my Spotify following is, you know, two million. It's like a whole different number. And, and so my goal is to, how do I make those two million people

• 17:27Speaker 02

  that are listening feel the most? And that's like my number one goal. At the same time, doing partnerships with other brands and exploring other creative avenues is really interesting as well. So I work with a lot of TikTokers on dance videos to help promote my music because a lot of young people are watching these dance videos. And so it's something that we're thinking about as I, you know, create new content. But yeah, I think the line is blurred for, for a DJ right now. It's not, you know, the conventional notion of like a wedding DJ or a disc jockey, so to speak. We're really, the best identity to associate with a quote unquote DJ, we're really music producers with, you know, public facing identities that people hopefully can relate to. I think that's like a concise way of saying it.

• 18:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so obviously the business completely changes. You are used to kind of flying around every single day touring, you know, meeting fans, putting on these expensive shows, and then COVID hits, and basically the world goes on lockdown. What was kind of the changes you made and how did you think about how you spent your time and kind of how the business would evolve?

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, that's that's the most important question of the day. Um, I, you know, I I've said this to a lot of people. I I started when I was nineteen. I'm twenty nine. I'm gonna be thirty in a couple of months here in January. And after a decade of being on the road, I have to say I'm thankful for a little bit of a break. Because I probably wouldn't have taken one. I wanna make the fans happy. I wanna be out there. I I have such a love for giving energy back to the world with music. But in that process, you know, I tell people I don't get paid to DJ. I get paid to put my body through hell. My travel schedule is pretty insane. Gone from like in in a in a one week period from Vegas to New York, New York to Tokyo, Tokyo to Philippines, Philippines to Jakarta, Jakarta to San Francisco, San Francisco to Hawaii and Hawaii back to Vegas,

• 19:10Speaker 02

  like all in a period of like thirteen, fourteen days, or whatever it was, you know, like that's that's a typical day in life. And so, living that life for ten years of my young years, and then it shutting off in March like that. At first, I was really depressed for like a couple of months. I couldn't really motivate myself to do anything. I didn't really know what to do. I had all this extra time. And as time went on, I started to realize that, you know, this opening came like pretty suddenly. And, you know, I've I've had an interest in in the cryptocurrency space for a very long time. Been involved in that space for a long time because of my background in finance, because I've always been fascinated with this idea of disintermediating the entertainment industry, giving power back to creators.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  And so, you know, come March, or sorry, come May, June, I re-explored the non-fungible token NFT space. And I started working with my art director, same art director that does all the visuals for my shows that you see on the screen behind me. We started working collectively really hard on creating digital virtual audio experiences. And that's been kind of my focus focus for the past couple of months, you know, producing unique music that no one's heard before. And combining it with unique visuals that my art director Mike designs and issuing it in the form of an NFT. And you know, it's fascinating. And you know this because you've been very heavily involved in the space. There's a lot of value in a digital

• 20:37Speaker 02

  certificate of authenticity for art. It's no different than a physical piece of art where a painter has spent hours and hours and hours of time designing it. And then one person gets to have the painting, right? You can still find the painting on Google. You can still find those Picasso's and those Andy Warhols on Google. The amount of time that we put into this digital art, it's never been valued as something that's scarce. It's always been, oh, it's media, it should be spread everywhere. And so this notion of spinning that on its head and saying, well, everyone can see it, but there's only one owner. There's a lot of value in that. Exclusive media consumption is really interesting. And so we've both been exploring that world. And it's been a great new source of income at a time when the touring world is completely shut off. And I'm like, what now?

• 21:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so how did you first come across Bitcoin or crypto? Like, what was that kind of

• 21:25Speaker 02

  We can rewind, yeah.

• 21:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Experience? Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'll try to go through that really quickly as well. I met the Winklevoss twins in Mexico on spring break in 2013 or so, right after I'd started. It was with Avicii, actually. I was opening for Avicii at a club and just befriended them. They're awesome guys. Obviously, their whole story, finding Bitcoin and Abiza, right? They love dance music. They invited me to stay with them in LA for a little bit of time. It was like during Grammy week the following year. And that's when they were building Gemini. I don't think it was launched yet. And my memory is a little, not 100% clear here. But they were talking on a call about it. And I just overheard about it, asked a couple questions and bought, you know, some Bitcoin back in 2014, put it away, still have it,

• 22:09Speaker 02

  still have that Bitcoin from back then. And it was like my first realization that the financial system was so flawed. And I had a background in traditional, you know, finance, right? And so I realized that there's like three main value propositions to cryptocurrency that both exist in the financial world and also apply to the music world. Number one, banking the unbanked. There are so many people that don't have access to storing value. They've worked hard in their lives and they have no means of actually saving that value that they've created. Because the next day, their government could print more of it. They could, you know, Anything could happen and even in places like India, it's so hard to even get access to a bank account, right? And these are things that we don't think about a lot in the United States. So that was like the first major value proposition that rang some alarms in my head. And I was like, this is really important. I have to pay attention to this.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  The second thing was value transfer in a frictionless, permissionless way. So I had an experience where I was making a real estate investment and my local Bank of America branch didn't have someone with high enough authorization to send a wire. And we had to wait three days to move this money for me to make this investment. And then on Ethereum, send money around 45 seconds if you spend enough gas. And so I was like, wow, and I can send it anywhere in the world and on a weekend, right? You can't send money around, you can't send a wire on a weekend. This is crazy. How like it's 2020, how does this not exist yet? Or at the time, you know, 2015, 2016. And then the final thing I realized is there are all these rent seeking middlemen in music

• 23:34Speaker 02

  and in entertainment and in all types, all forms of the world that take a fee on things they probably shouldn't be taking fees on because the internet makes the relationship between the consumer and the creator or the consumer and the supplier way more direct. And so, you know, even in the music space with royalties, right? We have all these contracts. There's a lag in payout from Spotify. Then you have to like individually invoice every person that participated in a song and they get a percentage of the royalties and it's like never right. There's always an accounting issue. Load all that up into a smart contract and have the money funnel out automatically every day. Like this is, this is stuff that should already exist, right? It really should, but the regulatory environment makes it difficult. So, you know, I've always just had a passion for exploring this stuff and thinking about

• 24:19Speaker 02

  how I can participate in the story of what we both know will revolutionize not just, you know, the financial world, but the entertainment world and so many other things.

• 24:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It's really, really crazy to me that, um, you know, when you hear it and it's, and it hits and you're like, oh wait, this is why it's so valuable. People go from, I didn't understand any of this to immediately up to speed. I mean, it's just, you just get pulled down the rabbit hole, right? And so, um, you obviously were able to do that. You learned from two of, uh, two of the best people to do it and, uh, and had the most skin in the game, uh, and Cameron and Tyler. Uh, and then when did you kind of come across the NFTs and this idea of digital art, um, and kind of things outside of just, uh, money and Bitcoin?

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of the best, the best place to kind of explain where I am today. So I had a couple of interesting adventures through crypto. I tried a lot of things, experimented in a decentralized finance space, which I'm sure other speakers in the podcast have spoken with you about. There's a lot of really interesting, I call them experiments that are going on. And experiments are the best way to beta test ideas that will work to the masses. And one venue that has always historically been that the fastest onboard of the mainstream to a new technology is art. You know, it's like, it's porn and it's art. Like, that's, that's what people say, right? Like, you know, so it's really interesting that, you know, through my journeys in cryptocurrency,

• 25:44Speaker 02

  there's, there's always been this kind of huge barrier to entry, whether it's the process of buying Bitcoin, buying Ethereum, or it's, you know, using MetaMask, which is, you know, for someone new, very difficult. And people don't really have the patience to learn about it, unless they really want to learn about it, right? So art became a way, I had this realization only a couple of months ago, you know, I'm an artist, I make music, but art can be, exclusive art can be a way to onboard the mainstream to the digital currency ecosystem. And what's interesting about it is, if you bet on an artist, like, there hasn't really been a way for you to bet on, on an artist you believe in. There hasn't been a way for you to invest in your favorite art, you know, without, I mean, just buying a painting.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  There isn't really, you buy merch from a musician, you support them by seeing a show, you stream their music, but when you're streaming their music, you're not like thinking yourself, oh, I'm supporting that artist by streaming their music. No, it's, it's one directional. It's like, I get to enjoy this music. You don't have a relationship with the artist. So we started experimenting with NFTs. We launched our first batch with, with a company called Block Party that I've worked with and advised for a couple of years. And what I noticed is it creates such a personal relationship with collectors, people who are buying this digital art, this, this limited edition digital art. And they feel so much closer to you as an artist because they're participating in this very limited product that they know I've spent tons of time on and I have, we put a lot of effort and care into every piece that we do. And all those people that bought, you know,

• 27:12Speaker 02

  our first round of NFTs, which sold out in like three hours, which was crazy. I followed them on Twitter. I talked to them and they were, and then we sent them the full version of the unreleased song that we used to make the art in an email after the fact. And people were going crazy. Wow, I have this blouse on that no one else has heard. And that got me thinking about this idea that media doesn't have to be available to everyone. Media can be exclusive and there's value in people having access to a song or a piece of art or even just ownership of that art. There's so much value there that's just never been explored before because we've been trained that music and art should be widespread. So this is what got me into like doing more NFT stuff. So we did this first launch and

• 27:54Speaker 02

  we did another launch with Nifty Gateway following and our piece is sold out in 14 seconds. We did $21,000 in 14 seconds. And then we did another $21,000 at auction for the one piece that was in the auction. And that's when I was like, this is real. There's real demand here. People are really excited about having a piece of digital culture that I made and being the true owners of it. And then the more people that get to see this art, people are like, oh, well, why can't I just rip it and put it on my screen? Well, you can, someone comes over your house, you have a digital frame and someone says, what's that? You're like, oh, it's this art that I like. Okay. It's this art that I own. I supported this artist in making this piece that's on my wall. People want to be able

• 28:38Speaker 02

  to say that. And so I've really started diving into this idea of like what it means to create content that might be available to everyone, but that is exclusive to a few. And it already exists in the physical world. I don't want to rant too much about this, but like when you buy a pair of Yeezys, a fake pair of Yeezys and a real pair of Yeezys, they do the exact same thing. But do you really want the fake ones? No. The same thing with like an Instagram verification checkmark. People love to know that they're verified on Instagram. And there's this whole market for buying verification, like back when Instagram let people do it. People would put up offers to get other people to verify them. And that was like a common form of social digital scarcity, the checkmark. People wanted that shit, you know?

• 29:20Speaker 02

  And so this, this concept of owning a piece of digital art is not that foreign, especially from the gaming world, and that's a whole other, you know, we can, that's a whole conversation in and of itself. It's not that foreign, but it feels kind of weird to someone new. And just like with Bitcoin, with other cryptocurrencies, once it clicks, you're like, aha, I get this. I want to support the artists that are making digital art because they're spending just as much time on the digital art as a physical artist is spending on a painting.

• 29:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it's, and it's pretty crazy to me too, because part of the digital art, like if you just compare what I'll call analog art or traditional art to digital art, there's a number of superiorities that you can point out in terms of the digital art, right? There can, you can change it, you can, you know, kind of programmatically do things. You can have motion, you can have sound, you can do all these kinds of things. I think that we've just kind of touched the very start where people are saying, oh, I took like a regular piece of art, but now it's digital and I can prove that I own it. That to me is like important, but it's not the most important thing. It's not the whole story, right? Whereas with you, like you're now talking about sound, motion, artistic kind of creativity.

• 30:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So talk through a little bit about just like how you think about, you know, to me, it's like being a non-artist, like multiple inputs to the experience, right? Of viewing the art or kind of experiencing it.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  You've guided just a couple of these conversations in the past, haven't you? You're, you're very good at guiding this. I was, I was just about to go there and I appreciate that you mentioned that, you know, art in the physical space can only be experienced in one way. You see it. Art in the digital space can be experienced in a multitude of ways. And you can add sound, which is something that is so special. Where my art director and I are literally creating audio reactive art. It's not something that's possible. I mean, it is possible in the physical world, arguably, you know, but but not to the same extent. So when we think about what we're creating, we want to create these experiences for people that ultimately capture memories for them. And right now it exists on these platforms like, you know, Nifty Gateway and Block Party

• 31:25Speaker 02

  and Super Air. But in the future, I imagine, you know, when the world opens back up, you go to a music festival. And if you come to my stage and you see the visuals that are on my screen behind the stage, if you were in there at that moment, you can take your smartphone out, scan a QR code and you get a limited edition NFT that is your proof of memory of that of experiencing that. And that's so powerful. It's incredibly powerful. I mean, that's one way that it manifests, but there are other ways that it manifests as well. You know, when we did my project that I worked on, I did a crypto music festival project in 2018. We created an, it wasn't an NFT, it was just a limited ERC 20 token. We just made 50, we just minted 50 tokens.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  And if you found me at the festival, it was like a scavenger hunt. I was in the audience, I was walking around. If you found me and you'd scan my phone and you get a limited edition Blau badge. And people were so stoked about it. We've like barely scratched the surface of how digital art can interact with reality. And that's something that I'm I'm exploring really heavily now and getting really excited about. But like you said, it's it's the first type of art that's truly multi-dimensional. And it's been kind of devalued in the sense that people think you could just go on the internet and find it, but no. The fans and the listeners and the people that appreciate art, they actually really want to be the owners of it. They want to own it. And we're just starting to see these trends.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And I mean, you you personally, I mean, you've supported an artist like Fioshe who's exploded in popularity, who's very talented. And is just being creative out of there, you know, I think it was out of his parents' house, he's moving out now, but out of his parents' house here in Vegas and like, that's incredible. That resource for an artist is so valuable at a time like this, when there are few ways for artists to monetize. So props to you for showing support to the art world.

• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, look, I am a, I'm a huge believer. And here's the argument I always say to people is like, the wealthiest people in the world love art, right? They love art because there's a creative aspect to it and they love art because it's a great store of value, right? And if they're intelligent about from a financial investment standpoint, it can appreciate, right? And so if you think that traditional art has all of those things in the analog world, what the hell do you think's gonna happen in the digital world? And we're talking about a market opportunity right now, that's like literally measured in the single digit, you know, millions of dollars. You're telling me that's not going to be worth billions, if not over a trillion dollars in the future? Of course it is.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  So funny you mention, the art market, I think is over 80 billion annually. There's 80 billion in art sales globally annually in physical art. And I'm lucky to have some connections to the physical art world because I'm a musician and a DJ. And I've already had discussions, you know, not disclosing particular people, but one very, very well-known art collector and his gallery is already looking to procure some pieces for me digitally. And one of the top four galleries in New York is still new to this concept, but wants to help me bring it to the physical space so that the older collector community understands it. And we have things like these Samsung digital frames, which look awesome. I mean, right now they're

• 34:32Speaker 02

  not on, but I actually have pieces displayed on screen behind me. And right next to them, I have a piece of physical art, right? And so like, there's no reason why people in their homes and in their personal spaces, they can't display the art that they're proud of. And some of this digital art, like you said before, it can bend dimension in ways that physical art can't. There's something called, and I don't know if you know about this too much, but have you heard of OP art?

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  No, what is that?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Oh dude, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun to, for you to look it up after this. It's optical illusion art where it looks like it's moving, but it's actually a still image. It's really difficult to achieve that with paint, with, with paint and with physical products. So there are a couple of artists that do this really well, but it's like black and white mostly, but it literally looks like it's moving, but it's a still image. And it's, it's like unbelievable what, how technology can add dimension to the art world.

• 35:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What, what is kind of your goal in the art world? Are you going to one day turn around and no longer be a, a DJ and only an artist? Or kind of what, what's the, uh, what's the master plan here?

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think that's a great ques- man, you're so good at these follow-ups. It's, it's incredible. Um, I, I just had this conversation with a friend. Um, I'm going to be 30, right? And in thinking about my life, I've thought, well, the last 10 years of my life were incredible. I got to make music. I got to travel the world, meet a lot of fans, play a lot of music. And I'm still going to do that in the future, but I like sleeping and I like being, living on a normal schedule. So instead of doing 120 shows a year, I'm going to scale it back to like maybe 40 or 50. And that's going to be great. The next 10 years, I, I'm thinking about my legacy, right? Like, how can I influence the music world in a way that's, you know, that will really change, change people's lives and artists' lives especially. Like I've always been a huge proponent of supporting young artists and new talent because they need that push.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  So I've kind of had three goals over the next decade. First goal, continue to make music and push the boundaries musically. Second goal, explore the, you know, digital art world and experiences digitally and in a way that are completely new and exciting to, to users and to, to listeners. Create these new experiential environments that like haven't ever existed in the past. And of course leverage blockchain technology to distribute and to access that world. And the final thing that I'm working on, you know, that we can chat about another time, is giving the public the ability to invest in music. Literally allowing the public to provide liquidity to young artists and bet on their success and participate in the cash flows that music generates, which I think will

• 37:03Speaker 02

  effectively disintermediate the entire music business because if an artist can go to their fans to raise money and they can go to their fans for distribution, record labels don't really need to exist. The problem with that is just that there's securities implications there that just need to be worked out, but it's only a matter of time before something like that happens. So those are my kind of three missions in the next decade. Continue to make music, explore this digital art, experiential world via blockchain technology, and also, you know, give the public the means of investing in music assets.

• 37:28Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. That's awesome. Before I let you go, ask the same two questions to everybody, and then you get asked me when to finish up. The first one is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  The Intelligent Investor.

• 37:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  It gave me perspective on how to manage my capital long-term in a way that I hadn't had, and I had probably only been thinking short-term prior to reading that book. And so it gave me a way longer-term perspective and gives so many great historical examples of really smart people that made really bad investments. And that's great. And I love like seeing the history of it and it kind of maps the future, especially with what's happening now. So I would say that's one of the most important books that I read.

• 38:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great answer. Second question's more fun. Aliens, believer or non-believer?

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Believer, given some new things that have come out. They've got to be out there and they're probably way smarter than us. So not surprised that we don't know about them. They definitely know about us.

• 38:24Anthony Pompliano?

  But let's hope that we find them. They don't find us.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. Yeah.

• 38:27Anthony Pompliano?

  You could ask me one.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  That's a good one.

• 38:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you could ask me one question to wrap it up. What you got for me?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Who is your favorite artist, either in music or in the digital art space right now?

• 38:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Digital art, flotative, obviously. We've been pretty clear that we're big fans there and obviously commissioned a couple of pieces and just generally think it's everything about the story of the artist, the way that the artist kind of builds a community and engages with that community, and then the actual quality of the work, right? So I think that there and then.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Music.

• 39:06Anthony Pompliano?

  On the music side. Man, I, no matter what, I, I just gotta stick with Biggie for forever.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  All right, dude, that's a good, dude, that's a good answer, man. That's a good answer.

• 39:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Even, uh, yeah, there's a lot of artists now that are really great that, you know, I'm like, hey, look, they're, uh, they're doing a good job, but, uh, but in terms of music, if, uh,

• 39:26Speaker 02

  If you're at the gym, that's what you turn on?

• 39:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I was gonna say that there's basically, uh, if I had to rattle off a bunch, it's like Biggie, NWA, Jay-Z, you know, you just go down the list, uh, of, uh, of a bunch of, uh, great artists, but those would, uh, those would definitely make the list. So, listen, man, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I think people will, uh, will learn a lot. And obviously, uh, you've got kind of these parallel paths now, both on the, on the music side and the art side. So, uh, I'm cheering for you and we'll definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, thanks. Thanks for taking the time. I've been a big fan. I love your tweets. Um, appreciate your support of, of the community and, uh, and thanks for having me on.