How Cultural Leaders are Paving the Way for the Intersection of Music and Crypto

The world of finance and investing is shifting, and it's no longer just for experts. One of the most intriguing changes we're seeing is how music and finance blend with digital money like cryptocurrencies.

This is making the often complex and intimidating sphere of investing more accessible and appealing to everyday people. By linking popular culture with financial tech, new opportunities are opening up that allow more people to get involved in investing.

The result?

A broader and more diverse group of people are getting the chance to invest. Plus, they're bringing fresh energy and different perspectives with them.

This article will cover how the intersection of music and crypto can be the next “cultural community” but for investing.

While communities like the Grateful Dead's Deadheads or the modern-day hip-hop scene aren’t always financially literate, we’re going to extrapolate how it can relate to decentralized finance (DeFi).

The traditional music industry practices

The global music industry is vast, pulling in an impressive $26.2 billion in revenue in 2023. For decades, this industry has thrived on the talents of artists, composers, and producers.

Yet despite its size and influence, the music industry has been notoriously difficult for individual artists and creators to navigate. You can’t break through without some sort of middleman, be it a record label, distributor, or agency.

They act as gatekeepers, taking a significant share of the profits. Major record labels keep nearly 90% of the profits, while mid-sized labels hold onto anywhere from 50% to 75%.

An artist might create all of the content, such as writing and performing the song, but it’s the middlemen enjoying the lion’s share of the profits.

And while this gripe is common across sectors like entertainment and digital app stores (Apple AppStore demands 30% from in-app purchases), there isn’t much a budding artist can do to solve the problem.

Until, of course, Web3 and cryptocurrency can challenge big labels for the throne. And as more people join the Web3 community, the scale will tip in the favor of the underdog.

For instance, Blondish (a Canadian DJ with a background in computer science) has created a massive community around her music, with over 389K followers on Instagram. While she started in the traditional industry of CS and branched out into music, she understood the middleman wasn’t always fair.

That’s what led her, and potentially many others like her, to challenge the industry giants.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller

How cultural communities can disrupt the music industry

Unfortunately, there isn’t a set amount of money that will guarantee a disruption to the traditional practices of the music industry.

But in the finance world, we’ve watched David versus Goliath stories take place in real-time, and you know who wins that fight.

The best part?

It was a cultural community that took on hedge funds.

The Reddit community, WallStreetBets, took on major hedge funds who were preying on stocks like GameStop and AMC. After watching the hedge funds short these stocks, Redditors decided to band together to make a change.

The result was a cultural community that fought against big industry tycoons, resulting in nearly $5 billion lost.

They demonstrated that a united community with a common goal can wield as much power as well-funded corporations, maybe even more.

This opens up an exciting possibility:

What if a similar, passionate community rallied together around the idea of disrupting the music industry?

They could pool resources, both financial and intellectual, to back Web3-based music platforms.

And to make it more organized, what if this community was unified and supported by a crypto hedge fund led by the same passionate vigor for change in music? For example, the hedge fund Indigo has a team (including Blondish) that is well-versed in crypto investing and is passionate about creating cultural communities around music.

The CS degree gives Blondish the credibility needed to build a Web3 community, and her DJ experience could ignite the fire needed to take the challenge head-on.

The result could be a similar situation to WallStreetBets, where David faces Goliath and wins. The beauty of this approach is that it can start small and grow exponentially.

A cultural community offers a built-in audience ready to support the initiative from day one, as they’re early adopters and evangelists. And this would provide Web3 startups with the ammunition to challenge these massive corporations.

So, while the middlemen in the music industry continue to take large portions of artists’ profits, there’s a growing movement for change. The goal is to form a creative industry that distributes profits more fairly, supporting artists directly.