Paul Eastwood:
In all the spaces that NFTs will have a long term effect. I think music is probably the place where it's going to have the most effect than anywhere else. And like I said, we just haven't got there yet. But I think it's going to be an ongoing format for music distribution. Again, not for the casual listener, but for the fan, the collector.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate sustainable income with your music. We're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution of today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
All right. I'm excited to be here today with Paul Eastwood. Paul is currently the Vice President of Sports & Entertainment at Orderinbox, which is a social NFT marketplace for the Metaverse, where he leads OIX's business developments initiatives in the sports meet music, art, and entertainment spaces. What a cool across section. Paul Eastwood is best known in the entertainment industry at Universal Music, whereas vice president of marketing and promotion, he oversaw the marketing strategies for roster of artists including 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, Sheryl Crow, Eminem, No Doubt, Sting, Rush, and holy cow, you've had quite the roster that you worked with. That's amazing.
So today, I'm really excited to talk with him about one of the newest waves in the music industry, which is NFTs. And if you're listening to this right now, then probably, and you're in the music industry and you're looking at things and trends, then that NFTs are such a big topic of conversation right now and there's a lot of excitement and energy. And also, it's like when the internet first sprouted where there's a lot of unknowns and we're kind of figuring out what's the direction things we're going to go in. So, super excited to connect with you today Paul, and thank you for taking the time to be here.

Paul Eastwood:
Hey Michael, it's great to meet you and thanks for having me.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. So kick things off, I would love to just hear a little bit about your story and how you found your way here and were able to work with all those artists.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah,. I've sort of started my whole career in the music industry. I spent 15, 16 years within some of the major labels at BMG Music, in Universal Music. I took a little time out from the industry and pivoted into the sportswear and men's golf apparel. I grew a brand up there and we eventually sold it and little by little, I got pulled back in the music industry doing some time at The Feldman Agency, a show tech merchandise who did all of Russia's merchandise and then ole Media Management, which became Anthem Entertainment. And then some other ex-pats of the music industry contacted me because they were looking to launch streaming service, actually originally during the pandemic. And quickly we found out that the biggest problem with streaming is artists don't want to stream, because no one picked up a guitar and wrote a song so they could stare into a video camera.
But at the same time, a lot of artists we were talking to started to ask about NFTs and what we knew about them. And it so happened at that point, one of the partners in the company was called Gigr Entertainment And Technology was a foremost authority on blockchain technology and NFT. So, we did a hard pivot into that space. Unfortunately, Gigr never really got the traction that it needed to attract the investor money. Little along the way, I met the owners of Orderinbox and signed on with them back in the beginning of April, because I was really excited about the platform and the offerings that they had. And I just thought is a real opportunity in a number of spaces, my background obviously in the entertainment, but for music specifically.

Michael Walker:
Wow, so cool. So I would love to hear your perspective on NFTs right now and the opportunity around NFTs. From your point of view, what do you think, for anyone who's listening to this right now who maybe they've heard of NFTs before and they've thought about maybe even making NFTs for their music, but they're still kind of trying to grasp what exactly is an NFT and why is this thing valuable? What's your take on it?

Paul Eastwood:
Well, I think first off, we have to realize we're at the tip of the iceberg and I'm not even sure that we've even had that aha moment where we've figured out how NFTs, particularly even in the music industry, how they're really going to come in to affect our lives on a day to day basis in the real world. But what I do think, they provide for artists, and again, I don't think NFTs are here to replace streaming or physical sales or anything else. I think it's an addition, it's a new revenue stream the artists can look in to make money from. The streaming services in my opinion, are never going to go away. They're particularly geared for the casual listener. People put on a playlist and listen while they do other things. I think hardcore fans, collectors, that's who the NFT speaks to. Someone that's interested in getting something of value from an artist that they really want to support or they're a big fan of, they're the people they're going to be interested in NFTs.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Awesome. So it sounds like what you're saying is that rather than this being something that's going to break necessarily or replace streaming or all these other things, the way that we should look at it is that this is actually a complimentary revenue stream that we could potentially tap into.

Paul Eastwood:
I see NFTs sort of in the future. The thing that's really holding NFTs back from mainstream, there's a couple of barriers of entry on the artist's side, it's rights management. But I've spoken with people both here in Canada and down in New York City that are really working hard and I know other people are too, and that's going to get solved. And once the whole rights management thing gets solved, you're going to start to see international artists really start to get into the NFT and the major labels get into the NFT space as well. On the consumer side, and it's very close to being worked out. In fact, the Flow blockchain is pretty much nailed it already is. Once people can just lay down a credit card and buy NFTs and not have to worry about crypto exchanges and all that type of thing, then we're really going start to see NFTs, the acceptance and the usage of NFTs really grow.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense because it'll seem like one of the biggest barriers to entry right now is that there's so many hoops you have to jump through in order to own and purchase an NFT. And you have to sign up for your crypto wallet and you have to jump through and you have to be kind of a techy person to really go through all of that.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, but like I said, the Flow blockchain with the Dapper Wallet you can pretty much use a credit card there. You're going to see more and more, maybe not even blockchains but certainly marketplaces on those blockchains that will allow credit card usage. Already in Orderinbox, we have a partnership with a company called Wire, where you can, without having to go through a crypto exchange from your profile in Orderinbox, you can reload your crypto wallet. So those barriers to entry are certainly getting smoothed over and will continue to do so.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, awesome. Man, I'm really excited to be talking with you. So one of those NFT marketplaces, I'm not sure if you know this or not, but we have a beta launch that we just did, we're rolling out music NFT Marketplace and that's how it's set up as well is that, what do we call it? The wallet, from purists from the blockchain, they might look at what we're doing and think it's not pure ownership from a standpoint of, we help create the wallets, we have a modern musician wallet which allows the artist to easily transfer these NFTs without requiring them to jump through a bunch of different hoops just using a credit card.
But that's one of the things that I'm geeking out about most right now, is having this marketplace integration and making it really simple for fans and artists to create them. So, definitely excited to talk with you more and kind of hear your take on the whole landscape and hear about the service you guys are working on and how you've built it and what kind of makes it a stand out. So maybe we could talk a little bit about that. So could you tell me a little bit more about what you guys are working on and what your goals are with it?

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah. So, Orderinbox was really set for that sort of independent artist, not necessarily music, but for all the art spaces, whether it's digital art, photography or music. It was never set up, and still we have not done to this point in time any of those big speculative token things. Sort of like Bored Apes, CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, and I'm not here to bash those. They've certainly served their purpose. I do think if there's an NFT bubble, it'll be in that space. But Orderinbox is really set up for the creators, it's more set up for artwork. So just really ease of use, of minting and we've added some new features allowing for large scale collections. So, if you wanted to have a piece of art that you wanted to offer sort of a 100 of it versus just one of ones type of thing.
And also, we're soon launching sort of a split wallet so you'd be able to both in the initial sales revenues of the NFT and the secondary sales that we should talk about just to make sure everyone understands that thing, you can split it into different accounts. Why I think that's particularly of interest is when it comes to charities, a lot of artists are very active with certain charities. And so, particularly for heritage artists that don't want to look like they're money grabbing, they can tie in a charity and with the blockchain technology, that charity gets paid automatically just as soon as that NFT is bought through their crypto wallet, through the blockchain, they get paid as well. And you're starting to see some platforms. There's one where I'm going to be working with shortly called The Giving Block that specializes in sort of an API, they're a plugin for different charities type of thing.
So I think that's one of the other really interesting things about NFTs is the way in which they can support charities. Just to go back to that secondary royalty for a second, in case anyone isn't aware of how that works. With the smart contract that backs up an NFT, when anyone sells that NFT again, the original artist always gets a chunk of the royalty, which is kind of very exciting. And I think that's why you've seen about two weeks ago, evil Ticketmaster has announced that they are working with the Flow blockchain on some sort of upcoming thing. It's going to be interesting to see, but when you think about it, secondary sales of tickets makes a lot of sense for NFTs. So that the artist is seeing a piece of that secondary sale, that resale of a ticket.

Michael Walker:
Cool, that's super interesting. One thing that I would love to dive a little bit deeper on that you had mentioned was one of the hurdles to NFT adoption right now for artists, was figuring out the copyright or the royalties and the rights of those NFTs. And we could talk a little bit about that and I would love to hear your perspective on, I know there's a lot of different strategies or ideas around NFTs and some of them include, you get a royalty of some of the streaming royalties and whatnot. What's your take on, if an artist is listening this right now, and I was thinking about creating NFTs, do you think that that's a area worth pursuing, is trying to create percentage royalties of your streaming or you think that it's better to keep it in its own space?

Paul Eastwood:
I think it's interesting space to look at and keep your eye on. I mean, it is kind of an interesting hook for someone like The Chainsmokers who did it on the Royal platform because they're a known established act and they sort of little reward for their fans or if their own fans want to invest. Now, we have to remember that they're only selling a portion of the streaming royalties, which I think is probably because that makes sense. So they're the sort of easiest through the DSPs to track the sales of and whatnot. But at the end of the day, there's still sort of a trust element, someone at that artist's side of things who is going to have to manage those statements that incoming revenue and then get it to you, that NFT holder. Paying people on the blockchain, that's not the problem. The problem is like, okay, so, at what point in time someone's going to have to physically manage and administrate that incoming money from streaming service and pay it out to you.
So there's a little bit of trust that needs to happen that doesn't happen automatically and if you've been on any of those platforms, you'll notice that when you click on the legal tab or the drop, I'm trying to think of how they word it, but it's a seven page PDF of legalese. So there's a lot of legality in that. I've seen it also tried with some developing artists. So the more you're investing in a new artist that you like and that's been a tough go so far. I think it's an interesting space. I think we'll see more of it, but I don't think it has to be the only way to do it, that's for sure.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's one thing that I feel like hasn't quite clicked for me, just from a standpoint of, what does this technology bring to the table that isn't possible to do any other way? And investing in a business or investing in something it's already a use case you can do, there's just kind of a cool flashy new way to do it. But I don't know if that's really the unique thing that now we have wed3, it uniquely gives us the ability to invest in assets.

Paul Eastwood:
And I think also as web3 develops more, you're going to see all the e-commerce and maybe e-commerce is not the right word to use, but all the commerce, at least coming out of web3 will be through NFTs. And that's certainly is people who become more comfortable with web3, they'll become more comfortable with the concept of NFTs. And again, and just remembering that an NFT is really just a digital certificate of authenticity, it says you own this type of thing. And next to that is the unlockable content. And that's a key important because that unlock unlockable content, the utility of the NFT, which I think is important to always remember, can be anything. It can be exclusive digital merch or even physical merch. It can be VIP experiences, either online or it shows.
I was thinking today actually, it can be used for voting too. When an artist had a new release and you had VIP members and they could vote on different versions of songs. You know could ask them, they could get early access to hearing songs and pick what version should go on the album, pick maybe what songs from their back catalog they're going to play in live in their next sort of concert tour. But the utility can be just about anything, you imagine nation can really dream up. And again, there is always that resell sort of potential with an NFT. And I think that in itself creates new opportunities that so far, I don't know other ways of doing it that also ensure that the artist would get paid on it.
You have to remember the great thing about blockchain, and this is technically doable, it's not quite efficient yet, but it's going to come, is whenever a consumer was to buy a piece of music on the blockchain, everyone that contributed to that piece of music would instantaneously get paid their slice of the pie. So if you bought a song, every writer, every producer, everyone that's supposed to get paid their slice of money for that song could get paid.

Michael Walker:
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Paul Eastwood:
Now, obviously, that's a pretty big disruption for how the music industry, the major labels, the big publishing companies and rights management companies in general do business because part of their business model has a time element. They collect revenues for artists, they get to sit on that money for a period of time, somewhere between 6 months and 18 months and they can do other things without money. They can reinvest it in other developing artists or they can invest it in other sort of monetary vehicles, but that's a big disruption for the industry. People getting paid immediately for their works of art as opposed to them getting to hold onto the money and then of divvy it out over time.

Michael Walker:
That's really interesting. I'd never really thought about that as a use case for the NFTs is that you can just work into the royalties, instantaneous payment for it. It seems like we're in such a unique time with web3 and with the internet in general and with maybe democratization of musicians being able to, you have an independent music career without necessarily needing to have a record label. What's your take on NFTs? Maybe I think a lot of the people who are going to be listening to this right now are independent musicians who may or may not have aspirations to get signed to a record label. And because you hear your take on the benefits of being an independent musician as it relates to NFTs versus record labels. What are the differences between if you're an independent artist or if you're a signed artist when it comes to making use of this unique opportunity?

Paul Eastwood:
Well, certainly right at the gate, it's rights management, most independent artists are unencumbered by rights management. Either they own all their own royalties or maybe they have a very simple split with either an indie label or whatever, so it's a lot simpler. I mean, certainly can be handled with all the technologies that exist today. The other thing I was going to mention is that I think that was going to develop a real cottage industry of people and I don't know what to call them yet. I don't like to use the word agents because we already use that term in a number of different ways within the music industry. But people that are going to really help facilitate artists and into the NFT space. So they'll help with of ideation, curation and then promotion of the NFTs. So a little bit of artist handholding to get from the music to the NFT.
I do believe that is a service industry that is going to grow within the next little time and that's what I get asked so much, "Who can I talk to? I'm interested, who can I talk to?" And there just aren't a lot of people out there. So the best way right now is to find platforms, marketplaces, like Orderinbox that are fairly DIY, lots of instruction, lots of how-to videos. You can start to do it on your own. The one thing I will mention though is, doing an NFT drop is no different than doing any other kind of musical drop or selling anything else. You need to promote it, right? You can't just put it out there into the world and not let anyone know and expect anyone's going to buy it. So, same thing, if you were putting some new music to a streaming or you were releasing something physical or whatever, you've got to promote it.
And another great thing about Orderinbox is that they're really... In Orderinbox, basically, you build a profile like you would at any other social media site. But it's easy to link that to your sort of more common sites like Twitter, Instagram, those type of things, because self-promotion obviously is an independent artist is key. And so, all I'm saying here is, if you're going to do an NFT drop, understand that you need to promote it like you would anything else, a show or any other release of new music.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. The analogy that we used to describe that all the time is that it's kind of building a fire. And just because you have the logs, which in this case might be like the NFTs, if all you do is you just drop in a fire pit, nothing happens. You need a way to generate traffic, you need to promote it, you need to generate the flames or the spark. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that it's like anything, it's really important to work out a promotion strategy too. If you do create NFTs using Orderinbox, then you need to make sure that you have a good intention or a good strategy, a good sequence around how you're going to release it and build an audience around it.
So I would love to hear your perspective on as an independent artist right now, what are some of the biggest opportunities for them to be able to build an audience? Especially if they're maybe starting out and they don't have funding from a third party investor or record label. Imagine this is someone who's like wickedly talented, someone who has amazing music, that's not the problem. But now they're just looking at, "Okay, how can I put in front of the right people, start building an audience and actually build demand for creating NFTs on order and bucks?"

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah. Well, again, I don't think that's any different than anything you do anywhere else. I mean social media has become a great tool for artists. I happen to believe that going up and playing live is still really important part of building your audience. Not that every artist does do that, but one thing we should mention here is that the digital files required to do an NFT are really simple files we have already, right? So MP3s actually, because the music needs to have a cover shot, an MP4 is always better to have. So it becomes more of a still video if you will. But we're not talking about complex digital assets to build your NFT. As soon as you have a mix of your music that you're happy with and you have a good quality, MP3, MP4 file of it and either some artwork or if you don't have a video, but a good still... I mean, you can build an NFT. And I think the big important thing is to not wait until you think you've got everything perfect, but to try something.
There are no rules out there. Believe me, I follow all the pricing for different NFTs and different drops and the pricing is literally all over the place. Obviously as a new artist, you have to be careful. You're not going to be putting tees out there for hundreds of dollars type of thing. But take a look around, it's like anything you wouldn't sign with a label or a manager without doing your research, talking to other artists, seeing what they offer. Same thing with NFT platforms, you have to do a little bit of homework and see what they offer, see what they charge and find out what's a good fit for you. And then once you've done that, then I think it's time to just experiment. Just do a drop of 10 NFTs and maybe price them at $10, whatever it is.
The only way you're going to learn from this, and like I said, there are no rules, is to try things. And the more you try it, the better you are going to be at it and the more following you'll have too. But that's the big mistake we see with NFTs, is people are just a little bit scared to put their toe in the water. But you don't need to jump into the deep end and have all this different stuff, but get your foot in the water, do a drop, see how it goes.

Michael Walker:
Totally. That makes a ton of sense. And the analogy of starting a fire, it's kind of like you do need to drop the logs into the fire pits, you need to do something. If you just are carrying around the logs, then it can be exhausting and at some point, you need to test out and put something in the fire pit.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, I mean, if you're lucky enough to have sort of still a record or music store in the city that you live that does some sort of consignment with hard copy or vinyl, whatever, you wouldn't put it in there and not tell anyone. It's the same thing with NFTs, right? You've got to nurture the sale a little bit. And I still think that social media is probably the best way. And if you happen to have a website and are able to collect email addresses, email is still a really great way to get in touch with to keep in touch with your fans.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. It seems like email is an unspoken champion of online business.

Paul Eastwood:
It's never kind of gone away as all these other things come back. And there are free services like MailChimp that you can use to a certain degree that are really easy to use and email just continues to. Assuming people are opting in, which they should be in a positive way. People want to hear from you and so, people don't mind getting that email from you, long as it's not too often to hear about what you're up to, to hear about a new tour or new music or whatever. It's the reason they signed up, because they're interested.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. So we have a software as a service called StreetTeam that we just released about four months ago and it does two way text message conversations, so it does what community does in terms of text messaging and then it has email sending back and forth as well. So it kind of does what MailChimp does, but we designed it for musicians specifically to build-

Paul Eastwood:
Awesome.

Michael Walker:
...their "digital StreetTeam." So there might be actually some alignment there. Maybe we could build a custom API integration with Orderinbox or something on the NFT front, could be really cool.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, for sure.

Michael Walker:
But a 100%, it seems like this is something that almost every online business owner that I've connected with understands us deeply that email and their list, their CRM list is like the number one of the number one most valuable assets to their career. But it seems like it's one of those things that is easy to overlook because maybe social media is more on the surface, it's a bit more apparent and sexy on the surface, I guess. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about, I mean, it seems like you have a ton of experience and wisdom when it comes to marketing and promotion strategies for some major record label artists even. So I'd love to hear your take on right now, how to get the best of both worlds when it comes to social media, but also with building an email list, building a contact list that really is a long term asset that you own that's not potentially going to die in a year or so.

Paul Eastwood:
I mean, yeah, that's one of the great things about heritage rock acts, They seem to have been the smartest ones and I've spent some time working with the Rush guys and when I say the Rush guys, I should really talk about the people around them, their management team, their merchandise team. And they've been very smart about cultivating, they have a very active fan base. They've been very smart about cultivating and keeping in contact with them. But a lot of heritage rock acts, Iron Maiden is another one, Metallica obviously, right? It does seem a little bit like it's more in that sort of metal power rock side of things because their fan bases are known obviously, for being very active. So I just think that you've got to be able to do sort of all of that. It's that all of above type of thing.
To me, the streaming services are just sort big national radio chains. They have the power now that the big radio chains used to have for exposing people to music. And while I think it's great, I think it would be better, competition is always better. I'd like wish there were more streaming services than there are. I think that would obviously be good for artists all over the place. But I think there are more opportunities now for independent artists. I think competition is certainly increased. The major labels used to be, of which there used to be six, now there are only three. While they were gatekeepers, it helped sort of weed out a little bit. It made it harder for independent artists to get noticed, but it sort of weeded out, I don't want to say bad music, but the strong survive type of thing. And now, just with independent music sort of flourishing and anyone being able to really put up a video on YouTube or whatever, just the competition is that much.
There's just more out there, there's more volume. And I think which just means that unfortunately, aside from honing your craft, being your playing ability, your songwriting ability, your vocal ability, you have to become business savvy as well. And I always find there's one guy in the band or one person, sorry, in the band that's sort of the more business leaning. There's always someone in that band that looks after more of the business than someone else, or you've got to find a good manager. And of course, more and more we're seeing these, what used to be just management companies being more like management companies, but indie labels, but doing their own marketing as well. The industry, I mean like any industry, it continues to be in a state of change. Anything common and the only thing that stays the same, the world is change, right?

Michael Walker:
100%. I think that's one of my favorite quotes and just ideas is that, that's the one thing that doesn't change is that everything is always changing...

Paul Eastwood:
The only thing in this world that's constant is change, I think is the quote. And we're seeing major labels, I don't think they ever want to get left out like they did with the internet back at the turn of the century type of thing with the advent of the internet. And then Napster, of course, they don't want to be left there. So all the major labels have sort of invested. And even some of the major independent labels, they're certainly partnering up with NFT, they're making sure they've got a sort of partner in this space, They don't want to get left there, so they'll be there too. Like I said, when the rights management thing gets dialed in, and it will certainly over time. Technology will solve it for sure, you're going to see more and more international artists get into the NFT space.And I think they'll become like this, back in the day of bricks and mortar, a lot of the major accounts would get different sort of versions of an album. Like when a major release came out, some of them would have extra tracks, Japanese releases used to have extra tracks, that type of thing. I think, yes, you'll see in the NFT space before or as something an album gets streamed, there'll be NFTs with extra tracks, bonus material, that type of thing. I think you'll see digital box sets become NFTs. To me, that's kind of exciting too. But I think in all the spaces that NFTs will have a long term effect, I think music is probably the place where it's going to have the most effect than anywhere else. And like I said, we just haven't got there yet, but I think it's going to be an ongoing format for music distribution. Again, not for the casual listener, but for the fan, the collector.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. I totally agree with that assessment. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on NFTs versus streaming instead, because you mentioned that... I don't think streaming is going anywhere. So streaming is here to stay, there's some benefits to streaming. But from your point of view, which platform or if an independent artist was listening this right now and they're kind of hedging their bets and they're thinking, okay, I have a limited amount of time, limited amount of resources, where should I really invest my energy in order to get the best return right now and have the best shot of building a successful career? Would you recommend that they lean towards NFTs or another strategy and specifically NFTs versus streaming? Do you think that streaming as a revenue stream is something that long term is going to be one of the major revenue streams? Or you think that NFTs are going to kind of way surpass streaming in terms of an actual revenue stream for artists?

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah. Again, I think we're talking about two different consumers of music, in that the streaming really lends itself to the casual consumer. Guys like you and I fans, we're fans of music, I feel like listening to this album or I feel like listening to this artist right now. I happen to use TIDAL as a streaming service and when I put it on, it's either a playlist that I've built of my own of a band or it's a certain album or something that I want to listen to. And so, the streaming will always be there. I think the revenue from streaming will get sorted out. It's a hot topic, it will continue to be a hot topic. The streaming model reminds me a little bit of the old Columbia record club thing. That's where you get, what was it, you get a 100 CDs for a dollar or whatever type of thing. These subscription type services.
And the major labels loved it because they got these huge advances and then they trickled out the royalties to the artists. And it's a little bit what's going on today, and I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. But I do think with time, with technology there will be more equitable payments for artists from the streaming services. But with NFTs, of course, the artist gets to control the revenues, they can set the price, they can set the quantity. Scarcity means value. So if you want to do a limited edition and you only want to mint a 1,000 copies of this NFT for the world that creating scarcity and price it as you will. Certainly as an independent artist, it's cheaper to make an NFT than it is to go press vinyl or press a CD at this point in time to sell it your shows.
I have seen independent artists do things where handing out special discounts or special codes for NFTs, for people that attend their shows and then can go online and buy NFTs at a special price or in lockable content. But there's some really interesting ways to tie live performances in with collecting NFTs too. You're going to see that, I think that's probably one of the things you're going to see from Ticketmaster. In fact, the NFL's kind of doing it, like the NFT ticket is becoming your collector item. The way some people like to collect ticket stubs and as we all know, paper ticket stubs are kind of going away as we're getting tickets digitally on our phones and our devices. So to give it sort the experience, a bit of a commemorative piece tease along with when you buy a ticket, at least becomes a digital commemorative piece for attending that show.

Michael Walker:
Interesting. So it sounds like what you're saying is that streaming and NFTs, there's whole different spaces. So streaming is for a different kind of user, as opposed to tease or someone maybe more wants more ownership or is more of a fan or more a collector is something that's just serves a different need. Maybe we could talk a little bit more about that idea of scarcity. I guess, one question, and I'm sure you get this question a lot. Again, I've certainly heard this question a ton is, because we're still kind of early on with NFTs and there's a lot of different things that could be an NFT. There's just a lot of confusion around what exactly is an NFT and why is this thing valuable. I'd say that's one of the biggest questions.
Why is this thing worth more money when I can just stream it online? If I can enjoy it right now then, and it's basically the same digital file, what makes that more valuable? So from your point of view, what is it that makes an NFT of a song that you can stream more valuable to own versus the streaming song which someone can just listen to online?

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, I think it's really the utility, the unlockable content that only the owner of their NFT gets. So I would never suggest to someone that you just NFT a song, right? Because it could be shared, that MP3 can be shared. But in that NFT, there should be some unlockable content and either make that some digital merch or maybe it's a different mix of the song, especially for EDM artists. And of course, EDM music has adopted NFTs a lot quicker than a lot of the other sort of genres of music. But the unlockable content to use a marketing term, a value add, give them something else. Maybe it's a membership, so they will get notice of your next music drop type of thing or when they're going to tour or a discount even on the next NFT type of thing.
But I think just to say, "Well, we're going to do 10 NFTs of this song" and then people can share the MP3 of course with anyone that they want. So, you've got to have something a little bit extra. And it doesn't have to be expensive, but it needs to have the utility of the NFT needs to be more than just that digital piece of art that comes with it. Whether it's that MP3 of music or photograph if you happen to be an artist type of thing. But again, it's the unlockable content, it's the utility of the NFT that really drives the value.

Michael Walker:
Cool. So it sounds like what you're saying is that the NFT in and of itself can be amplified by actually granting that utility, by granting unlockable content that's exclusive to someone who owns the NFT. And that's probably one of the easiest ways to really demonstrate extra value. It's just by saying like, "Hey, when you get this, you also get this other thing that's really cool." And so, that makes a lot of sense just in terms of this clear value that's easy to demonstrate and understand. I forget where I heard this analogy, but this is one thing that really helped click into place for me was thinking about the Mona Lisa and how the Mona Lisa is worth $800 million for the original Mona Lisa. And when you think about it, what makes that Mona Lisa worth $800 million? When nowadays, you can basically recreate the Mona Lisa and hang a decoy side by side.
So almost, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the real Mona Lisa and the decoy. And you could share the decoy, you could print out a bunch of different, you could hang it up on your wall, you could enjoy the artwork, you could do everything that you want with that Mona Lisa. But when it comes down to it, one Mona Lisa is worth $800 million and the other one's worth $30. And why is that? And it's not necessarily because with this Mona Lisa, you get the copyright to it and you can resell it, because that's not the case. You don't get the copyright with Mona Lisa, but it's still worth $800 million. And it's not necessarily because when you own the Mona Lisa, you also unlock membership access to a private downtown area. Although, I mean, there probably certainly are some status base, like you own the Mona Lisa, it's pretty day cool.
But there is an aspect to just the tangible, the owning of an asset, the original one of a kind verified, authentic, one of a kind asset that it seems like that's one thing that's maybe a bit harder to fully grasp with NFTs. But ultimately, why is it that you can buy the Mona Lisa for $800 million, but Let It Be by The Beatles, you've never been able to buy for more than a dollar, right? There's just a mismatch and value opportunity there.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, the reproduction issue is, you can reproduce the Mona Lisa, but there's still just one of one at the end of the day, right? So, just that one that was made by the artist type of thing. So when it comes NFTs and scarcity and value, I think you'll see, particularly in the sports entertainment world, you'll notice when sports figures do drops of NFTs, you'll see different levels. They'll have a rarity of one rarity and you'll be like, oddly, it's usually based upon whatever their sports number is, but let's say they're number 87. So one line might be like, there's a 100 of these at $870 each, right? But there's only a 100 of them and then there's a 1,000 of these ones, but they're $87 type of thing. And then we have to remember, you can also do auctions for NFTs. You can have reserve auctions where you set a price and once someone hits that reserve, then you can set the time for how long the auction goes too as well.
So you could have, again, as you become more, you have a more of a following, not just super for the independent artist, but let's say you start to have a certain following and you had a tour coming up, you could do an NFT, an auction for a meet-and-greet type of thing, or some sort of VIP package. That was one of one, and people would bid on it type of thing. So that's always kind of an interesting way to generate funds as well, is just that whole auction thing versus just a hard sell of entities. But, it's all about the value proposition. It's all about the scarcity.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Man, well, I love this conversation. I love to geek it out on the future of the music industry and NFTs. And it's so cool that you guys are building this platform to help to bridge the gap between the end user and make things as streamlined as possible for fans and not just the artists or people who are technical or into web3. Do you have something to add to that?

Paul Eastwood:
No, this two things that will right now. Of course, when you mint on one blockchain, you can't necessarily sell those assets on other blockchains. But that sort of blockchain technology, that's not far off too. So that's going to really open up the market sizes that you can market to once all these blockchains are able to speak to each other. Another point that I think is very important to artists, in fact, I know it is, is some of the misconceptions about the energy that blockchain uses. And yes, the old proof of what's called proof-of-work, blockchains used a ton of energy, like a ton. But the new ones, the proof-of-stake blockchains use like 95.95 less percent, they're much more energy efficient and blockchains will continue to become even more energy efficient with technology for sure. But just be aware that even the original Ethereum network, which was a proof-of-stake is just, actually going through the what's called the merge to their layer two blockchain that will be a proof-of-stake and much more energy efficient.
So in most cases, most of the new blockchains, the Polygon blockchain Solana blockchain, Flow blockchain are all proofs-of-stake. So just be aware that yes, early blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, certainly were big energy eaters. But the new ones are much more energy efficient because I know of a couple of artists that were going to mint and their fans kind of pushed back on it because of not being so green and they didn't. I think that's too bad because they still could have, had they just chosen a right blockchain or maybe didn't even know that there was that available to them.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, that's a really important one. Because I know there's quite a few artists I've talked to, that was their main concern was for them and for how their fans base would react to it because the old proof of work was so incredibly energy inefficient. And I think it was maybe Flow that released an article on their blockchain that the energy that it takes on Flow using the new model takes less energy to mint an NFT than it takes to do a single Google search or to post a single photo on Instagram.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah, I've seen that too in that. That's a cutting edge blockchain for sure. I've followed the Flow thing for a while because my previous company, Gigr was actually looking to mint on Flow. And it's only just recently that Flow has opened up the Dapper Wallet to many more market places and platforms. It's going to be interesting to see how they do, but they've partnered it up with a lot of big sports franchises as well, right? NBA top shots, NFL, LaLiga, UFC. So, it's going to be really interesting just to see the competition between all the blockchains plays out in the long run. Who's being smart about it? Who's not? Like I said, I'll remind everyone, we're at the tip of the iceberg on this thing.
And while NFTs do use cryptocurrency, there really is a separation between NFTs and their utility and cryptocurrencies, which are essentially just that, they're currencies and they have an urban flow almost all the other currencies in markets out there. And you're never going to be able to predict those. But I do believe NFTs are here to stay, and I do think they're going to play a very important role in the distribution of music in the future. It allows musicians, creators to have that one-on-one exchange with their fans. It's between the artist and the fan. And I think whenever you can do some of that and circumvent the gatekeepers, I think that's a positive thing, I think haven't worked for a gatekeeper before.

Michael Walker:
That's so cool. That really is just the core of the movement really, it's been about connecting and bringing artists closer to their fans. And the internet has really opened that up and now NFT is going to give ownership in a way that wasn't able to for a long time. So cool. Hey Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on here. I love talking about this and what you guys are building is super cool. So, I'm sure what we'll be in touch, and I'd love to connect on maybe partnering up on building a custom API integration with Orderinbox. So, thank you so much. And for anyone who's listening or watching this right now, who would be interested in checking it out and potentially minting an NFT and using the Orderinbox platform, what's the best place for them to go to learn more?

Paul Eastwood:
Well, you should really take a look, and like I said, you should do your research on whatever platform you're thinking on minting on. Some platforms actually help with marketing too. So that's an important thing ,that if a platform like Orderinbox has a mailing list that they're willing to utilize to help you promote your drop, then that's something you should always consider. You should really go to orderinbox.com. Orderinbox is all one word .com, and you will only be able to see the marketplace. But to really experience it, you need to connect your crypto wallet to it. So you need to have a crypto wallet connected to it. And then that allows you to build a profile like you would in any other social media platform. And then you can start connecting with other collectors, other artists, and really see what it's all about.

Michael Walker:
So cool. Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put the show notes, the links and everything in the description for the show for easy access.

Paul Eastwood:
Cool.

Michael Walker:
And yeah, man, it's been great talking with you. I really appreciate you taking the time, it was very cool.

Paul Eastwood:
Yeah. Thanks, Michael. It's a fun, fast moving subject. I'm obviously excited about it and I like talking about it. So, thanks for your time and the opportunity today.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, you bet.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you, who want to take the music careers to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I'll look forward to taking you on our next episode.