Singing the Web3 Anthem 🎶 The TILT #16
Tilting into creativity with Jonathan: Song a Day Man
Hey internet friend, do you identify as a “content creator”?
In this week’s podcast episode, we dissect this rather sticky term and look at the intersection of content, music and NFTs. We talk about the need to find different lexicon than what Big Tech have mandated through their ‘content creator’ mantra. The question is, what narrative rocks your vernacular boat?
#contentcreator to… #audioalchemist #dialogicwizards #craftersofthought…?
The thing that’s so darn exhilarating with Web3 is that it’s an open ocean 🌊 right now to take back our creative freedoms. The way we leverage our data + our art is up to us. And as we progress further into the creator renaissance, it becomes more apparent there are some wicked upsides for artists whose creations deserve to be valued rather than monopolized by the big platforms that have “held content hostage” (to take a leaf from Zora’s manifesto).
On this front, we’re excited to share with you Episode 20 where we sync in with the effervescent Jonathan Mann: @songadaymann, an absolute standout in the music x web3 category. Jonathan has been creating a song EVERY SINGLE DAY since Jan 1st 2009 including viral hits like ‘Baby Yoda’ 🎶
So we think he’s an apt authority to speak on: why the term #contentcreator needs a rebrand. We also traverse the topics of:
Cryptopunks + Meebits
The origins of Song A Day
NFT predictions
What creativity means to Jonathan…and much much more!
Tune in with us…
Let’s kick off - what’s the origin story of getting into the Metaverse and Web3?
I was at a conference in 2014 and I remember coming away from it being like, Hmm, there's something here that I'm more interested in now. So I tweeted shortly after that conference and Boris Mann reached out and he said, yes, I do have ideas. So that was my entré into the world of Ethereum. He walked me through setting up Metamask and said, literally “go play”. He also sent me Cryptopunks. Like I got it right away. I was obsessed. I loved the idea. I understood immediately. What this could mean for other forms of media, in terms of digital scarcity, I wrote a song about Cryptopunks.
I started making videos about digital scarcity and going to meetups and meeting all kinds of people like immediately. It was just this crazy, heady time. And right at that time as well, I started working on a project to tokenize Song a Day to turn my thousands of songs into NFTs.
How did the NFT community feel at that time?
It was a very, very small fledgling community. But where it started was ultimately with the Cryptopunks. They really were the gateway drug. Also having something a little bit more tangible was great, cause I’m not a developer myself. And there's just something so charming about it.
Were you adamant about releasing a SONG a day, versus something else every day back in 2009 when you started this?
Yes, because I'm a songwriter and I started writing songs when I was 12. So I knew basically from that moment that I wanted to write songs. So I've been doing that ever since then. I started Song a Day man when I was 26. So I did it for two years. So more or less at that point, it became an indefinite thing where I was just going to keep going. And 1 Guinness World Record and 4,500 songs later, here we are.
Wow that’s remarkable persistence. Surely you must have sometimes thought ‘I just feel shit today’, so how do you work through that?
I mean, there's a whole genre of songs done while being sick. Like, while having food poisoning or having the flu, or while being in the hospital while… just like everything. But you know, the thing that I always talk about and the way that I think about Song a Day is the getting over the point of caring. Essentially, it's a little bit counterintuitive because we're taught that we should really care and put a lot of craft and care into the things that we make.
But if you want to make something every day and you want to, and in my case share something every day (which I don't recommend for everybody), but if you want to do that, the real key to it is to not care. You have to turn off the part of your brain that cares what anybody else is going to think about it.
Well, speaking of ones that you do care about and have quite vivid memories of, the situation with Steve Jobs must've been quite a highlight there…
So the story, of the iPhone4 antenna song begins with the iPhone 4 defect. Like this was literally headline news for weeks. People were freaking out. So for the first time ever Steve Jobs decided to hold what I call a defensive press conference. And on the eve of this press conference I decided to make a song defending Apple from what I saw as a sort of like overblown stupid controversy.
I wrote the song, I made the video, uploaded it just like any other song any other day. And I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and there was an email in my inbox. And the email was from ‘pr@apple.com’. And the subject line was “Your Song”. And I ignored the email because I assumed that it was someone trolling me because it's very easy to spoof an email and like, it literally didn't compute to me that it could be real.
So I got in the shower, starting my day. And while I was in the shower my phone rang and it said ‘unknown number’. And on the other end of the phone was a gentleman called Steve Dowling, who said ‘Steve Jobs just saw your YouTube video this morning and really likes your song. And he wants to know if we can use it in the press conference to open the event.’
And I'm literally standing there naked in the shower, speaking to the speaker, the PR representative of one of the largest multinational corporations in the world of which I'm a huge fan.
And if you go back and you watch that the video of this press conference, you can't see him dancing, but you can see the remnants of the dance on his hips as he's coming out onto the stage. The shimmy is what I call it. Like it's a little shimmy that he does a little jiggle… the ‘Jobs’ Jive’.
The question that I've been left with, you know, is, how in the world did Steve Jobs, (a control freak CEO and OCD to the absolute degree) decide to use a video that I made in my bedroom the night before to open a press conference?!
Why do you think "content creator" is a stupid phrase, Jonathan?
I hate the phrase "content creator" because that is a word has been created and propagated by the tech platforms to give to people who make content for their platforms. It just feels so disposable to me…
And I just feel like it further devalues…like every single thing that we see online is made by somebody, it's all crafted. Every single GIF, every single meme, every single image, every single thing… someone took the time to make it. And it all becomes content for the internet mill to just like churn and churn and churn and sell more ads.
It's an insult to the actual act of creation, in my view. It detracts from the creative process, every tiny little step of that creative process… yeah. It hurts my feelings.
So what does creativity mean to you?
Creativity to me is… there's this Martha Graham quote:
"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And there was only one of you in all of time. This expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expression.
It is your business to keep it yours and directly to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or you work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatsoever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
That’s what I think about creativity.
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