Bankless - The Song-A-Day Man | Jonathan Mann (Layer Zero)

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Jonathan Mann writes and publishes a song every single day. He's done this without missing a day since January 1st, 2009, and holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days writing a song. His inspiration, passion, consistency, and all-around charm really comes through as he explores his journey in both music and crypto. Infatuated with the ideas and methodology behind CryptoPunks, he's launched his own NFT project for his daily songs with an accompanying DAO - SongADAO. Creation, labor, value, and scarcity blend together in Jonathan's world. He exemplifies Layer 0 brilliantly -- a mortal human behind lines of code, expressed through music and commitment. When you stretch art this far, cool things emerge. Tune in to find out what they are! ------ 📣 ALTO IRA | THE CRYPTO RETIREMENT ACCOUNT https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 👀 POLYGON | LAYER 2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask  💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 Finding Crypto 8:33 Writing a Song a Day 16:14 Inspiration & Emotion 20:46 Creations & Crypto 24:16 Storytelling 28:20 One Thing a DAO 31:03 Because We Die 36:14 The Value of Scarcity 44:17 Product Market Fit 47:38 Proof of Work 55:20 The Song a Day NFT Project 1:00:53 SongADAO 1:04:36 Governance for Creators 1:10:29 Impacting Creativity 1:14:46 Community & Get Involved ------ Resources: Jonathan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/songadaymann?s=20  SongADAO: https://songaday.world/songadao/  Fuckin Trolls: https://fuckintrolls.lol/  Songs Hat: https://cottonbureau.com/products/songs-hat#/12607532/dad-hat-unisex-yupoong-dad-hat-black-100percent-cotton-one-size-fits-all  Jonathan's Website: https://www.jonathanmann.net/  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today I'm speaking with Jonathan Mann, who might be known as the Song A Day Man. Jonathan Mann has been creating and singing and producing one song a day for a really, really, really long time, something like over four years now. And so we talk about, and I also discovered him for the first time in 2019 at East Denver, where he was kind of just an emcee of sorts and where he gave his talk about his journey of creating one song a day. And there's a number of these a day people that have gravitated in towards, into crypto, Beeple being one of them. But there's others as well. Another previous podcast guest

of Lairzio, Justin Aversano, also took a picture of someone on their birthday every single day for a year. And there's a conversation to be had about the relationship between creative output, hard, just work, provably hard work, because if you do something one time a day for years, you know you're putting in the work. and also the power of assets, crypto assets. So we unpack that a little bit, and we also go into what Jonathan has been up to with his Dow, the Song-a-day Dow. And so that'll be in the second half of the show.

So let's go ahead and get right into it. I bring you, Jonathan Mann, right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. If you're going bankless, you need Metamask. This is your tool to unlock the world of Defi without giving up custody over your private keys. Metamask is both a secure in-browser wallet and also a secure bridge for your hardware wallet.

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at the same time. Leverage your wealth without the risk of liquidation. Take out a loan that repays itself. Yes! Just, just, yes! What was once inconceivable is now within your grasp. Are you winning some? Hey, Jonathan.

What's up? Hey, good. How are you doing? Good. Really good. The first time I ever discovered you was at Eith, Denver, 2019? Yeah, 2019. Is that when you were like the MC of sorts? I was the MC for like one minute.

So what happened was they were trying to do like the judging of the hackathon, and all the judges were taking too long. And so John Pallor of Eat Denver was like, Jonathan, like go up on stage and do something. Stall them. And it just happened that I have, I like had my computer ready and like I had this talk that I used to give all the time, like ready to go. So I was like, I'm on it. And so, yeah. So that's probably where you saw me if you saw me there at that time. Right, right, right.

You gave the talk about your story of making one song a day, which that story I don't think has stopped at all. No, yeah. then. No. Yeah, it's, Saga Day is nuts in that way and that it's just kind of relentless. And, you know, that's like, that's literally a thousand songs ago. That's how I think about it. That's a thousand songs ago. Three years is a thousand songs. So that's like, that's pretty intense. So most of these layer zero episodes, I start with somebody's backstory and then try and lead it into crypto. But with you, I actually kind of want to do the inverse because of just the nature of who you are. So, let's start with crypto.

How did you find crypto? Yeah, that's fine. Well, from listening to the podcast, I know that you came in around 2017 also. That's like, that's my entry point. I was at a conference in Ontario in like at a summer camp. And I saw a talk by Ethan Buckman who does Cosmos. And he's just, he was just great. and I had never been interested in it before.

It seemed like it wasn't really for me. It seemed like a finance bro kind of thing. It didn't really seem like it vibe with, just didn't really see how it related to me. But something about his talk, and I can tell you exactly what it was. It was like, he explained proof of work in a way

where I kind of got it for the first time. And I started, and then he also sang a song, which helped, like, he had a little, like, ukulele who was singing. It was great. And I started, I had this really dumb thought.

Like, looking back on it, it's kind of dumb, but also it makes sense, which is, like, oh, yeah, proof of work. Like, I have that. Like, I've been doing a song a day since January 1st of 2009. Like, that's my proof of work. Like, and then I was like, oh, like, is there some connection between, like, blockchain and my song of day project? And, like, what could that be? And I talked to Ethan about it, and he was, like, really supportive. And then I got home and I tweeted when you could find the tweet.

And I said, like, hey, like, does anyone know anything about the blockchain? like I have this crazy idea for a project. And my friend Boris reached out, sent me some ETH, said, go play. That was literally his words. And about a week later, he showed me Cryptopunks. And that was the moment. That was like, that was the real lightning bulb lightning strike light bulb moment for me was seeing Cryptopunks at that time. Which was, you know, like maybe six months.

five months after they had launched. And it just blew my mind, wide open. Okay, so let's put a pin in that part of the story. Now let's do Song a Day. How did you start doing Song a Day? And also, what is Song a Day? Yeah, Song a Day is an ongoing project where I write and record and make a video for a song every single day.

And I've been doing that since January 1st of 2009. I started really just trying to go for a month. It was literally just 31 days that I was aiming for. Um, within that 31 days of January of 2009, um, I had a couple songs go kind of mini viral and like, it just was going well and I was unemployed. I was like 26 living in Berkeley. I had nothing else going on. And so I decided to try for a year. And then at the end of 2009, it just kind of, I've just kind of decided to keep going and not stop. Um, and that's how that's how I'm here, you know, 4,7666 songs in to the project.

But why? Yeah, yeah. Well, that answer has changed so much over the years. If you asked me back then, and people did, and this is the answer that I would give back then. It's basically like, it basically talked about how as a creative person who I'd been writing songs since I was 12. And, like, while I've always been somewhat prolific, there was a piece of me that would often run up against some kind of form of writer's block, where the problem with writer's block is, like,

you feel like you want to make something. You have, like, the urge to create, but nothing comes out, and that's very frustrating. And I found, I sort of stumbled into Songaday as, like, a... just a writer's block proof method of creating. And that's like one reason that I used to give. And then another reason was, you know, to get attention. It's like in this day and age, you need to have a hook.

And like, that's my schick. Like, hey, I'm up here doing a song a day. Like, that's just like a good schick to have. That's another reason. but as time goes on, you know, it's, it becomes, it's become something quite different in a lot of ways. It's become almost like, I don't want to say spiritual, but it's become like, it's become just a practice, you know? It's just become something that like there's, there's a, there's a weight to like sitting down and just doing something every single day and doing it. And there's just like, I just find so many benefits that come out of it that, that it just be,

has become part of my life. It's like part of the firmament of my existence now. What are some of those benefits? So the only way to get good at something, right, is to fail a lot, is to make, is like to fuck up a bunch. And Song of Day is a really great framework for fucking up and for like making a lot of shit and a lot of crap that's bad, you know?

And even for me, like, doing that in public for all these years, you know, they all live on YouTube. There's, like, there's something about that that is humbling, I guess, but also is teaches me a different thing, which is that, like, no one really cares whether you suck. You know what I mean? No one real, like, there's haters and there's trolls and stuff, but, like, in the grand scheme of thing, like, No one's really paying attention to you most of the time. And so, like, what's wrong with making something shitty on the way to making something good? And to not be afraid of that. So that's, so that's like a lesson that I learn over and over and over again.

And then just in, like, a pure kind of practice way, just gotten better. Just gotten better at things. As a musician, as a producer, as a singer. I've just gotten better from literally doing it for 13 years. like every day. Yeah. Do you feel like it takes a similar role in your life as perhaps like meditation or journaling does for other people?

Yeah, I think that's definitely the case. I would say, you know, again, like back in the day, I wouldn't have said that, you know? I wouldn't have like, it's not something that I set out to do. But looking back on it, especially now, you know, if you go on a songaday. World and like you just like, like shuffle through the songs,

you know, you get a real sense of like, of my life in a lot of ways. Like it is literally a record, um, of my life. You know, there's people,

you know, Gazali just went, uh, viral for taking a picture of himself every day for five years. And my friend Noah Kalina has done that for like 21 years now. Um, you know, there's something about, like, documenting yourself, documenting what's going on in your life every single day.

That's kind of, that's really intense. And then, what was the other part? I don't remember what you just said. Yeah, I just asked if it fills the same niche as somebody who, like, meditates or journals. Oh, yeah, for sure. The meditation part, absolutely. In fact, like the one time that I feel, free from anxiety.

The one time that I'm like not anxious, well it's two times. One of the times is when I'm sitting down and writing my song. Like when I'm really lost in creating a song and like in that state of flow, if you're familiar with that idea, the idea of flow is where you, the task that you're trying to do

is right at the edge of what you're capable of doing and you know you're you're pushing right up against that edge that's when you get into that flow state and i find myself in that all the time when i'm doing a song it's never boring that's not true there's just boring a lot of times but when i get into that zone it's like it's and and and and i get and almost every day i can get there even if it's just for a few minutes if i don't have a lot of time to work on my song but when i'm actually in it it's the only thing i'm thinking about. You know what I mean?

Whereas every, all the other times of the day, I'm like, anxious as shit about everything. But when I'm like actually in it doing my song, I'm so present, like, with the song. So in that way, I don't know if it, you know, I don't know if it, in the meditation sense, I haven't gotten as good at, like, taking the benefits of that, you know, taking that kind of hearness that I feel when I'm doing a song and applying it to other places. That's a sort of key of meditation. It's like you learn not only to do it when you're sitting there,

but also you're just like standing there doing the dishes and you sort of notice yourself like, whoa, here I am. That is a, I think it's a different muscle than this one. But for the purposes of like an everyday moment when I am just here with myself, song a day, I would say, fills that for sure. I'm sure there's got to be like days where, I don't know, it's in the last part of the day and you're like, damn, I haven't done my song today.

God damn it, I just have to bang this song out. How often, how do you get through those days? Yeah, yeah. So by giving myself a lot of leeway, basically, I call those phoning it in, phoning it in days where, where sort of to what I was, saying before is like no one fucking cares. No one cares. If you're going to phone it in one day,

who the fuck, who gives a shit? And so, and so ultimately I give myself a lot of latitude to just suck. If I need to suck on at a particular time, that's cool. That's right. And so I'll phone it in. I'll just, I'll literally just like

improvise a song on the spot. I will, there's days when I put like as little effort as possible into it. The other thing that I I've learned about that though. What's wild is another term I have for it is like these songs that I just sort of poop out. Like the songs that I just sort of poop out in those times when I'm like, I don't feel inspired whatsoever.

And I'm like, like you said, end of the day, I'm exhausted. You know, especially my kids are, you know, four and seven. But when they were infants, forget it. I mean, that's like when you have an infant in the house. But what I found is like oftentimes those songs, they still resonate with somebody. somebody still hears it and says wow I really like that one or like wow that one really like that one really hit me at the right moment or whatever so so who the fuck knows like I I'm not you know you we're like not the best judges of what we're what we make um and it's easy it's so easy

to get in your head about like is this good is this bad when the when the fact of the matter is is what you think about it kind of doesn't matter because somebody else is going to think something completely different about it. There was a podcast that Ryan and I did a Monday podcast, like one of the big ones, and I won't name the guest just because of the nature of the story. But as soon as we got off of the podcast, him and I were both like, oh, God, that podcast was awful. Like, do we even release that?

Like, that was so bad. And we just didn't have enough time to, like, scrounge up another podcast in time. So we released it. And it turned into being a number three most downloaded podcast. in that spot for a really, really long time. And we got so much positive feedback about it. And we just learned a lot about ourselves. Like sometimes, like, what we think is good

and the enjoyment that we got out of it is just not at all what, like, everyone, all the listeners get out of it. I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me. Where, like, songs that I think are great and I'm, like, really excited by, do nothing. And then songs that I literally put no effort into people are like, this is the best.

I love this one. Like, you know, there's a famous story about how, like, Tom Petty wrote Free Falling, where it was like, he was just trying to make everybody laugh. Like, he was singing this song, and he's like, he's just, like, making up the lyrics,

and he's like, she's a good girl. Crazy about Elvis. And everyone's, like, just cracking up about it. And it turns into, like, literally his biggest song ever. Yeah, right. You know? There's something about, too,

about, Like, you know, a lot of people will say like, oh, you got to like, to make good art, you have to like be all emotional. You have to put your emotions into it. It has to be like this deep thing. That's bullshit. Like, you know, what if you sit down to try to be emotional, you know, if you sit down and you're like, I'm going to write an emotional song, you know, and I'm going to make it all come out, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to like to live up to that. Whereas if you just sit down, you're like, I'm just going to write something. Let's see what comes out.

You're not putting any pressure on you, and that's when you can just like open up and let something come, you know? That's how I see it. I don't think you can actually like go for emotion, right? Like that's not something that you can optimize for. No. Right? You can't just decide that you're going to be emotional today. Exactly.

And sometimes you feel emotional and sometimes you're able to like to channel your emotions. but on days when you don't to try to do that, you know, is fruitless, I think, but also on days when you don't, there's a lot of power and just sitting down and showing up. Do you have any of, like, your favorite songs that you've written? Either judged by the output of the songs that you created or the process of you making them? Like a lot of my, a lot of the stuff I'm most proud of making are, on like albums and things that I've done like a big part of what I do with song and days I go back and kind of mine the songs for things that I think could could stand to be polished you know because because a lot of times what comes out of song a day sort of is you know ultimately like a demo in a lot of ways um so I put out an album like 2019 that I'm really proud of and um I did this narrative fiction podcast called songanauts and the Music for that I'm super, super proud of as well.

So those would be, I'd say, like, the ones that I'm, like, most... Because I put so much work into them to talk about, like, the process. Like, I really, you know, I really honed and try to get to the heart of, like, what each song was. And so, yeah, that's, that's, like, that's definitely what I'm most proud of, I'd say. They're the ones I like the most. So picking up the crypto thread, crypto is a very interesting... industry. Do you think that like you've used crypto just as like inspiration to like, yo, crypto has so much content inside of it. Like I can just get a lot of inspiration for my songs.

Crypto is going to make writing about songs so much easier. Are these some of the thoughts that went through your head? No, but, but I, in my life, you know, because song a day is just part of my life, like I said, the firmament of just what I do, anything that I get into, I end up, folding into song a day, right? So you can look and like on, I think it's September 17th of 2017, I wrote a song about Cryptopunks because I was just so into Cryptopunks. And that's just sort of naturally what I do, you know? I wrote a song about Dada, like the Dada art people I wrote a song about. And I did a song about, what's another one? I did several CryptoKitty songs back then because I was just so excited about NFTs. They weren't called NFTs back then, but like that's what I was excited about.

And so that sort of, that sort of continues now where now I'm like really deep in the space. And so yeah, there's just like, there's just so much, so many different things to write about. I'm working on today I asked Twitter what to write about. And some people said, and I also put, I said, I said, what should my song be about no shilling? Was the, and then like, because I didn't want people to come in and be like, I heard a song about this project, my project, this project. Write a song about my bags. Yes, exactly. And so several people were like, no shilling.

That's a great song. That's a great song. And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right. That is a great song. That's a fun one. So, yeah, so that end up being, that end up being a song. And that's, you know, oftentimes, like, there's so many projects in the space that I, that I just love, you know, that I'm, like, really aligned with philosophically and just

that I'm such a fan of. and I'm going to write a song about all of them eventually, you know? And that's just sort of like, got a lot of songs to write. So why not write them about things that I enjoy? One of the more recent songs in your trajectory that you've written is the ENS Dow one. Yeah. That was super catchy, by the way. I posted that into a couple of my discords, like, yo guys, like, look at this.

Look at what the energy of E&S Dow created. Like we have, you know, singer songwriters writing songs about it, but also listen to how catchy it is. And also, I think a little bit of what's going on here is you're becoming a bit of a storyteller, or you have been, right? You're, like, so much of the story of E&S got baked into that song. Maybe it's be reaching for something when I kind of say, like, the vibe of the song is also part of the vibe of ENS, like the melody and the tune.

Is it very, very ENS-N-S-like? But also just straight up, the lyrics were, illustrating two people about what it was. Yeah. And the fact that, like, somebody would write a song about E&S Dow. It's not like you wrote about, like, Coinbase or insert your equity company here or, or, you know, like, show my bags.com. You wrote about E&S Dow, a community project.

And so that is also part of this story. Do you see yourself as a little bit of a storyteller in, like, these short little snippets of songs? That was my job. Pre-pandemic, that was literally my job. the reason I had, you know, when you saw me at Eath Denver, the reason I had this talk all ready to go is because I would go around to conferences, give that talk, and then watch all the other talks at the conference and get up at the end of the day and recap everything that everyone said. And that was literally, that's what I was doing like, I was doing like maybe like 15 of those a year. And like that was my, that was my main job right up until the pandemic. So, yeah, that's a huge part.

And I, stories are compelling and I find, obviously, and I, that's sort of a dumb sentence. Stories are compelling. Yeah. But, like, the stories that are within, the stories and lore of this culture, I'm sure the, I'm sure, like, every culture has amazing stories and lore. And so because I'm so steeped in this one right now, I can't help but just be attracted to the different narratives that are popping up. You know, for a long time, it was all about cryptopunks for me and like the different kinds of like, like I wrote a song about Snowfro, you know, who made art blocks. His burned zombie punk. Like he accidentally burned a zombie punk, which I love.

Like there's a great story about like how that happened. Even the story of how he made art blocks where he sold a bunch of his really valuable punks to fund art blocks. And then art blocks becomes this amazing. Like, that's just a great story. You know, there's all these amazing stories in the space. And so E&S Dow is just one of those stories, you know? It's just like, what an amazing project and what an amazing kind of like coming to fruition of something in the space. And so it was a no-brainer for something like that to write a song.

Whereas, like, you know, not to shit on this or anything. I absolutely do not mean to do that. But, like, everyone's like, when are you going to do a song about Irene Dow? And I'm like, I'm not sure what the story is there necessarily. If there's a story there that pops up, then I'll be compelled. Whereas with Gozali, did you see Gozali, this kid who took a picture of himself every day? So there's this kid from Indonesia who took a picture of himself every day for five years and made a PFP project, basically Bay.

accident. He like up, he like, up and it's, it's just, it's, it's great. And like, so that to me, it's the guilelessness of him that, like,

makes it compelling. And he became like an instant meme overnight. And that to me was like so compelling. And it's like, he has this long history of like all these other people who have done picture a day things. And like that to me is an interesting story. So that's something that I'm going to write about.

There's just a lot. There's just so much in the space to do. I feel like there's enough people. at this point in the world doing one thing a day, that could turn into a doubt. Oh, yeah, the thing a day doubt. Yeah, yeah. Oh, is that a thing?

No, it should be. Yeah, right. For all the people that do one thing a day and have been doing so for a while, like, we should get all those people in the same Discord. Just, I've always had a fantasy of doing a conference that was just a conference where all the speakers were people who do things a day, you know? Because there's a ton. There really are.

Like, you know, I feel like I'm, I feel like even, you know, I find out about new ones all the time. Like people show me folks who are doing it. I'm like, I didn't know this person existed. Yeah. Is there like a thing a day community out there? Just like all the people that know. No, there isn't. I mean, you know, when we find each other, I think we feel some kind of kinship.

Sure. I know. So Noah Kalina entered the space recently. he's gone viral many times for his a picture of himself a day thing and I knew of those and I'd been following the project but we were able to connect over crypto because he started messaging me asking about Songaday and NFTs

and it's great you know it's just great to connect with people who do it because they sort of understand things on a on a really specific level so there's another layer zero that I did with Justin Aversano who took a photo of somebody's birthday every single day for a year. So like you have the challenge of you need to put output like a couple minutes of creative output every single day. His challenge was that he needed to go find somebody whose birthday it was every single

day for a year, which is a very different challenge. Yeah. And there's just something about doing something a day that was fine. People find really compelling. And like the cool thing about Justin's story was that you couldn't, I don't think you could have taken any single one of his photographs and created the value that he got out of the whole entire thing, right? Right.

His photographs are great, but, like, it's not, one photograph isn't going to do it. It's the fact that he did something every single day for a year, which was challenging, that created the story, that created the total, like, valuation of his combined work. Like, why do you think humanity, and one of the things that I think is cool about humanity and crypto assets is that, like, we actually find ways to put. market value upon the things that we value. And all of a sudden there are these people out there that are doing these a day things. And they're gravitating towards crypto to be able to find a price tag for these things,

a valuation for these things. But before we get to the crypto part, like, why do you think humans value the days, the people that do things a day? And like, why do we like that? Because we die. We like it because we die. We like it because time. time is literally the most scarce thing that we have.

And the everydayness of something is a reminder of that. It's the most grounding kind of way of structuring something. And so I think a lot of it has to do with death. It has to do with like our connection to the fact that we have only so many of these days on the planet. And that ties right into crypto, honestly, because what you have and what you have with NFTs especially is you have this artificially scarce thing, right? Because in the real world, everything is scarce just by its nature. That's just how the real world operates. But in computer land, as we know, like, you know, things are interesting.

infinitely perfectly replicable. And so we have suddenly this way of making digital things scarce, which is holy shit. That's like amazing. But then we have to then we have to confront this idea of, well, what does that mean? Like how can we make something digitally scarce in a way that feels legitimate, that feels true. And, you know, we would talk about this kind of shit all the time back in the old days,

you know, back in 2017, 2018. And a lot of it was sort of theoretical, whereas, like, you know, on my podcast digitally rare, we would often say that, like, you know, for this to work, there's going to have to be a really strong narrative. Like any project that's going to succeed is going to need a really clear story about why it exists, which is not true. That's not turned out to be true at all.

That was a theory that we were sort of working on back in the day before there was very many projects. But, you know, ultimately we are still confronted by what is, and we're so early that actually we don't really know the answer because in the long term, 10 years from now, you know, who knows? But when we're confronted with the idea of this artificial digital scarcity, what can make that feel real. One of the things that we're seeing now

is that, you know, uh, uh, um, OG projects, you know, and depending on how you, that's one way actually to, to value something because it came before all the hubbub and, you know, it's, it's scarce. But the fact is, you know, when Larva Labs decided to do 10,000

cryptopunks, they could have easily have decided to do 5,000 or 20,000 or infinite. I mean, near infinite cryptopunks they could have done out of that, out of those combinations. So it's sort of an accident that they chose 10,000 in a lot of ways, you know, to me, that's a really interesting philosophical thing, is how do you ground, how do you ground this artificial scarcity in something that feels real? And doing something once every day is one way to ground it. Time.

Put it in time. Um, my compatriot Matt Condon, one of the many Matt's, uh, is also obsessed with this question. And he's come up with two other really great ways that I love. And so one is that you may have heard of this. He has a chip in his hand. Do you know about this? Yes, I've met him. Yeah. Yeah. So Matt has a chip in his hand where you, you scan it with a, with a near field communicating thing, NFC. And it gives you an NFT. So the scarcity comes from, uh, proximity to him. Whoa, that's like, that's really cool. And his new one is even cooler where he, he sleep talks.

Have you seen this, alliotoric? So Matt found out that he sleep talks. And so he decided to make this NFT project where when he sleep talks, his phone records it. It gets translated, it gets like Google translated in the text. The text gets fed into an AI thing that shows it as a visual thing. and that gets sold as an NFT on Zora. And so the scarcity of this project, he has no control over how many are going to happen.

It only happens when he sleep talks, which, you know, there's been months now where he hasn't. He set up this whole project. He was sleep talking all the time. And then he set it up and he hasn't been sleep talking, which is just fascinating. So that's another way of creating real scarcity in this digital realm.

You know, so I just, I find all of those experiments, it's like the most fascinating. Can you elaborate on the relationship between scarcity and market value of assets and what the blockchain has to do with that? Yeah, although, you know, I'm skeptical of most of the ways that people use scarcity to assign value to most NFTs because it all feels so arbitrary to me. Let me actually ask that question slightly differently. Can you elaborate on the relationship of the scarcity of human time and labor and creativity

and the market value of assets on public blockchains? Yes, yes. Well, that to me is way more interesting than, you know, the other thing that I was thinking when you were saying that is like, you know, this one is, this one has like lasers shooting out of his eyes and that may, and that's rare. It's like, okay, really why? I could just go into 100 ERC 20 tokens and say, Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. It needs to have...

I didn't realize this for a long time when, like, you know, when projects are choosing... Like, bankless, how did you decide how many tokens to make? What was your rubric? A billion is a big, big number. You just make the number. Like, this to me, like, I didn't realize. I was like, you mean there's no...

And people are like, of course there's no. It's just you can make up any number. It's just whatever. I'm like, oh, yeah, right. Oh, man, that's crazy. And so, like, Eith, Denver, you know, they decide. decided to do like the length of Colorado or something and the height of the mountains. And they multiple, like, but in terms of like, yeah, labor and time and putting that into, I don't know, I don't think that right now we are at the point where we are ready to actually value these things correctly in the NFT space. I think that there's too much froth and there's still too much

like wild westness of it but I think there's a chance that like over time NFTs can become it's not going to be perfect. I don't think it's ever going to be perfect. I don't think it's like a panacea in any way. It's not going to like solve this. But I think that it has a chance

to be a really powerful tool for rewarding creative work in a way that hasn't existed before and certainly hasn't existed for the last 20 years and we you know when I come at everything thinking specifically about music and what's crazy about music is that

you know prior to the invention of recorded sound the music was ultimately extremely scarce in the sense that the only way to hear it was in person when someone was playing it for you. Like that's crazy. And then suddenly we had this ability to copy it and we lived through this sort of golden age of musicians being able to get paid for their work because it was copyable but not infinitely copyable yet.

And that was one age. And then for the last 20 years, we've been in a completely different place where the value of music just plummeted. It went away completely. And I don't think NFTs or digital scarcity is going to solve that. But I think it's just going to, it's this has a potential to be this really powerful tool to help alleviate some of that. And I don't know how much of it has to do with scarcity or not. I think that sort of still remains to be seen. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone's obsession,

if our crypto culture's obsession with scarcity itself becomes not the thing. I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of goes by the wayside. And ultimately, we settle into something that's more just about like, another way to show your appreciation and support for a piece of art. But yeah, I think the speculation has to, the like wild rampant speculation has to die down for that to happen. And that honestly did happen, you know, 2018, 2019 things died down so much.

And that's when a lot of so many interesting things came about in that space. That's definitely true. And that time was for DFI, really, where, like, we had, like, early DFI, which were ICOs before we called it DFI, and then it went away. And then we actually had true DFI come after the fact.

And so, like, we're having this first NFT frothy movement in 2020 and 2021. And there's a ton being built right now, but a lot of that froth hasn't left the market quite yet. No, no. And it will. Eventually, I assume. Hey guys, in the second half of the show,

we get into the subject of the Song-a-day Dow, which is the Tao that Jonathan has spun up to help manage the funds of all the money that is raised from his song-a-day sales and other conversations around this topic as well. So let's go ahead and get there right after we get up to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Polygon is Ethereum's the largest and most vibrant scaling solution to date, with millions of monthly users and all of the best,

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No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. The Uniswap Grants Program is accepting applications for grants. Do you have something of value that you think you want to contribute to the Uniswap ecosystem? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply it for a Unigrant at Uniswapgrant.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring bankless. My hot take that I think is true is that these a dayer artists, people that do things every single day, find crypto sooner than all the other artists types of the world. Do you think that's true and then why?

I think that I don't know if it's true that we find it faster. I know that I feel like we maybe we get it faster. I feel like as soon as soon as I was like properly explained what what proof of work was and how that operates, it really fit for me. And then, and then, and then seeing Cryptopunks, 10,000 Cryptopunks, 3,000 songs, you know, there's 10,000 of those, there's, there's as many of I can make until I die of these. Like, it just, there's something that sort of like, there's something that clicks in that realm. It's hard to know now because, because now there's meant, there's quite a few of us thing a day people who are doing it. although it's worth noting that like, you know, people, when he came into the space, unless I'm wrong about this, he didn't, he didn't like make it into something that had to do with his every days. It wasn't like he put out all of his every days. He was like much more curated about it. And it was like, here's this every day and here's that every day. And then, you know, he did his big sale, but that was like all of his every days all at once. It wasn't quite the same kind of like, here, you know, here's the group. And I'm not. You know, here's the group. And I'm not. You know, you know, he's the group. And I'm. going to put them all up for sale.

I think that it's the people that get, at least from the NFT side, the people that get it the most are the people who have been robbed of the ability for their artwork to be valued. And Beeple was a prime example because, you know, he makes these really cool images and there's just no way. way to monetize those in a way that is, you know, clearly what they're worth. And, you know, I talked to eclectic method all the time. And like, you know, he was tired of DJing. He's like, that's how he had to pay his bills. But all he really wanted to do is make like cool little 3D music pieces. And like, who the fuck wants a cool little 3D music page? Like, what are you going to do with that? You can't do anything with that. But, but now you can. And those, those are the places, those are the spaces where

I think people ultimately really get it is where the thing that they make has no like place to live you know, has no place to like really reside. Which is true of me, you know, like I, um,

writing a song a day for 13 years, putting them all on YouTube, that's not a living, you know, that's not even like, that's not even like an eighth of a living, you know? Um, uh,

so that's why, That's why it was, I think we, it's, it's maybe less to do with the everydayness and it's more to do with like the lack of, of value put on the stuff that we create. I'm glad that you took us here because if you hadn't, it's going to be my next question because there's a, there's something I'm trying to circle around and I think it's time that we descend there. You started off with talking about the connection between what you're doing and proof of work. And in another way, like one of the ways that I like to explain proof of work to people that are asking like the 101s is like I point at the Egyptian pyramids. Because when you go to the Egyptian pyramids, like it's a proof of work. Like you know that that took a lot of work. Like you don't have to verify it.

You know that it's true. You just have to look at it. And so that's one of our early OG like proof of works. Like if aliens came to planet Earth, they could see the pyramids be like, oh, that took a lot of work. Yeah. It's very obvious, yeah. And then they can go to your YouTube channel and see your upload rate. And it's like, oh, one tongue, one a day.

They're all unique. They're all different. Oh, man, that took a lot of work. And you're telling me that, like, all these adayers, these creative adairs, are finding crypto because of a sensation and some sort of need to fill a monetization niche. And one of the fascinating aspects, I've already said this once before, and many, many times throughout the bank of the ecosystem, like, one of the cool things that really makes me bullish about crypto is that

in Ethereum specifically the ability to tokenize stuff allows, and tokenized stuff on open public permission list networks that allows the whole entire globe to come and impart their perceived value upon these things, that we now have ways to

produce market assets, financial assets, that more closely aligned with our human values. So we have the market value of our assets more closely aligned with our human values. And so I think we have like these creative adairs that are putting in the work, that it's verifiable,

and that's backed by time. You have provenably burnt time to produce this output. Yeah. And like maybe it's not a financial asset like staked ether is or a bond, a treasury bond. But at some point, like it doesn't matter because so many things in so many market, the value of our market assets are perceived, right?

We tell us, we have these narratives of like the price to earnings, ratio or price of sales ratio and that's a that's a value a fundamental valuation but it's also perceived yeah and then we got and then we start to zoom out a little bit and like oh well what else is perceived like a mona is also perceived but no one's going to like argue with you about like the value of a mona and at some point like what's really happening here is like because we have so many creatives out there in the world burning their time in the same way that proof of work winers are burning their electricity to produce some sort of creative output. And you don't need like a whole entire financial system to agree upon,

oh yeah, this token has strong fundamentals. You just need 100 people or 1,000 people to be like, yo, like the waveform of this guy's like sleeping words is like kind of unique. I guess I'll pay a couple hundred dollars for that. And all of a sudden, like, we have enough people to like support up these creators. And the only thing that the creators really need to do is provably burn. their time in honest and real fashion. Yeah, and just to keep doing what they've been doing all along anyway.

And I think that gives it a, that gives it like another layer of legitimacy, I think, you know, where you look at someone who's been doing it every day anyway or has been creating their songs, even if they're not doing every day. They're just, you know, someone like Latasha has been like putting in the work for years and years and years. There's so many people in the space doing that. You can see that. You can't, you can't fake that, right?

There's no, there's no, there's, yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. And, and I mean, you know, I love that. I take a, I take a, you know, I take a pretty like measured approach to this. And like I said, I think it's, it's more, for me, it's just like, it's going to be another tool in the tool. ultimately. Same with Dow's. Same with everything. Ultimately,

they're all just going to be like this really cool tool that we can use where appropriate to like make cool shit. And it's fun. I have so many. I keep getting calls from far flung friends now who like, dude, tell me about NFTs.

You know, that's happening more and more now. So, but when you discovered Ethereum and crypto and NFTs before they were called NFTs, you didn't really see this as like, oh, this is how I can monetize my, my Sanga days. You were just drawn to it for whatever reasons. No, I was immediately. I was like, I immediately saw it as there's a great, there's like a video that I found actually. We can maybe share it in the show notes. A video of a talk that I gave in, right in 2017. not long after I had discovered Cryptopunks, where I lay out the entire song-a-day NFT project in 2017. Like, I didn't know this video exists, and my friend had sent it to me,

and I give a talk about Cryptopunks. I'm like, here's these Cryptopunks. Aren't they so cool? And I point to this zombie one. I'm like, this one, for instance, like there's only blah, blah, blah of these. And so it's really rare. So it's very valuable.

See, it's $33. Somebody is willing to pay $333 for this zombie. But then after I talk about that, I'm like, oh, and like, here's what I want to build on top of that with song a day. And from the very beginning, I saw it as like this way that maybe if, you know, if I could, if I could be putting out my song every day and even just making like $100 or something. Somebody paid me like $100 an eph every day for my song, I'm going to come out so far ahead than if I wasn't able to do that. And that was like the impetus for me from the very beginning was the monetization part. You know, and then the further I got down, like just like you said, you start going down these rabbit holes and you start discovering like, oh, right, everything is made up. Like everything is completely just made up.

It's all stories. Stories like entirely down. It's all the way down. It's all stories. And so, whoa, oh, that's mind blowing. and then, you know, and then back in those days, too, there was so nobody, I've heard you talk about this too, like, even Vitalik, like nobody got NFTs. Nobody gave a shit about NFTs or understood. And there was a small group of us, like me and like the da-da people and the super rare guys and Jason Bailey from Art Nome.

There was a bunch of us in New York and we would have all these meetups and we just get together and just like geek out about NFTs. in digital scarcity. And yeah, anyway, I don't know where I was going with that. That was a really nice time. That was like a really like warm, fuzzy feeling time for me because it was like, it seemed like endless possibilities at that point. It was like, we don't know what we're doing. And if, you know, but a lot of it holds up.

A lot of the things that we wrote back then, a lot of like the podcasts we did, it holds up. We called this, I think, in a lot of ways. Like we called the NFT what would be compelling about NFTs. So what was the original monetization plan for your song a day with using NFTs? And how did it start and did it change over time? It did change over the time. But the basic idea, again, you can go watch this video.

The basic idea is exactly the same for the very beginning. Take Cryptopunks, make it into Song a Day. Like that was like, that was my goal from the very beginning. And what's so funny is that like. But not the generative. aspect, right? There is even the gender of aspect.

Oh, really? Well, because there's the images. I hired a different illustrator for each year of Songaday, and they each made layers of the illustrations, which is like old hat now, right? Like now that's just like,

oh yeah, of course you would do that. Table stakes. You know, but back then, it was like really, like I had to explain it. It was like really hard to explain to anybody. It was, there's like, it was,

it didn't make any sense. But I was like, But look at Cryptopunks. Now imagine that. And each song has an image. It's generated from these layers. And each layer, each year is done by a different person. And I did all that.

Like that ended up being my project. And that was there from the very beginning. Each, each Cryptopunk has all these traits. And again, the traits are like, yeah, of course. Of course you're going to have traits. Like what, your thing isn't going to have traits? But it was like, no, no, no. You don't understand.

Like no one got it. They're like traits. What are you talking about traits? What are traits? No, no. So like there's a location. Like I sang myself. song and like there's a topic and there's like there's all these different traits of the songs and they're like

what are you saying like it doesn't make any sense but from the very beginning that's just what it was it was just take cryptopunks and map it onto song a day and the main thing that changed actually was the tao the main thing that that changed from then to now was uh seeing some of the amazing experiments specifically like nouns dow and and the song that owns itself and those blowing my mind in a whole new way and deciding to like bring that part of it and glomming that on to the Song of Day NFT project that I had been building forever

anyway. Yeah. So that that's the main thing that changed was was bringing in the Dow aspect. Yeah. So what's this date of the Song a day project now? Like as of right now where is it at? So we on

it was a ton of work. It was like ridiculous amount of work to get this project going. I spent probably like $600,000, maybe more total building this project, which is like more than I normally make. Up until this year, I made about $100,000 a year for the last 10 years. That's like, that's been my, my, my, my, my, my, where I've been. Basel level, yeah. So the idea that I spent like six years worth of that just this year, just in creating this project and funded through this other project I made called Fucking Trolls, which is a PFP project making fun of other PFP projects.

I have to look at this. I did not know this. Many people sell their trolls for zero, so you can get some, which is just glorious. It's just wonderful. but we made a shit ton of money off fucking trolls. I made a shit ton of money off of just selling random NFTs this year and I was able to finally fund this project that I'd been dreaming of since 2017.

I hired 13 different illustrators. I paid them each like $50,000 to make, ultimately they made around 1,200 layers all combined. I hired Raid Guild, which is a wonderful Dow collective of people who you can hire them to just slay your project. They call it Slaying Dragons and build it. So they did all solidity work and all the front end work and all that kind of stuff.

And we launched on December 31st and it sold out, like roughly 4,000 songs sold out in like an hour and a half, which was amazing. That's a whole other story of like how that happened. very specific to crypto story. Actually, we can get into that if you're interested. But now what's been happening since January 1st, and this has always been part of the plan, is that I've been selling my songs on my website, songaday.world.

Every single day, there's a new song. It's being auctioned each day. And all the money from those auctions goes to the Dow now. And so the Dow has roughly, I don't know, 31th now in its treasury, just in like the last six. days, 17 days. And that will go on, you know, indefinitely. Every day, I'm just going to sit down, do my song like I always have, and tokenize it,

sell it. You know, we're going to see each other at Heath Denver, right? So, like, I'm hosting the Shelling Point conference that O'Waki is doing, Awaki and Simona. And so I have this plan where I'm hoping, I don't really know if they're going to let me do this, but, like, my idea was, I'm going to bring each of you up on stage with the like with like a little verse of a song that I'm going to write about you and I'm going to have you stand there while I sing your verse and then I'm going to stitch all these verses together and

that's going to be my song for the day and then that song is going to get sold on my website. It's going to be tokenized and auctioned off and that money. I would imagine there's going to be some bids for that one. I hope so. I hope so. And so that will, you know, that money goes to the Dow. And it's fun. It's been super fun.

People are coming into the Dow. We're still getting our feet under us. Like we're working on. the voting of how we're going to do voting because the way we're doing voting is one person, one vote. We don't have a token. We just have the NFT. There's no token in this Dow yet, maybe someday.

And it's an NFT curated DAO rather than a Dow about a NERC20 token. It's if you own one of the songs of a song a day Dow. If you own one of the songs, you are eligible to be in the Dow. The only thing you have to do to become fully in the Dow is to get verified on Bright ID. And then you can vote. once you're verified with bright ID and that's that's what we're trying to do right now it doesn't actually exist this is like a we're hoping to make this like a public good thing that doesn't exactly exist yet which is a snapshot uh instance or whatever you call it that um has bright ID

as part of it so that you can have a snapshot where you're sure that everyone who's voting is a person every single person who's voting is one person um which not a lot of projects are doing currently because it doesn't exist. And that's what we're building right now. And it's cool, man. It's like, it's crazy. It's a crazy world. And I'm just so, like, excited.

And as jazz as I was, the first day that I saw Cryptopunks. How much do you let the Dow dictate what your decisions are? So the Dow, the, the, all member, anyone who holds an NFT, ultimately is welcome to have creative input. And at some point, once we have the voting up and running, we will be doing things where we'll take certain questions to the Dow.

I have a lot of collabs that I want to do, and we can have them suggest collabs or like steer the collabs in a different way. the Dow ultimately if you are a voter if you're verified with bread ID that's when you can deploy funds you know to do grants or to do whatever ultimately um I would say that like the creative direction stuff is more of a suggestion and the the treasury stuff is more binding like that's the that's the idea is like once you're you know once you are verified that like you're going to be one person one vote then we're going to, you know, then we'll abide by what everybody wants, you know. Like, we already have proposals to do like an NFTX, uh, vault for the songs and like, you know, um, I'm down for it, but like, depending on what people want to do, then we may or may not do that. Does allowing the Dow to dictate your creative output make you uncomfortable? No, because like I said, it's not, it's not binding that part.

But as because it because perhaps it would make you uncomfortable if it was. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just think it would be less interesting because I found that like most people don't give great suggestions is what I found. And sometimes they do. But like, but I found that like, you know, it's it's more interesting to me what they will do with the money than it is to me. what they will do with me with the songs leave the songs the professionals i guess is like is is is the way i'm thinking about it so what what about the dynamic of like what there's only one of you yeah and so

like the the dow is really a dow around like the treasury not the song creation what's the dynamic like of you have this one guy who's responsible for the actual inflows of ether into the treasury what's that yeah well what's interesting about that is that, I mean, so we're only 17 days in, so I don't really know what it's like yet. And I would like to get to the point where, you know, part of why I wanted to do one person, one vote, and that includes me, is that I tried to, because it's so me focused, I wanted to give as much power as I could to everyone else. knowing that I wield, obviously, way outsized influence, I wanted to find a way to, like, to counteract that as much as I could.

And so that's part of the idea behind one person, one vote. But ultimately, you know, it remains to be seen, ultimately, like, how people are going to respond to it or what it's going to look like. So far, it's been really fun. And I would like to get to the point where it's not just me bringing in the money because there's a lot of opportunity for other people to, if someone got a song placed in a movie or something, that could bring in an enormous amount of money to the Dow. And we have pathways for, because the Dow's a legal co-op like Spork Dow is,

we have pathways where if you do something like that, you can get paid by the Dow in ETH. You can get paid from money directly from the Treasury if you bring in, it's called patronage activity. There's this co-op term called patronage activity where things you do that benefit the co-op entitle you to money from the Treasury. So, yeah, I just imagine someone being a music license. licensing person and you know there's a lot of songs to choose from like listening through me like

oh I like this one like maybe this one could fit here maybe or something and then if that happens all that money all the royalties and everything flow into the Dow all the off chain royalties I mean like from Spotify and from the the ideally I would like to get to the point where paramount pictures is not doing a deal with me they're doing a deal with my Dow and and and ultimately it's the Dow who has a lawyer who's hammering out the details and all of that money flows right back into the Dow and the person who is responsible for that can see some of that upside how do you think the mere existence of the Dow impacts the valuation of the NFT songs do you think like because like you could just pocket all the money for yourself right

and be a lot more direct yes I mean for you for a long time that was the plan right and and part of the reason I valued, part of the reason I minted the songs, the original songs, the archive of the songs on January, on December 31st, I had the mint price at 0.2, which is like really high for a project like this.

But the reason I did that was because that was the number that I needed to feel comfortable to give the rest of this money to the Dow. But I think ultimately it's a long-term prospect, right? I don't know what's going to happen. And like right now we're living through this moment that's really interesting in NFTs that I've noticed. I keep talking about this because it's on my mind.

We're living through like a it's burgeoning, this like really burgeoning pure meme NFT time that we're living in. Olive Garden was maybe like the first that I noticed. Ghazali is another example of this kid. and now Irene Dow, which is like these three just like pure, almost a reaction to the rallying cry that's been around for the last like six months of like utility. What's the utility of the art? The art needs to have utility. And now there's a reaction to that we're like, fuck utility. This is a pure, we're going doge coin people.

We're just going like pure meme. It's just a, it's a funny fucking thing and we're all getting behind it. And you're buying it. And you're buying it. Yeah, yeah, right. So ultimately, I don't know what's going to happen, but I've set up song a day in a way that I think, you know, I think in like really long-term ways, you know,

because of, I think about, you know, like I said, three years is a thousand songs. which sounds like a lot, but honestly, man, like the first thousand felt like they took forever. The second thousand kind of took a while. The third and the fourth thousand went like that. They're just like going so fast. So I think about like three years in the future when I've done, I've literally auctioned off a thousand songs. And all that money goes into the Dow.

What are NFTs even going to look like? Like is any of the stuff that's around now? now still going to be around? I don't know, but I, but I've, I've built Songaday specifically to like, to be able to hopefully weather that, weather whatever comes, you know, having lived through the one, the one, uh, winter that I did. Do you see yourself, um, changing what, changing the songs that you write and how you write them or how you sing them or what, what they're about? Because you now know, that there's like a Dow behind this and you're trying to want to be like a profit maxi for on behalf of

the Dow. Yeah, definitely. And I talk about this even in the in the, that very first talk that that the Cryptopunk talk that I was talking about from 2017. I sort of was aware even back then. And I thought, I thought what the vector was going to be actually was rarity. I thought the vector was going to be rarity because that's what cryptopunks was. And that's how people were valuing different cryptopunks. So I thought, oh, like, maybe when I'm doing my song a day, like, if I play with an instrument I've never played with, and I do it in a location where I've never been, and I sing about a topic that I've never sung about, and I'm wearing an outfit that I've never worn, like maybe, which I don't think is the case anymore, and it's more about the stories about the space.

that people want. Now, that's not surprising to me in the least because always the songs that get the most views are the topical songs. All of my most viewed songs are either political in nature or about pop culture or whatever. Like, those are all the ones that have the most views. So songs about crypto, you know, makes perfect sense that those would be the ones that people are willing to pay the most for. I would imagine that like the E&S Dow song, for example.

Yeah. It would be really compelling for the ENS Dow to make an offer on the ENS Dow song. Well, they own it. They so it got minted. Oh, they do. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It got minted.

It got minted. You know, I minted all the songs randomly in the drop. Uh-huh. And so somebody got it, but then they bought it off them. They, they were able to secure it. There's a bunch of ones like that where the people who ultimately a song was about, like they were able to secure it after the fact because I did it randomly. I wanted to be fair.

And that's why I did random. But yeah, they own it. They own it now. It would be really interesting strategy to make a bunch of songs about a bunch of DAOs. And then allow the DAOs to bid for the songs, perhaps even in their native token. So they don't actually have to keep or give up any of their USC or ether. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then your Dow has just shares of all the other Daos and just buy it just because you sang a song about them.

They kind of have to buy it at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and there's, you know, I did a song about Constitution Dow when that was a thing. I've done, yeah, I've done a bunch of, I've already done a bunch of Dow songs. I have a bunch of, like, collabs lined up with, with NFT projects that I love. I should probably do some more Dow-aligned things. We could do a bankless one. Do you allow your songs to be commissioned?

by projects? So that is something that I've not explored in this new setup because because of the auction nature of the thing. Basically, there's been a few times now in the last couple weeks, people have come to me. And I said, well, listen, I can't let you pay me directly. It needs to go to the Dow. Because if I do it, I'm going to make it. I could do a song outside of Song a day.

You know, could be like a separate song. Don't really want to do that. Don't really have time to do that. So it would have to be a song-a-day song. And so it's like, you're just going to, you're just going to have to, like, bid on it and just hope that no one's bidding against you. And that's fine. And then I'd be like, I'd be like, I guess what I would probably say is like, you know, bid at least like two-eth or something. And then, and then, like, then I'll just, I'll do the song for you and you just have to promise that you're going to bid at least two-eath.

And then that's, and that's probably how I would do it now if I was going to do that. Yeah, and I'm open to that. I've done a lot of commissions over the years, you know, a ton. That's part of how I made my living. And so as long as it's like something that I don't totally hate, I'd probably do it. Have any community members from the Dow stepped up to wear a leadership hat? Yes, they have. It's been super exciting.

My friend Boris, who was like the first person to introduce me to crypto, is in the Dow. he's been helping a ton. I have a couple like mods that I picked out and they have like a couple of them have like some really good technical skill

and they've been like just taking the lead on this voting thing which is like really helpful because it's a it's a it's a conundrum. It's like a there's a lot of like things to solve.

And that's like the most pressing thing right now is getting voting up and running because we can't do anything until we can vote. And yeah, it's been amazing. It's, it's been so cool to see that happen and really gratifying.

Well, Jonathan, if listeners want to go join your DAO or just find out more about what you're up to, where's where they go? Yeah, come to songaday. Dot world. That's the place where every day right there on the front page, the song is auctioned off. Wait, so it's not called Songadau? No, it's songaday. dot world. We also have songadow.org, which is our discourse.

place. All right. So that name is somewhere. Okay, I'm glad about that. Yeah, yeah. Songadau.org. But to see the daily song, you go to songaday. Dot world where you can link to the OpenC.

Because of all the DGens, the songs are like way below mint. So you can get some for real cheap, real cheap right now. And yeah. Yeah, that's the place to go. I also want to plug this hat. I'm currently selling this hat. You have seven, let's see, whenever this goes like, this is going to go live when, like roughly.

So you have five days to order this hat. We'll put the link in the show notes. The songs hat. It doesn't give you anything other than a really cool is a hat that says songs on it. And so you can support your love of songs with this hat. Jonathan, if there's one lesson that you've learned that you wish more people had learned in their lives, what would it be? Sucking at something is the first.

step to being kind of good at something. That's a quote from Adventure Time, right? You got it. Yeah. That's one of the most wise things that anyone has ever spoken. Jake the dog. And who in the world really needs to hear that? What cohort of individuals?

I mean, anyone that wants to do anything. I mean, like, there's no, there's no. there's no like anything that you're trying to do and and and I have to tell myself this constantly too about things that I want to learn like anything that you've been thinking about like oh I would like to write songs or oh I would like to write a novel or oh I'd like to you know make podcasts or oh I should do blog posts on this or oh I want to do Twitter threads like you know just sucking at something is really the first step you have to go through the sucking it and And it never really stops, but you just have to sort of accept the sucking sometimes.

The LDR of this episode, you've got to accept the sucking. That's it. Awesome. Roll credits. Roll credits. There we go. Jonathan, thank you for coming on this episode of Player Zero. Thank you.

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