December 22, 2025 • 42 mins
Ever get the feeling that everything around us is just getting worse, more expensive, slower, and less interesting over time? Well, that might not be a coincidence - that was the plan, all along.
A chat with Marc Fendel (@fendelmarc) of Sustainable Music NorthWest and how the concept "enshittification" (a book by Cory Doctorow) and how it relates to crypto and NFTs.
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teia.art | Arts Collective on Tezos
Sustainable Music Northwest (Seattle) | Public Music Concerts and Fair Wages for Musicians [https://www.sustainablemusicnw.org/]
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hello everyone, this is Ryan from Taya Cafe.
(00:03):
Today, uh, this will be episodenumber seven, I think.
And I'm here today with uhguest, Mark Fendo.
Probably know him as Fendo fromuh uh Tezos Things, NFTs, he's a
great musician.
Um, we both live in Seattle now,so we hang out quite a bit.
(00:26):
But uh this time I thought uhlet's try to talk with someone
else and see how it goes.
Yeah, hey, can you introduceyourself, Mark?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (00:36):
No, thank thanks for uh thanks for having me, of
course.
Um and uh pleasure to be here.
Yeah, my name is Mark Fendel.
Um I mostly go by Fendle in thekind of web three space.
Yep.
I'm a musician, uh producer, uhmusic producer for many years.
Um and uh the last five yearsbeen very focused on uh Web3,
(01:00):
Tezos, NFTs, and um pairing mymusic and sound design with art
and uh collaborating with peopleall over the world.
Um I absolutely love what I do.
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
He does, he already does.
SPEAKER_01 (01:18):
And so it's nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
Yeah, true.
Uh no, thanks for well,actually, I'm in your uh studio
right now, so I'm the guest.
But um yeah, uh but I talk withMark a lot, like just random
things.
We hang out together quite a fewoften, and uh we do have like
interesting discussions onreally various different topics.
(01:41):
And I thought we might beinteresting to kind of use this
podcasting format to just kindof let people know what sorts of
things we talk about becauseyeah, not not a lot a lot of
these you know conversations arepretty private and and never
really sees the light of day,but I do think it's like very
(02:02):
important.
So today we're gonna be talkingabout insidification.
There's a there's a lot ofdifferent ways, uh things
falling apart.
I don't know if you have anyother how would you describe the
the theme, you know?
SPEAKER_01 (02:21):
Well I think things things fall apart is a good is a
good way to speak about it.
Um I think and shitification alot of times in its modern day
um refers to um companiesbuilding products and and making
(02:42):
them worse and worse as timegoes on.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
And sometimes intentionally.
SPEAKER_01 (02:48):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Um a lot of times intentionally,and a lot of times.
And we see that all around usthese days.
And some of it I think is doomand gloom.
And and and then I'm pleasantlysurprised about you know how
sometimes things turn out too.
SPEAKER_00 (03:07):
So yeah.
Well, uh, at least for theTesla's people listening to
this, right?
Like one example of somethinggoing against that is Tezpol.
And uh yeah, if you're notfamiliar, there was sort of uh
at Art Art Bazo, Miami 2023, andI was there at the time as well,
(03:27):
but uh some things are fallingapart in the display of the
Tezos NFT, let's say you can youcan look it up if you know if
you're really curious.
But but in that moment, there'ssomething interesting that
really happened that that theyturned this in shitified thing
(03:50):
into a artistic movement, youknow, and uh yeah, so that's
what's known as a TESPO.
People have very fond memoriesof it, and they're still making
art about it to this day.
There's a coin.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So so we'll be we'll be talkingabout like how things are
falling apart, but also like howcan we get out of that, you
(04:12):
know, and and yeah, I mean, youknow, things going poorly, we
could probably spend all daytalking about like I don't know
if there's a example that likecomes to your mind right now,
Mark.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
I mean when we talk about insidification, you know,
I I immediately kind of oh Iread Corey Doctorow's book.
Um so I immediately kind ofthink of the first like the big
social media, you know, plaplaces on the internet, X and
and Facebook and the things thatthey've rolled out um only to
(04:50):
make their their product mu muchworse as time goes on and and um
and and charging people moremoney too.
So things getting worse andthings getting becoming more
expensive at the same time,right?
SPEAKER_00 (05:03):
Exactly.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:04):
Um and we see this over and over with with all
kinds of with all kinds ofcompanies, um and with Google as
well.
Um too many too many things toname here.
SPEAKER_00 (05:17):
Um Google, Facebook, Twitter, Meta, like yeah.
Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
And they're totally willing to throw a lot of money
at these products only to maybeeven kill the whole thing, you
know.
SPEAKER_00 (05:35):
Yeah.
Part of me is like, I don't knowif it's all intentional or not,
but it's more like a result oflike short-term thinking.
And if if really the goal is tomake a money a lot of money very
quickly, as soon as possible,you're not really thinking about
like making a good product downthe line, right?
(05:56):
Sure.
And I do think a lot of that hasbeen the norm for quite some
time now.
And yeah, so uh the the exampleI was talking about uh earlier
was uh printer ink, because Ithink that's the most egregious
example of that, and somethingmaybe a lot of people can re
(06:18):
relate to because if you notice,uh printers have gotten very,
very cheap, but how are thesecompanies making money?
It's actually through printerink.
And those little tinycartridges, 20, 30 bucks,
they're not cheap.
And uh it doesn't have to itdoesn't have to be that
(06:41):
expensive.
The ink itself is like worth acouple cents at most.
And I remember in the past youused to be able to like refill
it yourself, or they used to bea dollar, two dollars.
Now, how did it get soexpensive?
Well, they they make it so thatyou can't buy ink from anywhere
(07:02):
else, and if they catch it doit, it just won't work.
You know, they have specialchips embedded in these
cartridges where it monitorswhat you're doing with it.
You can't refill it, you can'tuse other brands, you know,
there's no competition.
We're kind of stuck in thismonopoly environment, right?
(07:22):
And what you can't do anythingabout if you're so it's kind of
a similar thing with socialmedia, I think.
It's just it yeah, you know,everyone's on a few platforms,
and yeah, you just basicallyhave to do what you say at this
point.
So it's gotten shitty.
SPEAKER_01 (07:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's uh it's funny because Kevinand I were talking about that
too, and like we have this blackand white printer that you know.
SPEAKER_00 (07:51):
I don't know how you guys found it.
SPEAKER_01 (07:52):
We we you know, I think we did that uh homework a
long time ago, many years ago,and we were trying to find the
printer that just did black andwhite that was cheap, you know,
um just really cheap cartridgesto to replace.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Yeah, then you guys had like a cartridge, you said
it was like 15 bucks and itlasts all year.
SPEAKER_01 (08:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:18):
It's insane.
I know.
I haven't had that a long time.
I noticed that the the thing,the the ink it it gets smaller
and smaller every time I buy anew one.
Like it prints less yeah, itprints less and less.
It's less and less, and they'relike, please refill.
I'm like, what?
You know, I play forget like onedocument and I go, what the
(08:39):
hell?
So That's crazy.
Yeah.
But kind of like since we'reboth in like NFTs, um how does
that I guess like from yourperspective, how did we get to
the point where like both of uswe got into the whole web 3
(09:05):
thing looking for somethingbetter, right, than what the
music industry or the artindustry was doing.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I'd like to hear like, youknow, um your perspective, like
how you got why did you getinvolved, really, right?
SPEAKER_01 (09:20):
Well, I you know, probably I would say the biggest
reason was I could actually seewho owned my music.
Um and so that really resonatedwith me straight away.
Um and these are some of thethings, you know, that I mean
(09:46):
that alone solves this problem.
Um that Spotify and streamingservices do not just do not have
those metrics for Well, they'renot gonna let you know.
SPEAKER_00 (09:58):
They don't tell you.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:00):
You don't know who's listening to your music.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
You don't know how the algorithms work, you don't
know how they're weightingthings.
SPEAKER_01 (10:05):
Um Yeah, it's I mean this was this was totally not up
to artists the way that thisplayed out.
Um talking about I mean,historically, we could go way
back.
(10:25):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (10:25):
I mean, but um well the music industry was never a
nice place, right?
SPEAKER_01 (10:31):
It sure wasn't, yeah.
Um, especially for our blackAmericans, um, black American
musicians, um, respectfully,like it was a it was a terrible
deal.
SPEAKER_00 (10:41):
I just watched uh uh the P.
Diddy Diddy's documentary.
SPEAKER_01 (10:47):
Oh really?
I gotta see that.
SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
Whoo, oh man, it was really eye-opening because I was
like, I knew that guy wassketchy, but wow, he's really
wow.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:58):
So I'll have to check it out.
SPEAKER_00 (11:00):
Yeah, it's worse than you think.
So he definitely deserves to bein jail, but like, but it's you
know, so so a lot of it istrying to do better than that,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
Or yeah, absolutely.
And and um, and then I guess theother thing that really just got
me excited about the kind of anew landscape of sharing music
was just the idea ofcollaborations and musicians and
artists having a split share atthe time of sale in perpetuity,
(11:37):
um, with royalties attached thatget paid when somebody collects
the work um in perpetuity, likereally like made a big
difference for me and and movingforward um with NFTs instead of
this instead of the streamingkind of way of of sharing our
(12:02):
music.
And and so that's what reallystill makes sense to me.
And I think the that collaboratethose collaborations is really
like one of the main the mainthings why I stick around is
because I really value that andI value their real human
connection.
We get together, like we haveTezcon.
(12:23):
Like we do put this together,even though um people are all
over the world, and you know,people can't always travel.
I I understand that.
SPEAKER_00 (12:31):
But that's something special we have here uh on
Tesla's thing.
That that doesn't always happenin other projects, the the human
side, right?
Yeah, uh you have similarreasons why I got in.
Uh I think like the streamingmodel is not necessarily a bad
one, but it's just the lack oftransparency, lack of
(12:55):
accountability, right?
It's a black box, and you don'tknow how they're weighting their
revenue, right?
And yeah, there's probably a lotof money going to places where
it shouldn't be, but oh we knowthis uh for facts.
Yeah.
I know.
But we're spot, right?
We can't prove that they'redoing this and that since we
don't, right?
(13:16):
So I thought the blockchaincould help to bring that sort of
transparency and just goodrecord keeping, right?
And then definitely.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (13:27):
Definitely.
Um and I think that the eventhere's a lot like there's a lot
to do, you know, in Web3 withthe with this new technology can
evolve in a lot of reallyinteresting ways where I just
don't see I just don't reallysee that for like streaming
(13:50):
services.
And I just feel like it's gotteninfinitely worse, especially in
the last year with fake streamsand and AI and massive AI dumps
of streams.
And even like we saw like threeweeks ago, um, an AI generated
song what was the top was thetop's play on Spotify.
SPEAKER_00 (14:13):
I mean, this is just I I heard a this statistic that
um well I don't want to get thenumber wrong, but but there's
millions, you can probablybelieve this.
There's there's millions ofAI-generated songs being
generated every day.
Yeah.
Every fucking day.
SPEAKER_02 (14:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:35):
Who's gonna listen to that?
It's physically impossible,right?
And uh, but I think even uhSpotify, they have a uh
something like 70,000, 100,000new songs being uploaded every
day.
And and how are how are yougoing to really the the business
(15:00):
model doesn't make any sense,like like and right if if a lot
of the if it's be being measuredby volume, not by quality.
And I think that's the biggestlike issue the uh really in
tech, because right, like adsare based on views and clicks,
(15:21):
the stuff that gets pushed tothe top of your feed are all
like bottom of the barrel stuff,right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:29):
Usually, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:31):
And yeah, you're we're just talking about today,
just like that's how it works,you know, that's the reality.
There's no quality control, andthis is like nothing new to uh
internet in general, it's likebeen like that a while.
But uh the whole crypto NFTthing was supposed to be an
(15:53):
antidote to that, right?
Yeah.
And that's where the excitementcame from.
But yeah, but I do think likechange doesn't come easy, right?
I I think what what the Web3world really it took a lot of
the bad habits of the old worldand just kind of slot the coin
(16:14):
on top of it.
SPEAKER_01 (16:15):
Yeah.
And we saw we've seen plenty ofbad behavior in Web3, obviously.
It's why people don't like NFTs.
Yeah.
You know?
SPEAKER_00 (16:23):
It just made it it made it infinitely worse because
there was it was a promisebroken rather than something new
as it advertised itself, right?
SPEAKER_01 (16:35):
Well, you know, I mean I think I mean Tezos
doesn't really really have thatmuch in the way of like people
breaking it.
You know, like it just works.
Um which I think is really niceabout that chain.
SPEAKER_00 (16:53):
But um For me it's like a blank slate, you know?
Yes.
It's kind of uh hey, we havethis thing, anyone can do
anything with it, but at leastthey're not trying to actively
sabotage, you know, things likethat.
Exactly.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (17:13):
Um but then again, I'm glad that you said you think
of it as a blank slate, becauseI I do think of it like that as
well.
Um just in the way of it beingopen source and people can
build, you know, using that,using it.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (17:32):
When I look at it's not easy though.
It's no we'll say and and no,the big problem is, and it is
part of the initification thing,too, because when you look at
the models that social media andthe tech in general, even AI,
it's like where's the qualitycontrol, right?
It's all based on volume, evenAI, right?
(17:53):
Generative AI.
You can spit up millions ofthings every day.
Who cares?
Right?
Like it's how much of that isgoing to get actually used.
But they're measuring the wrongthings, they're measuring
volume, yeah.
They're measuring even past pasttech cycles.
Uh, do you remember big data?
Remember that phrase?
(18:13):
Oh yeah.
Big data.
And I didn't like that eitherbecause uh I was working in in
data projects at the time.
Most of the data you have isjunk, it's like garbage.
Yeah.
And you have to clean that stuffup for data to be useful.
That's kind of the work that wereally haven't been doing, even
(18:35):
now, you know?
Yeah.
And so I would like that to kindof change.
And but again, change doesn'tcome easy.
SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
No, and I think that in a as we talk about art at
least, art cycles are usuallymeasured historically in
decades.
So in that capacity, we've onlybeen doing this for, I don't
know, one cycle.
SPEAKER_00 (19:04):
Yeah.
If then, right?
SPEAKER_01 (19:06):
If that.
See, I think of it as like ahalf a cycle because because
like hick at nunk, like artists,you know, didn't really start.
SPEAKER_00 (19:16):
2021.
SPEAKER_01 (19:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (19:17):
So late 20 yeah, see it's so early.
SPEAKER_01 (19:22):
So I still feel like it's very early in that there's
a lot of like really greatthings that are that are
possible that make this thatmake this landscape work even
better than it already does.
And and that definitely likeexcites me about the future um a
(19:44):
lot.
Um that that people want somewant something better.
SPEAKER_00 (19:53):
One would hope.
Yeah, I'm not sure, but but I dothink most people w do want
things.
It's better.
It's just uh the opportunity todo so is is can be few and far
between these these days, right?
Yeah.
And I I do like the open slateidea because if we're being kind
(20:16):
of honest, we're all kind oflike just trying to figure out
this this thing on the fly,right?
And even if uh people have goodintentions, sometimes you don't.
Um sometimes you just don'tknow, right?
Yeah.
But that is preferable to whatI've seen in other projects
(20:38):
where they are activelyinvesting in the wrong thing and
doubling down on it.
SPEAKER_02 (20:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (20:47):
Like I won't name any chains, but but they're like
creating extraction models.
Yeah.
I'm like, well, Web 2 alreadydoes that.
And they do it better becausepeople actually like them, at
least to some extent.
So yeah, so hey uh at least forme it seems to make sense to
(21:11):
take a chance on the unknown.
SPEAKER_01 (21:14):
Yeah.
And at least, you know, like,you know, you've done a lot of
work, and I mean I think thateven just like talking about
copyright.
SPEAKER_00 (21:24):
Yeah, you know how hard it was just to get anyone
to recognize it.
SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
No doubt.
Even at the same time, if youwatch some of these YouTube
producers and and uh like um umI'm forgetting her name right
now, the lawyer, the the uhmusic lawyer.
SPEAKER_00 (21:46):
Oh yeah, uh told told me earlier.
SPEAKER_01 (21:49):
Anyway, several other people that are big on on
YouTube.
They're talking about copyrightissues all the time now because
of AI and these models, likemodeling like super famous
people and like just you know,blatantly like trained their
model on yeah, on whatever itis, or or even Suno or you know,
(22:11):
Yu-Di-Oh or any of these peoplewho are getting sued over and
over again uh for basically likestealing and like so blatant.
And then here's you just likemaking the copyright baked into
the NFT.
Yeah.
Which is to me, it's likethere's on one hand, there are
(22:33):
these people who are like likeCrystal is i is like literally
going after these companies andholding them accountable, you
know, and we need we need peopleto do that.
Um and that but we need peoplelike you who are actually
solving these problems like forreal.
And then I try to point it outto these people and like uh it's
(22:55):
crickets.
It's just uh I'm like I'mstunned actually.
Well like I'm like wow, wellhere's the here's the solution.
You know, you you guys shouldshould look at look at this.
It solves this problem, but thenI can't get anybody to so I
don't know, maybe it's a deal.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
I've been working on trying to solve this problem for
many, many years now.
This it's like when I first gotinvolved with crypto was like
2013, but it was already aproblem even back then.
And and really the the issue sothis is kind of how the history
of the internet went, right?
(23:41):
And so there's internet, peoplestarted uploading, uh if you
remember like Napster andLimeWire, right?
And then that was like a like abig copyright issue of that
time.
Uh eventually they got shutdown, but but the way that they
couldn't really stop the piracyitself.
(24:04):
They but they made it easier forpeople to basically listen to
music through streaming.
So in that sense, that's why I'mI don't think streaming is is
inherently a bad thing.
It made it a little bit moreconvenient.
So the next step after that,right, is we need to uh the
(24:29):
internet itself needs to monitoruh usage and copyright.
Because ideally, if you have a afile, like a song that you
wrote, someone takes that pieceof music and they use it on
their website, you should youshould be getting roties for
(24:49):
that.
That is a broadcast, right?
And there's all these people,it's not just me, there's a lot
of people who are interested inlike DRMs, right?
Digital rights management, anduh they tried to embed uh music
and art with these things justso you can keep track of it.
(25:11):
It made sense, but that was along time ago and it went
nowhere because the companiesthemselves that's not what they
were thinking.
That's that wasn't the businessmotto.
And so for them, piracy was justengagement, it was just clicks,
more clicks.
And skip over to 10-15 yearslater, now the whole place is
(25:35):
just flooded with a bunch ofgarbage.
You know, and then I'm notsaying that the people are
garbage, I'm saying thecompanies incentivize that.
And what do you what do youexpect, right?
Like so this is the norm, thisis the intritification of
content, in sherification ofart, music, whatever you want to
(25:59):
say.
SPEAKER_02 (25:59):
Sure.
SPEAKER_00 (26:00):
And AI has just accelerated that tenfold, right?
Because now it's so easy just topump something out.
And but I still do think theanswer really is we have to
reset the whole system.
Because it is it doesn't it makemore sense just to register your
(26:20):
work from the beginning?
Because what they're doing nowis that when you upload
copyrighted works onto YouTube,you have teams of people, they
have algorithms, they havepeople that are scanning.
I think I think I showed you apicture, a video of like putting
people putting weird filters onthe video just so they can avoid
the copyright detectionalgorithms.
(26:43):
You know, there's ways aroundit.
They're finding it, fightingthis endless war that they're
not gonna win.
And they're wasting a lot ofmoney and time doing it.
So But there are people who areinvested in the fight, right?
So some people get paid to roundthese people up, right?
People get paid for forenforcing copyright.
(27:05):
Lawyers get paid when theproblems happen, not when the
problems get solved, right?
SPEAKER_01 (27:10):
Totally Top Music Attorney is her name, by the
way.
SPEAKER_00 (27:14):
Oh Top Music Okay.
What was her name?
SPEAKER_01 (27:18):
Yeah.
Uh well she goes by Top MusicAttorney.
Okay.
Her name is Crystal uh Delgado,I think.
SPEAKER_00 (27:24):
Um Yeah, yeah, because I think he mentioned her
name once.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, she does great work, youknow?
She's definitely like on theside of the musician, so yeah,
but she cares.
SPEAKER_00 (27:37):
But she's only one person, right?
This has to be like Exactly.
SPEAKER_01 (27:40):
Yeah.
Um, I think she does have a ateam, but you know, like, yeah,
she's only one person, and thereare other people that are that
have expressed their concerntoo.
SPEAKER_00 (27:51):
But getting getting people to use this new system
that makes sense is gonna behard.
Because it's so different,right?
SPEAKER_01 (28:01):
Yeah, it takes time, you know.
Um change it does not comeeasily.
And one thing that Paper Buddhaand I were talking about a month
ago is this idea of Blue Oceanand Red Ocean theory.
The red ocean being being theplace where you would maybe put
(28:23):
your music where you're alwaysup against other people and
other musicians and you'recompeting for ears.
And and Blue Ocean would besomething completely different,
making something completely newand where you don't really have
you're not competing, you know,per se.
(28:46):
And I I mean at least in theyeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Like the so what are you doing it for?
SPEAKER_01 (28:53):
Well, to to do something complete something
else entirely, and saying likewe're not gonna as an idea, like
saying, okay, I'm not gonna I'mnot gonna put my music on
streaming because I know likethat this doesn't create
sustainability, but if I put mymusic over on Teya or Object or
(29:15):
somewhere else, like I'mparticipating in a community
that legit likes each other andlike wants to hang out and wants
to support each other.
And and uh that's a that's apretty uniquely different
situation than than a bottomlesspit of of wonder of something
(29:38):
like Spotify that is generatingbillions of dollars and putting
money in the world.
SPEAKER_00 (29:45):
At least with like NFTs, like you said, you like
being able to know who boughtit.
Yeah.
And sometimes that's hard thatkind of information is hard to
get.
Uh unless you go after ityourself, right?
Yeah.
And so Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:02):
Um But yeah, I love the idea of I love the idea of
collabor collaboration splitsand having lots several
different people on onecollaboration contract that have
um percentages.
I mean, why did any band everbreak up?
You know, yeah, yeah, they brokeup because mostly, mostly, not
(30:26):
not every in every case, butmostly bands break up because
there's arguments over who ownswhat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
Yeah, money.
Same with marriages, right?
Always, you know, like numberone reason for a divorce is is
putting money issues.
SPEAKER_01 (30:42):
Yeah.
So I mean, like if you had thatall if you knew exactly what it
was at the very beginning, whichon these smart contracts we do.
And like there's just therehasn't been any disagreement
after the fact yet.
Yeah, not even once.
Not once.
SPEAKER_00 (31:01):
I've not same here.
Same everything I've donethrough the blockchain has been
pretty straightforward and fair,no drama.
Assuming you use the technologylike it was intended.
And even in the traditionalindustries, right?
You do these things throughlawyers, your managers, your
agents, and sometimes people arenot honest.
(31:25):
So you get this situation whereit's like a he said, she said
kind of thing, right?
And you gotta resolve it throughthe courts, and it's just it's
just messy and expensive, youknow, and why not just have an
agreement that's just rightright there, yeah, that everyone
can see.
Yeah.
And yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:45):
That's why I like I that's why I really like this.
And you know, um, we haven'treally seen like a lot of use
case scenarios for severalpeople on the contract itself.
But I think that that could be areal powerful thing at some
point, you know, where you havelike a like a a group of people
that are collectively um sharingthe contracts.
SPEAKER_00 (32:09):
And I mean, it would be great if like one of the
celebrities like sort of usedtheir platform to like set an
example, right?
Mm-hmm.
And like, hey, we use the thingand see what happens after every
sale.
Uh, it goes to this person, thisperson, this person, and here's
the breakdown, right?
It would be a great use case forlike showing how this stuff can
(32:33):
work.
SPEAKER_01 (32:34):
It would only really I mean it could That's how it
needs to get done.
SPEAKER_00 (32:40):
Yeah.
That's how it should be done.
Yeah.
But I can't think of a singleexample where that has happened
above a certain uh popularity,right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:52):
I mean, maybe we could talk to some of the people
that have had some decentsuccess in music NFTs that might
be willing to talk more aboutit, like Violetto or McShinotto
or Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:06):
Well, you know, people are who are too famous
probably prefer to do it throughtheir lawyers, right?
SPEAKER_01 (33:11):
And yeah, maybe, but I don't know.
You we don't we don't know untilwe ask, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
Maybe the lawyer might be open to it, right?
Oh yeah, yeah, we got nothing tohide.
Like, check it out.
Seriously, I mean uh But I thinkwe uh on some level we
underestimated how much peoplehave to hide.
Oh yeah, a lot.
A lot, and uh that's a reasonwhy a lot of the blockchain
(33:37):
projects that had good ideasdidn't get anywhere because the
people in charge were like, Idon't want people to know what
I'm doing.
Yeah, there's that and someonestraight up told me that about
the music industry some yearsago.
I was like, oh, okay.
Like, oh, yeah, actually.
SPEAKER_01 (33:59):
That's unfortunate, but not surprising.
Yeah.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:06):
So I I but I do think it's hard to talk about
because when things are workingas they should, there's no
drama, nothing happens, and youdon't hear about it.
That's true.
But those are the successstories that go untold every
day.
(34:26):
And yeah, I w trying to think ofways how we can how do you
publicize nothing?
Nothing's happening in us.
I feel that way about Teya.
Like, yeah, you know, I I meanwe have we have had not not any
drama at least between the teammembers, like since the
(34:49):
beginning of it, it's inception.
Like small disagreements here orthere, but like but no one knows
about us.
Maybe we should maybe we shouldhave more drama.
I don't know.
Kind of interesting thing,right?
Because that's what sucks peoplein.
SPEAKER_01 (35:05):
Yeah, I guess I I guess I like to have strong
opinions loosely held is what Ilike to say.
Yeah.
Cause I don't I want to be Iwant to learn and and I think
there's like a certain amount ofin intellectual curiosity that
keeps me engaged.
So I might agree about somethingor I might disagree about
(35:29):
something else, but I have to bewilling to to listen and to have
a different opinion, maybe,about how how things ought to
go.
SPEAKER_00 (35:40):
Well, it uh That's how I involved it.
Yeah, actually some like uh youknow, we're kind of getting
towards the end of thisconversation.
We c we kind of agreed we wantedto like be more forward-looking,
right?
Sure.
So in in your opinion, like whatdo you think is the best thing,
(36:01):
like Tesla's, not even Tesla's,but just NFTs or even just
artists in general, what shouldthey be looking for or what
should they be doing or thingsto pay attention to?
It's kind of like hmm generaloutlook for the future.
SPEAKER_01 (36:20):
I mean, general outlook for the future in the in
the short of it.
I mean, I think the reason to doit is because of connection with
real people.
SPEAKER_00 (36:31):
Like I think that And you can get that from like
where does that come from?
SPEAKER_01 (36:36):
Well, I guess it does come from um how we've
connected online.
SPEAKER_00 (36:43):
So Oh yeah, but now here I'm in I'm in your house
right now.
SPEAKER_01 (36:47):
But then but then yeah, but then we get together,
yeah.
But then we do get together, andso like that's what I mean by by
real connection is that likeauthenticity.
Yeah, like um, I think in theshort of it, I think that's the
best that's the best casescenario.
It's worth it.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:06):
Um authenticity is worth it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:08):
In the in the long of it, I think you and I like
talked about provenance and whatreal ownership means and and
understanding who really wantsto um be part of that journey.
SPEAKER_00 (37:23):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (37:24):
Um and and honoring the people that that want to
support us in that journey is uhis such a uniquely different
kind of landscape than justtrying to see how many streams
we can get or how many likes Ican get from a video, um or or
(37:46):
these other kinds of dopamineinduced type of like things that
we see in social media andstuff.
Um but so I I value the I valuethe collaborations, the
connection, the provenance, andthe I those these ideas of of um
(38:08):
open source and building new umnew tools.
And to to and not to say thatthat's an easy thing on Tezos,
it is very, very difficult.
SPEAKER_00 (38:22):
Yeah, but but like yeah.
It's earlier.
It's early.
SPEAKER_01 (38:25):
It's ear it is early.
And we have good people thatreally um that really do want to
be part of that change.
SPEAKER_00 (38:33):
They want they care, right?
They want to do something.
SPEAKER_01 (38:36):
They they really do.
And there are great people inthe space that are that are
doing this work, either gettingpaid very little or nothing,
that that believe in it becausethey see uh a better a better
future for it.
Um and and I'm I'm I'm there.
(38:59):
Like because it's not goingaway.
We've seen that too, you know.
The problems are still there.
The the market the market is isshitty right now.
SPEAKER_00 (39:08):
And yeah, AI is kind of eating web two alive, I
think, in a lot of ways.
Okay because it is reallyexposing the limits of like
yeah, like a million songs aday.
Like, what are you gonna do withthat?
SPEAKER_01 (39:23):
I I don't know.
It's right, it's absurd.
SPEAKER_00 (39:26):
Yeah, it's absurd, and it's getting worse still.
So I think there's like a roomfor uh something new to happen.
We're just on that cusper now,yeah, I think.
And on my end, I think NFTsstill have like a lot of
potential, but it's reallyadding utility to owning one
(39:48):
that we really need to befocused on because even
previously minted works, worksthat already exist, can be made
useful by attaching copyright.
And royalties for licensing anddistribution, reproductions,
like there's a lot we can dowith already existing content
(40:10):
that people haven't figured itout yet.
Yeah.
So yeah, you know, there's wejust gotta do it.
But it is gonna take a while.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
I don't know.
I'm here for the road.
I'm here for the ride, rather.
Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (40:26):
I've been in here long enough already.
Why not just finish it up,right?
SPEAKER_01 (40:29):
Yeah, no, I will I definitely see see the the cool
things that are that arehappening and and um I'm excited
about that, those possibilities.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (40:42):
Yeah, I don't know, you too, for yeah, being around.
Yeah.
Uh if you're ever if you're everin Seattle, I should come to
Mark's place.
It's the coolest place hang outin in in the city.
I've he made me a very, verygood veggie sandwich today.
Yeah.
And I'm not even like avegetarian or vegan or nothing,
(41:05):
but it was very, very tasty.
So we got good sandwiches, uhgood fry mugs, uh chill people,
jab sessions, you know, all ofthe deal.
And we're recording it rightright here in the studio.
SPEAKER_01 (41:21):
So yeah.
Come to Tezcon.
SPEAKER_00 (41:24):
Yeah, oh yeah.
It's a little bit of an ad.
Yeah.
Tezcon, July 11th.
The Hiawatha building.
That was Hiawatha.
I Hiawatha building 2026.
So exciting.
Come on by.
It's gonna be great.
Okay, well, I think that's it.
Cool.
Um, so that's the podcast,episode seven.
(41:47):
Uh we'll see.
Yeah, what comes next.
So thanks a lot for hanging outtoday and see you in the next
one.
Thank you.
Hello everyone, this is Ryan from Taya Cafe.
(00:03):
Today, uh, this will be episodenumber seven, I think.
And I'm here today with uhguest, Mark Fendo.
Probably know him as Fendo fromuh uh Tezos Things, NFTs, he's a
great musician.
Um, we both live in Seattle now,so we hang out quite a bit.
(00:26):
But uh this time I thought uhlet's try to talk with someone
else and see how it goes.
Yeah, hey, can you introduceyourself, Mark?
Sure.
SPEAKER_01 (00:36):
No, thank thanks for uh thanks for having me, of
course.
Um and uh pleasure to be here.
Yeah, my name is Mark Fendel.
Um I mostly go by Fendle in thekind of web three space.
Yep.
I'm a musician, uh producer, uhmusic producer for many years.
Um and uh the last five yearsbeen very focused on uh Web3,
(01:00):
Tezos, NFTs, and um pairing mymusic and sound design with art
and uh collaborating with peopleall over the world.
Um I absolutely love what I do.
SPEAKER_00 (01:14):
He does, he already does.
SPEAKER_01 (01:18):
And so it's nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
Yeah, true.
Uh no, thanks for well,actually, I'm in your uh studio
right now, so I'm the guest.
But um yeah, uh but I talk withMark a lot, like just random
things.
We hang out together quite a fewoften, and uh we do have like
interesting discussions onreally various different topics.
(01:41):
And I thought we might beinteresting to kind of use this
podcasting format to just kindof let people know what sorts of
things we talk about becauseyeah, not not a lot a lot of
these you know conversations arepretty private and and never
really sees the light of day,but I do think it's like very
(02:02):
important.
So today we're gonna be talkingabout insidification.
There's a there's a lot ofdifferent ways, uh things
falling apart.
I don't know if you have anyother how would you describe the
the theme, you know?
SPEAKER_01 (02:21):
Well I think things things fall apart is a good is a
good way to speak about it.
Um I think and shitification alot of times in its modern day
um refers to um companiesbuilding products and and making
(02:42):
them worse and worse as timegoes on.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (02:45):
And sometimes intentionally.
SPEAKER_01 (02:48):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Um a lot of times intentionally,and a lot of times.
And we see that all around usthese days.
And some of it I think is doomand gloom.
And and and then I'm pleasantlysurprised about you know how
sometimes things turn out too.
SPEAKER_00 (03:07):
So yeah.
Well, uh, at least for theTesla's people listening to
this, right?
Like one example of somethinggoing against that is Tezpol.
And uh yeah, if you're notfamiliar, there was sort of uh
at Art Art Bazo, Miami 2023, andI was there at the time as well,
(03:27):
but uh some things are fallingapart in the display of the
Tezos NFT, let's say you can youcan look it up if you know if
you're really curious.
But but in that moment, there'ssomething interesting that
really happened that that theyturned this in shitified thing
(03:50):
into a artistic movement, youknow, and uh yeah, so that's
what's known as a TESPO.
People have very fond memoriesof it, and they're still making
art about it to this day.
There's a coin.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So so we'll be we'll be talkingabout like how things are
falling apart, but also like howcan we get out of that, you
(04:12):
know, and and yeah, I mean, youknow, things going poorly, we
could probably spend all daytalking about like I don't know
if there's a example that likecomes to your mind right now,
Mark.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
I mean when we talk about insidification, you know,
I I immediately kind of oh Iread Corey Doctorow's book.
Um so I immediately kind ofthink of the first like the big
social media, you know, plaplaces on the internet, X and
and Facebook and the things thatthey've rolled out um only to
(04:50):
make their their product mu muchworse as time goes on and and um
and and charging people moremoney too.
So things getting worse andthings getting becoming more
expensive at the same time,right?
SPEAKER_00 (05:03):
Exactly.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:04):
Um and we see this over and over with with all
kinds of with all kinds ofcompanies, um and with Google as
well.
Um too many too many things toname here.
SPEAKER_00 (05:17):
Um Google, Facebook, Twitter, Meta, like yeah.
Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
And they're totally willing to throw a lot of money
at these products only to maybeeven kill the whole thing, you
know.
SPEAKER_00 (05:35):
Yeah.
Part of me is like, I don't knowif it's all intentional or not,
but it's more like a result oflike short-term thinking.
And if if really the goal is tomake a money a lot of money very
quickly, as soon as possible,you're not really thinking about
like making a good product downthe line, right?
(05:56):
Sure.
And I do think a lot of that hasbeen the norm for quite some
time now.
And yeah, so uh the the exampleI was talking about uh earlier
was uh printer ink, because Ithink that's the most egregious
example of that, and somethingmaybe a lot of people can re
(06:18):
relate to because if you notice,uh printers have gotten very,
very cheap, but how are thesecompanies making money?
It's actually through printerink.
And those little tinycartridges, 20, 30 bucks,
they're not cheap.
And uh it doesn't have to itdoesn't have to be that
(06:41):
expensive.
The ink itself is like worth acouple cents at most.
And I remember in the past youused to be able to like refill
it yourself, or they used to bea dollar, two dollars.
Now, how did it get soexpensive?
Well, they they make it so thatyou can't buy ink from anywhere
(07:02):
else, and if they catch it doit, it just won't work.
You know, they have specialchips embedded in these
cartridges where it monitorswhat you're doing with it.
You can't refill it, you can'tuse other brands, you know,
there's no competition.
We're kind of stuck in thismonopoly environment, right?
(07:22):
And what you can't do anythingabout if you're so it's kind of
a similar thing with socialmedia, I think.
It's just it yeah, you know,everyone's on a few platforms,
and yeah, you just basicallyhave to do what you say at this
point.
So it's gotten shitty.
SPEAKER_01 (07:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's uh it's funny because Kevinand I were talking about that
too, and like we have this blackand white printer that you know.
SPEAKER_00 (07:51):
I don't know how you guys found it.
SPEAKER_01 (07:52):
We we you know, I think we did that uh homework a
long time ago, many years ago,and we were trying to find the
printer that just did black andwhite that was cheap, you know,
um just really cheap cartridgesto to replace.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Yeah, then you guys had like a cartridge, you said
it was like 15 bucks and itlasts all year.
SPEAKER_01 (08:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (08:18):
It's insane.
I know.
I haven't had that a long time.
I noticed that the the thing,the the ink it it gets smaller
and smaller every time I buy anew one.
Like it prints less yeah, itprints less and less.
It's less and less, and they'relike, please refill.
I'm like, what?
You know, I play forget like onedocument and I go, what the
(08:39):
hell?
So That's crazy.
Yeah.
But kind of like since we'reboth in like NFTs, um how does
that I guess like from yourperspective, how did we get to
the point where like both of uswe got into the whole web 3
(09:05):
thing looking for somethingbetter, right, than what the
music industry or the artindustry was doing.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I'd like to hear like, youknow, um your perspective, like
how you got why did you getinvolved, really, right?
SPEAKER_01 (09:20):
Well, I you know, probably I would say the biggest
reason was I could actually seewho owned my music.
Um and so that really resonatedwith me straight away.
Um and these are some of thethings, you know, that I mean
(09:46):
that alone solves this problem.
Um that Spotify and streamingservices do not just do not have
those metrics for Well, they'renot gonna let you know.
SPEAKER_00 (09:58):
They don't tell you.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:00):
You don't know who's listening to your music.
SPEAKER_00 (10:01):
You don't know how the algorithms work, you don't
know how they're weightingthings.
SPEAKER_01 (10:05):
Um Yeah, it's I mean this was this was totally not up
to artists the way that thisplayed out.
Um talking about I mean,historically, we could go way
back.
(10:25):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (10:25):
I mean, but um well the music industry was never a
nice place, right?
SPEAKER_01 (10:31):
It sure wasn't, yeah.
Um, especially for our blackAmericans, um, black American
musicians, um, respectfully,like it was a it was a terrible
deal.
SPEAKER_00 (10:41):
I just watched uh uh the P.
Diddy Diddy's documentary.
SPEAKER_01 (10:47):
Oh really?
I gotta see that.
SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
Whoo, oh man, it was really eye-opening because I was
like, I knew that guy wassketchy, but wow, he's really
wow.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (10:58):
So I'll have to check it out.
SPEAKER_00 (11:00):
Yeah, it's worse than you think.
So he definitely deserves to bein jail, but like, but it's you
know, so so a lot of it istrying to do better than that,
right?
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
Or yeah, absolutely.
And and um, and then I guess theother thing that really just got
me excited about the kind of anew landscape of sharing music
was just the idea ofcollaborations and musicians and
artists having a split share atthe time of sale in perpetuity,
(11:37):
um, with royalties attached thatget paid when somebody collects
the work um in perpetuity, likereally like made a big
difference for me and and movingforward um with NFTs instead of
this instead of the streamingkind of way of of sharing our
(12:02):
music.
And and so that's what reallystill makes sense to me.
And I think the that collaboratethose collaborations is really
like one of the main the mainthings why I stick around is
because I really value that andI value their real human
connection.
We get together, like we haveTezcon.
(12:23):
Like we do put this together,even though um people are all
over the world, and you know,people can't always travel.
I I understand that.
SPEAKER_00 (12:31):
But that's something special we have here uh on
Tesla's thing.
That that doesn't always happenin other projects, the the human
side, right?
Yeah, uh you have similarreasons why I got in.
Uh I think like the streamingmodel is not necessarily a bad
one, but it's just the lack oftransparency, lack of
(12:55):
accountability, right?
It's a black box, and you don'tknow how they're weighting their
revenue, right?
And yeah, there's probably a lotof money going to places where
it shouldn't be, but oh we knowthis uh for facts.
Yeah.
I know.
But we're spot, right?
We can't prove that they'redoing this and that since we
don't, right?
(13:16):
So I thought the blockchaincould help to bring that sort of
transparency and just goodrecord keeping, right?
And then definitely.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (13:27):
Definitely.
Um and I think that the eventhere's a lot like there's a lot
to do, you know, in Web3 withthe with this new technology can
evolve in a lot of reallyinteresting ways where I just
don't see I just don't reallysee that for like streaming
(13:50):
services.
And I just feel like it's gotteninfinitely worse, especially in
the last year with fake streamsand and AI and massive AI dumps
of streams.
And even like we saw like threeweeks ago, um, an AI generated
song what was the top was thetop's play on Spotify.
SPEAKER_00 (14:13):
I mean, this is just I I heard a this statistic that
um well I don't want to get thenumber wrong, but but there's
millions, you can probablybelieve this.
There's there's millions ofAI-generated songs being
generated every day.
Yeah.
Every fucking day.
SPEAKER_02 (14:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:35):
Who's gonna listen to that?
It's physically impossible,right?
And uh, but I think even uhSpotify, they have a uh
something like 70,000, 100,000new songs being uploaded every
day.
And and how are how are yougoing to really the the business
(15:00):
model doesn't make any sense,like like and right if if a lot
of the if it's be being measuredby volume, not by quality.
And I think that's the biggestlike issue the uh really in
tech, because right, like adsare based on views and clicks,
(15:21):
the stuff that gets pushed tothe top of your feed are all
like bottom of the barrel stuff,right?
SPEAKER_01 (15:29):
Usually, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:31):
And yeah, you're we're just talking about today,
just like that's how it works,you know, that's the reality.
There's no quality control, andthis is like nothing new to uh
internet in general, it's likebeen like that a while.
But uh the whole crypto NFTthing was supposed to be an
(15:53):
antidote to that, right?
Yeah.
And that's where the excitementcame from.
But yeah, but I do think likechange doesn't come easy, right?
I I think what what the Web3world really it took a lot of
the bad habits of the old worldand just kind of slot the coin
(16:14):
on top of it.
SPEAKER_01 (16:15):
Yeah.
And we saw we've seen plenty ofbad behavior in Web3, obviously.
It's why people don't like NFTs.
Yeah.
You know?
SPEAKER_00 (16:23):
It just made it it made it infinitely worse because
there was it was a promisebroken rather than something new
as it advertised itself, right?
SPEAKER_01 (16:35):
Well, you know, I mean I think I mean Tezos
doesn't really really have thatmuch in the way of like people
breaking it.
You know, like it just works.
Um which I think is really niceabout that chain.
SPEAKER_00 (16:53):
But um For me it's like a blank slate, you know?
Yes.
It's kind of uh hey, we havethis thing, anyone can do
anything with it, but at leastthey're not trying to actively
sabotage, you know, things likethat.
Exactly.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (17:13):
Um but then again, I'm glad that you said you think
of it as a blank slate, becauseI I do think of it like that as
well.
Um just in the way of it beingopen source and people can
build, you know, using that,using it.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (17:32):
When I look at it's not easy though.
It's no we'll say and and no,the big problem is, and it is
part of the initification thing,too, because when you look at
the models that social media andthe tech in general, even AI,
it's like where's the qualitycontrol, right?
It's all based on volume, evenAI, right?
(17:53):
Generative AI.
You can spit up millions ofthings every day.
Who cares?
Right?
Like it's how much of that isgoing to get actually used.
But they're measuring the wrongthings, they're measuring
volume, yeah.
They're measuring even past pasttech cycles.
Uh, do you remember big data?
Remember that phrase?
(18:13):
Oh yeah.
Big data.
And I didn't like that eitherbecause uh I was working in in
data projects at the time.
Most of the data you have isjunk, it's like garbage.
Yeah.
And you have to clean that stuffup for data to be useful.
That's kind of the work that wereally haven't been doing, even
(18:35):
now, you know?
Yeah.
And so I would like that to kindof change.
And but again, change doesn'tcome easy.
SPEAKER_01 (18:46):
No, and I think that in a as we talk about art at
least, art cycles are usuallymeasured historically in
decades.
So in that capacity, we've onlybeen doing this for, I don't
know, one cycle.
SPEAKER_00 (19:04):
Yeah.
If then, right?
SPEAKER_01 (19:06):
If that.
See, I think of it as like ahalf a cycle because because
like hick at nunk, like artists,you know, didn't really start.
SPEAKER_00 (19:16):
2021.
SPEAKER_01 (19:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (19:17):
So late 20 yeah, see it's so early.
SPEAKER_01 (19:22):
So I still feel like it's very early in that there's
a lot of like really greatthings that are that are
possible that make this thatmake this landscape work even
better than it already does.
And and that definitely likeexcites me about the future um a
(19:44):
lot.
Um that that people want somewant something better.
SPEAKER_00 (19:53):
One would hope.
Yeah, I'm not sure, but but I dothink most people w do want
things.
It's better.
It's just uh the opportunity todo so is is can be few and far
between these these days, right?
Yeah.
And I I do like the open slateidea because if we're being kind
(20:16):
of honest, we're all kind oflike just trying to figure out
this this thing on the fly,right?
And even if uh people have goodintentions, sometimes you don't.
Um sometimes you just don'tknow, right?
Yeah.
But that is preferable to whatI've seen in other projects
(20:38):
where they are activelyinvesting in the wrong thing and
doubling down on it.
SPEAKER_02 (20:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (20:47):
Like I won't name any chains, but but they're like
creating extraction models.
Yeah.
I'm like, well, Web 2 alreadydoes that.
And they do it better becausepeople actually like them, at
least to some extent.
So yeah, so hey uh at least forme it seems to make sense to
(21:11):
take a chance on the unknown.
SPEAKER_01 (21:14):
Yeah.
And at least, you know, like,you know, you've done a lot of
work, and I mean I think thateven just like talking about
copyright.
SPEAKER_00 (21:24):
Yeah, you know how hard it was just to get anyone
to recognize it.
SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
No doubt.
Even at the same time, if youwatch some of these YouTube
producers and and uh like um umI'm forgetting her name right
now, the lawyer, the the uhmusic lawyer.
SPEAKER_00 (21:46):
Oh yeah, uh told told me earlier.
SPEAKER_01 (21:49):
Anyway, several other people that are big on on
YouTube.
They're talking about copyrightissues all the time now because
of AI and these models, likemodeling like super famous
people and like just you know,blatantly like trained their
model on yeah, on whatever itis, or or even Suno or you know,
(22:11):
Yu-Di-Oh or any of these peoplewho are getting sued over and
over again uh for basically likestealing and like so blatant.
And then here's you just likemaking the copyright baked into
the NFT.
Yeah.
Which is to me, it's likethere's on one hand, there are
(22:33):
these people who are like likeCrystal is i is like literally
going after these companies andholding them accountable, you
know, and we need we need peopleto do that.
Um and that but we need peoplelike you who are actually
solving these problems like forreal.
And then I try to point it outto these people and like uh it's
(22:55):
crickets.
It's just uh I'm like I'mstunned actually.
Well like I'm like wow, wellhere's the here's the solution.
You know, you you guys shouldshould look at look at this.
It solves this problem, but thenI can't get anybody to so I
don't know, maybe it's a deal.
SPEAKER_00 (23:20):
I've been working on trying to solve this problem for
many, many years now.
This it's like when I first gotinvolved with crypto was like
2013, but it was already aproblem even back then.
And and really the the issue sothis is kind of how the history
of the internet went, right?
(23:41):
And so there's internet, peoplestarted uploading, uh if you
remember like Napster andLimeWire, right?
And then that was like a like abig copyright issue of that
time.
Uh eventually they got shutdown, but but the way that they
couldn't really stop the piracyitself.
(24:04):
They but they made it easier forpeople to basically listen to
music through streaming.
So in that sense, that's why I'mI don't think streaming is is
inherently a bad thing.
It made it a little bit moreconvenient.
So the next step after that,right, is we need to uh the
(24:29):
internet itself needs to monitoruh usage and copyright.
Because ideally, if you have a afile, like a song that you
wrote, someone takes that pieceof music and they use it on
their website, you should youshould be getting roties for
(24:49):
that.
That is a broadcast, right?
And there's all these people,it's not just me, there's a lot
of people who are interested inlike DRMs, right?
Digital rights management, anduh they tried to embed uh music
and art with these things justso you can keep track of it.
(25:11):
It made sense, but that was along time ago and it went
nowhere because the companiesthemselves that's not what they
were thinking.
That's that wasn't the businessmotto.
And so for them, piracy was justengagement, it was just clicks,
more clicks.
And skip over to 10-15 yearslater, now the whole place is
(25:35):
just flooded with a bunch ofgarbage.
You know, and then I'm notsaying that the people are
garbage, I'm saying thecompanies incentivize that.
And what do you what do youexpect, right?
Like so this is the norm, thisis the intritification of
content, in sherification ofart, music, whatever you want to
(25:59):
say.
SPEAKER_02 (25:59):
Sure.
SPEAKER_00 (26:00):
And AI has just accelerated that tenfold, right?
Because now it's so easy just topump something out.
And but I still do think theanswer really is we have to
reset the whole system.
Because it is it doesn't it makemore sense just to register your
(26:20):
work from the beginning?
Because what they're doing nowis that when you upload
copyrighted works onto YouTube,you have teams of people, they
have algorithms, they havepeople that are scanning.
I think I think I showed you apicture, a video of like putting
people putting weird filters onthe video just so they can avoid
the copyright detectionalgorithms.
(26:43):
You know, there's ways aroundit.
They're finding it, fightingthis endless war that they're
not gonna win.
And they're wasting a lot ofmoney and time doing it.
So But there are people who areinvested in the fight, right?
So some people get paid to roundthese people up, right?
People get paid for forenforcing copyright.
(27:05):
Lawyers get paid when theproblems happen, not when the
problems get solved, right?
SPEAKER_01 (27:10):
Totally Top Music Attorney is her name, by the
way.
SPEAKER_00 (27:14):
Oh Top Music Okay.
What was her name?
SPEAKER_01 (27:18):
Yeah.
Uh well she goes by Top MusicAttorney.
Okay.
Her name is Crystal uh Delgado,I think.
SPEAKER_00 (27:24):
Um Yeah, yeah, because I think he mentioned her
name once.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, she does great work, youknow?
She's definitely like on theside of the musician, so yeah,
but she cares.
SPEAKER_00 (27:37):
But she's only one person, right?
This has to be like Exactly.
SPEAKER_01 (27:40):
Yeah.
Um, I think she does have a ateam, but you know, like, yeah,
she's only one person, and thereare other people that are that
have expressed their concerntoo.
SPEAKER_00 (27:51):
But getting getting people to use this new system
that makes sense is gonna behard.
Because it's so different,right?
SPEAKER_01 (28:01):
Yeah, it takes time, you know.
Um change it does not comeeasily.
And one thing that Paper Buddhaand I were talking about a month
ago is this idea of Blue Oceanand Red Ocean theory.
The red ocean being being theplace where you would maybe put
(28:23):
your music where you're alwaysup against other people and
other musicians and you'recompeting for ears.
And and Blue Ocean would besomething completely different,
making something completely newand where you don't really have
you're not competing, you know,per se.
(28:46):
And I I mean at least in theyeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Like the so what are you doing it for?
SPEAKER_01 (28:53):
Well, to to do something complete something
else entirely, and saying likewe're not gonna as an idea, like
saying, okay, I'm not gonna I'mnot gonna put my music on
streaming because I know likethat this doesn't create
sustainability, but if I put mymusic over on Teya or Object or
(29:15):
somewhere else, like I'mparticipating in a community
that legit likes each other andlike wants to hang out and wants
to support each other.
And and uh that's a that's apretty uniquely different
situation than than a bottomlesspit of of wonder of something
(29:38):
like Spotify that is generatingbillions of dollars and putting
money in the world.
SPEAKER_00 (29:45):
At least with like NFTs, like you said, you like
being able to know who boughtit.
Yeah.
And sometimes that's hard thatkind of information is hard to
get.
Uh unless you go after ityourself, right?
Yeah.
And so Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (30:02):
Um But yeah, I love the idea of I love the idea of
collabor collaboration splitsand having lots several
different people on onecollaboration contract that have
um percentages.
I mean, why did any band everbreak up?
You know, yeah, yeah, they brokeup because mostly, mostly, not
(30:26):
not every in every case, butmostly bands break up because
there's arguments over who ownswhat.
SPEAKER_00 (30:34):
Yeah, money.
Same with marriages, right?
Always, you know, like numberone reason for a divorce is is
putting money issues.
SPEAKER_01 (30:42):
Yeah.
So I mean, like if you had thatall if you knew exactly what it
was at the very beginning, whichon these smart contracts we do.
And like there's just therehasn't been any disagreement
after the fact yet.
Yeah, not even once.
Not once.
SPEAKER_00 (31:01):
I've not same here.
Same everything I've donethrough the blockchain has been
pretty straightforward and fair,no drama.
Assuming you use the technologylike it was intended.
And even in the traditionalindustries, right?
You do these things throughlawyers, your managers, your
agents, and sometimes people arenot honest.
(31:25):
So you get this situation whereit's like a he said, she said
kind of thing, right?
And you gotta resolve it throughthe courts, and it's just it's
just messy and expensive, youknow, and why not just have an
agreement that's just rightright there, yeah, that everyone
can see.
Yeah.
And yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (31:45):
That's why I like I that's why I really like this.
And you know, um, we haven'treally seen like a lot of use
case scenarios for severalpeople on the contract itself.
But I think that that could be areal powerful thing at some
point, you know, where you havelike a like a a group of people
that are collectively um sharingthe contracts.
SPEAKER_00 (32:09):
And I mean, it would be great if like one of the
celebrities like sort of usedtheir platform to like set an
example, right?
Mm-hmm.
And like, hey, we use the thingand see what happens after every
sale.
Uh, it goes to this person, thisperson, this person, and here's
the breakdown, right?
It would be a great use case forlike showing how this stuff can
(32:33):
work.
SPEAKER_01 (32:34):
It would only really I mean it could That's how it
needs to get done.
SPEAKER_00 (32:40):
Yeah.
That's how it should be done.
Yeah.
But I can't think of a singleexample where that has happened
above a certain uh popularity,right?
SPEAKER_01 (32:52):
I mean, maybe we could talk to some of the people
that have had some decentsuccess in music NFTs that might
be willing to talk more aboutit, like Violetto or McShinotto
or Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:06):
Well, you know, people are who are too famous
probably prefer to do it throughtheir lawyers, right?
SPEAKER_01 (33:11):
And yeah, maybe, but I don't know.
You we don't we don't know untilwe ask, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
Maybe the lawyer might be open to it, right?
Oh yeah, yeah, we got nothing tohide.
Like, check it out.
Seriously, I mean uh But I thinkwe uh on some level we
underestimated how much peoplehave to hide.
Oh yeah, a lot.
A lot, and uh that's a reasonwhy a lot of the blockchain
(33:37):
projects that had good ideasdidn't get anywhere because the
people in charge were like, Idon't want people to know what
I'm doing.
Yeah, there's that and someonestraight up told me that about
the music industry some yearsago.
I was like, oh, okay.
Like, oh, yeah, actually.
SPEAKER_01 (33:59):
That's unfortunate, but not surprising.
Yeah.
Um yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:06):
So I I but I do think it's hard to talk about
because when things are workingas they should, there's no
drama, nothing happens, and youdon't hear about it.
That's true.
But those are the successstories that go untold every
day.
(34:26):
And yeah, I w trying to think ofways how we can how do you
publicize nothing?
Nothing's happening in us.
I feel that way about Teya.
Like, yeah, you know, I I meanwe have we have had not not any
drama at least between the teammembers, like since the
(34:49):
beginning of it, it's inception.
Like small disagreements here orthere, but like but no one knows
about us.
Maybe we should maybe we shouldhave more drama.
I don't know.
Kind of interesting thing,right?
Because that's what sucks peoplein.
SPEAKER_01 (35:05):
Yeah, I guess I I guess I like to have strong
opinions loosely held is what Ilike to say.
Yeah.
Cause I don't I want to be Iwant to learn and and I think
there's like a certain amount ofin intellectual curiosity that
keeps me engaged.
So I might agree about somethingor I might disagree about
(35:29):
something else, but I have to bewilling to to listen and to have
a different opinion, maybe,about how how things ought to
go.
SPEAKER_00 (35:40):
Well, it uh That's how I involved it.
Yeah, actually some like uh youknow, we're kind of getting
towards the end of thisconversation.
We c we kind of agreed we wantedto like be more forward-looking,
right?
Sure.
So in in your opinion, like whatdo you think is the best thing,
(36:01):
like Tesla's, not even Tesla's,but just NFTs or even just
artists in general, what shouldthey be looking for or what
should they be doing or thingsto pay attention to?
It's kind of like hmm generaloutlook for the future.
SPEAKER_01 (36:20):
I mean, general outlook for the future in the in
the short of it.
I mean, I think the reason to doit is because of connection with
real people.
SPEAKER_00 (36:31):
Like I think that And you can get that from like
where does that come from?
SPEAKER_01 (36:36):
Well, I guess it does come from um how we've
connected online.
SPEAKER_00 (36:43):
So Oh yeah, but now here I'm in I'm in your house
right now.
SPEAKER_01 (36:47):
But then but then yeah, but then we get together,
yeah.
But then we do get together, andso like that's what I mean by by
real connection is that likeauthenticity.
Yeah, like um, I think in theshort of it, I think that's the
best that's the best casescenario.
It's worth it.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (37:06):
Um authenticity is worth it.
SPEAKER_01 (37:08):
In the in the long of it, I think you and I like
talked about provenance and whatreal ownership means and and
understanding who really wantsto um be part of that journey.
SPEAKER_00 (37:23):
Right.
SPEAKER_01 (37:24):
Um and and honoring the people that that want to
support us in that journey is uhis such a uniquely different
kind of landscape than justtrying to see how many streams
we can get or how many likes Ican get from a video, um or or
(37:46):
these other kinds of dopamineinduced type of like things that
we see in social media andstuff.
Um but so I I value the I valuethe collaborations, the
connection, the provenance, andthe I those these ideas of of um
(38:08):
open source and building new umnew tools.
And to to and not to say thatthat's an easy thing on Tezos,
it is very, very difficult.
SPEAKER_00 (38:22):
Yeah, but but like yeah.
It's earlier.
It's early.
SPEAKER_01 (38:25):
It's ear it is early.
And we have good people thatreally um that really do want to
be part of that change.
SPEAKER_00 (38:33):
They want they care, right?
They want to do something.
SPEAKER_01 (38:36):
They they really do.
And there are great people inthe space that are that are
doing this work, either gettingpaid very little or nothing,
that that believe in it becausethey see uh a better a better
future for it.
Um and and I'm I'm I'm there.
(38:59):
Like because it's not goingaway.
We've seen that too, you know.
The problems are still there.
The the market the market is isshitty right now.
SPEAKER_00 (39:08):
And yeah, AI is kind of eating web two alive, I
think, in a lot of ways.
Okay because it is reallyexposing the limits of like
yeah, like a million songs aday.
Like, what are you gonna do withthat?
SPEAKER_01 (39:23):
I I don't know.
It's right, it's absurd.
SPEAKER_00 (39:26):
Yeah, it's absurd, and it's getting worse still.
So I think there's like a roomfor uh something new to happen.
We're just on that cusper now,yeah, I think.
And on my end, I think NFTsstill have like a lot of
potential, but it's reallyadding utility to owning one
(39:48):
that we really need to befocused on because even
previously minted works, worksthat already exist, can be made
useful by attaching copyright.
And royalties for licensing anddistribution, reproductions,
like there's a lot we can dowith already existing content
(40:10):
that people haven't figured itout yet.
Yeah.
So yeah, you know, there's wejust gotta do it.
But it is gonna take a while.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (40:20):
I don't know.
I'm here for the road.
I'm here for the ride, rather.
Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (40:26):
I've been in here long enough already.
Why not just finish it up,right?
SPEAKER_01 (40:29):
Yeah, no, I will I definitely see see the the cool
things that are that arehappening and and um I'm excited
about that, those possibilities.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (40:42):
Yeah, I don't know, you too, for yeah, being around.
Yeah.
Uh if you're ever if you're everin Seattle, I should come to
Mark's place.
It's the coolest place hang outin in in the city.
I've he made me a very, verygood veggie sandwich today.
Yeah.
And I'm not even like avegetarian or vegan or nothing,
(41:05):
but it was very, very tasty.
So we got good sandwiches, uhgood fry mugs, uh chill people,
jab sessions, you know, all ofthe deal.
And we're recording it rightright here in the studio.
SPEAKER_01 (41:21):
So yeah.
Come to Tezcon.
SPEAKER_00 (41:24):
Yeah, oh yeah.
It's a little bit of an ad.
Yeah.
Tezcon, July 11th.
The Hiawatha building.
That was Hiawatha.
I Hiawatha building 2026.
So exciting.
Come on by.
It's gonna be great.
Okay, well, I think that's it.
Cool.
Um, so that's the podcast,episode seven.
(41:47):
Uh we'll see.
Yeah, what comes next.
So thanks a lot for hanging outtoday and see you in the next
one.
Thank you.
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