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Background
Mint Season 3 episode 5 welcomes music producer and artist Daniel Allan.
In this episode, we talk about:
- 0:00 – Intro
- 2:55 – Getting Started in Web 3.0
- 7:16 – The Future of Artist Management
- 12:37 – Overstimulated
- 19:55 – Selling out in 12 Hours
- 24:30 – Getting the Fans Involved
- 25:51 – Launching on Party Bid
- 34:09 – Outro
…and so much more.
Show Notes
Pre-save song 1 ‘Say What You Want’ from his EP ‘Overstimulated’ debuting Friday! https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/danielallandeegan1/say-what-you-want
Check out his Mirror campaign that raised 50 ETH in less than 12 hours: https://danielallan.mirror.xyz/crowdfunds/0x18f623e397EF28F1A5a094840f7F6f5587828b94
Thank you to Season 3’s NFT sponsors!
1. Coinvise – https://coinvise.co/
2. POAP – https://poap.xyz/
3. Socialstack – https://socialstack.co/
Interested in becoming an NFT sponsor? Get in touch here!
Intro
Mr. Daniel Allan, welcome to Mint. How are you doing, man?
I’m good, man. Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being on. Let’s jump right in. You made a lot of noise on Twitter in the last couple of weeks. First off, congratulations on launching your first crypto project overstimulated, which is based off an EP that you’re releasing soon, but before we even go into that, tell me about yourself. Who the hell are you? What should people know about you? We’ll start there. Take it away.
For sure, man. Yeah. So I am Daniel. I’m from Louisville, Kentucky originally. My family is from Kiev Ukraine, former Soviet union. So, shout out to them. But yeah, I had a pretty musical upbringing for the most part. In some senses, I think both of my parents were in music, like my mom’s degree is in musicology, and then my dad was in bands growing up. So I had always seen it my whole life, but I kind of did the route where I took piano lessons as a kid, and was kind of forced into them. Like I had a super Russian piano teacher, and I remember she would take her thumb and put it into my back for good posture, and I never really had a choice of what kind of music I could play. So, I kind of fell out of love with music I think in a lot of ways when I was a kid. And then funnily enough, I ended up playing tennis. That was my way out of doing music. So I took tennis really seriously, and when I was like 15 or 16, I kind of started to get a little bit burnt out on that. So music actually became my outlet in general. So yeah.
Are your parents musicians?
Yeah. My mom is. In fact, when I took piano lessons, I was really bad at reading music, but my mom could read music like none other. So to get ready for recitals, I would just ask her to play what I was supposed to play and I would just memorize it as she played it. And yeah, my dad grew up in bands and was super cool. I mean, he ended up being like a scientist essentially, but it was more like throughout high school. My mom did pursue it a little bit more seriously. So I grew up like having it around me for sure.
Got it. And siblings, do you have any siblings?
Yes. I have one older brother whose name is max.
So are they musical as well?
No, he is creative though. For a long time he was working on cinematography and stuff.
Got it. Okay. So you’re a musician at heart, super talented. And how many instruments do you play?
Just piano and I’m really good at computer stuff.
Do you find that a lot of musicians nowadays tend to have very dual skills between the tech side and the musicianship?
Yeah. So I think that, just generally, things in the boxes we call it, which are like, just being on the computer has opened a lot of doors for people who maybe don’t have as much of a standard musical background. I think that for someone like me, I know enough piano to write songs, but I definitely don’t consider myself a pianist. However, I think that having this many resources, I use Ableton and things like splice, the accessibility to people becoming artists and them becoming producers is a lot easier. So I think that there are multiple types of producers. I think that there are people who maybe approach things from the technical side a little bit more and kind of just strictly stick in the box, kind of like myself. And there are people who literally will just use their computer as a way to record their instrumentation. But I think that it’s kind of like the best time right now to be a producer.
Getting Started in Web 3.0
You know, I wanted to have you on because one, full disclosure I bought into your Overstimulated project on mirror for everybody that’s listening. And the second thing is, everybody has a unique journey into crypto, into web three. What was yours? And as a follow up, what were you like before crypto?
Hm. Okay. So let me start with the first question. So the way that I got into Crypto was through my friend Cooper, Cooper Turley, who’s like, he was a project manager on Overstimulated and he’s like now become one of my closest friends. But, the way that he and I met actually, I was doing a show in March or April. It was low key. It was like still very much at the height of COVID, and I did a show in my friend’s backyard in Sherman Oaks. I did two parts of the show. So the first part was me playing music that was already coming out, but then the second half of the show was me playing seven or eight, just totally unreleased songs. And I invited a bunch of music industry A&Rs, friends, things like that. And after the show they had all come up to me and they were like, “oh man, we’re really stoked on your new music blah, blah, blah. Like let’s, let’s keep the conversation going”. And one of the other people that came up to me was Cooper, and he kind of mentioned, “Hey man, if there’s ever a way that I can help you put out music, then you know, I’m happy to have that conversation with you. So a month passed, and I had advanced in some of the discussions with various labels and whatnot. I just wasn’t a proponent of some of the deals that were on the table to be blunt, and so I revisited the conversation with Cooper and I was like, “Hey man, you know, I’ve kind of shopped these around a little bit. I haven’t really found anything that I’m super stoked on. Why don’t we talk a little bit about, you know, you think this can work”. And from that point on, he was like, my first steps were minting on catalogs. So I did my first series. It was called the drifter series, where I would go to a random location, take a disposable camera and mint NFTs like that. Just with audio and the cover art, and I entered those on catalog. That was definitely my first foray into it. Then after that, I spent three months kind of in discord servers and individually talking to people on Twitter and whatnot. But the second question that you asked, what was I like before web three. So I moved to LA in January of 2020. When I was in school, I was very much doing music with school on the side, rather than the school with music on the side. So every summer, I wasn’t seeking out any internships or anything traditional like that. I would just be here, live on my friend’s couch, and just try to do as many sessions as I could. So when I moved in January of 2020, I definitely had the privilege in a lot of ways to wave the full-time musician flag. But, by the same token, It wasn’t very glamorous. I think that I had done some small deals and whatnot, but primarily I was doing a lot of things that I wasn’t passionate about. Because in my mind I was like, oh man, if I can just weather this storm of being here and doing it, then eventually something will figure itself out. But I think that the nature of it was really, I was just doing a lot of mix work, which mixing is really important to me. I understand the technicalities of it. I just wasn’t necessarily as passionate about it as I am about just creating music in general. So, I think in some ways I was happy that I was in LA and doing it, but I think at the same time, I thought that there was a lot more out there. So kind of the intersection of my music career and then web three was like a perfect fit.
So when you got into Web 3.0 first,, you just mentioned that there was a lot more out there. What does Web 3.0 have that kind of possesses more out there? What did you come across that you’re like, “shit, like, this is where I belong.” This is what I need to be doing. This is where my focus needs to be?
Sure. Well, I think the first thing that stands out is definitely, there’s a very big sense of community. I think that people throw that word out a lot, but one thing that I kind of realized early on was , If I’m to put out music, I really don’t have a direct way of talking to fans. Like I can post something on Instagram and someone can like, and comment on it. I can put out a tweet and someone can, you know, maybe respond or like it or retweet it, but Web 3.0 and discord, I mean, I know Discord is typically a web platform, but so much of Web 3.0 lives on discord. And that was the first way that I could directly talk to people who care about me and care about my music. And that was something that Web 3.0 aside, didn’t really exist, you know? And Web 3.0 was kind of what got me into discord in general. I think another thing was, when I started my mirror crowdfund, I had like 200 Twitter followers or 300 Twitter followers. Like Blau, who was so incredible for what he did, was already somewhat established as an artist, very established. For me, I was just at ground zero for the most part, and for people to really take a risk on me and to believe in me, that was something that I don’t think could have happened in a Web 2.0 world.
So interesting. Such a unique insight coming from someone who is as rounded as you, and then comparing it to someone like, wow, you killed the game. You set the example for many artists, and I’d even argue one of the core reasons why we saw a lot of the snowball effect in March. And I think it’s so cool. You as a musician, what are the details? You’re not signed to a label, you’re independent, right?
Not right now.
The Future of Artist Management
Oh, really? Okay. I feel you’re gonna get a lot of DMs after this now. So you’re independent. You don’t have a manager. It’s just you and your creative team, and pieces of individuals from Web 3.0, from crypto, et cetera. Do you think that’s the future of how artists are going to be organizing?
I mean, to be honest, I’ve had this conversation a few times with friends because we’ve all talked about management and things of that nature, and without getting too much into management, I think that probably. Because, with management, I think that it’s kind of a tall ask unless someone is already in Web 3.0 to kind of pursue that in general. My kind of philosophy with this is pretty entrepreneurial. I just kind of find people that are really good at what they do and I give them the keys and I’m just like, this is your thing, you know? Cooper, for example, with him, I was just like, yo dude, anything that is like super logistics, super tokenomics wise, I’m going to lean on you for, but nothing else. For Lisa, my creative director, girl of the year. I’m just like, dude, like everything creative, the way that we want this to look , that’s you. For me, I want to focus on two things and that’s making music and being as involved in the community as possible. Those are the two things that are coming from me. I have Henry, my community manager, I have Maria who’s in charge of finance and budgeting on things, but generally speaking, I really like how this is working. I think that I just trust everyone who’s involved, you know? And I don’t think that there are any hidden motives, you know?
So for those who aren’t familiar with your music, can you talk a little bit about your genre?
Yeah, for sure. I think that the music that I have out is somewhere between that electronic and pop realm. I think that with overstimulated, I am taking a little bit of a turn. I think that I’ve always enjoyed working in a hip hop space, enjoy the more electronic side of things. So I think that moving forward, a lot of my music is definitely going to be electronic without a doubt, but has more Indy and hip hop influence. But yeah, I think that’s the genre. I mean, when I’m asked that at a party, that’s my answer.
And when people ask you some of your biggest inspirations that led you to pushing out your most recent pieces, what do you fall back on?
Yeah, for sure. I think actually, recently, I think Kanye west. I have a picture of him right over here, but I think for better or worse, like politics aside, I think that he’s an incredible creator and an incredible musician. And I think that Chicago, I’m from Louisville, Kentucky, but my brother moved to Chicago when I was a kid, he’s 15 years older than me. So Chicago was very much my city growing up. I mean, it was the first time I went to a music festival and, you know, it was really the first downtown that I had ever seen, the first skyline I’d ever seen. So I think there are a lot of reasons that I resonated with him and his music. I think that Flume is like the first artists that I’ve ever seen live, and that definitely changed my shit up for sure. But yeah, he was definitely one of the first artists that I saw live and I was like, wow, that’s really cool. So I would say, primarily, those two are in the conversation of people that inspire me the most, but there’s so many others I can think of.
All right. Let’s jump into the Web 3.0 side more. And specifically, focusing more on you as an independent artist and using cryptocurrency to own your creator economy, as people like to say. And doing so in a way where you’re building your own team, that each individual in that team specializes in their own respect, giving them the autonomy to do what they do best. And you focus on the music, this person, focuses on the crypto, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When you were building this team out, when you’re preparing for your mirror posts, when you were about to go live and literally getting into the trenches of discord, how was that process like getting started, and what were some of your biggest fears, if any, or concerns that you had getting started?
I mean, I generally think if you have fears, you are NGMI. I think that generally speaking, you have to just kind of go all in on it and send it. Because for me, like my worst case scenario here was I put out an EP that maybe has like a thousand or a couple thousand dollars into it, and I could make that work. That was my worst case scenario, but my best case scenario is kind of a small part in my changing the narrative and the music discussion. I think, as you mentioned, I was definitely in the trenches and I think that was probably the scariest part. In full disclosure guys, I’m in the scheme of things, a noob. I have fundamental understandings of a lot of things in the Web 3.0 space, but I’ve had to lean on a lot of my friends for advice. But I think the hardest part of all of that early on was like finding the people that weren’t embarrassed to answer my questions. I’ve had this conversation with Cooper before. When I was first starting out in music, all of my friends stuck with me, so we could send each other stuff and we weren’t embarrassed to be bad. And we weren’t embarrassed to send bad music together because we knew that we were all on that level. When I had first started out in this Web 3.0 world, which hasn’t been too long, it was really intimidating to find people that were also noobs like me. So what I did in building out my team was kind of just being as transparent as possible and asking stupid questions. For every 10 questions that I would ask in random discord servers, like maybe one or two people would get back to you, but those people are my friends now and people that I can really rely on. And so, I think that kind of the biggest fear here was just being afraid of sounding like a noob, but I think as I joined, I was fortunate enough to get in FWB early, and obviously like that’s one of the best platforms to kind of openly ask questions, you know? And I think finding those communities early on, as soon as I did that, was kind of the catalyst where I was , okay, I can really get moving on this.
I think the hardest thing to do is to get to that mentality where you feel comfortable feeling like a noob. Feeling like you know nothing, and not being scared to ask random people, random questions. And being okay with being the dumbest person in the room, because that’s part of growth. That’s part of learning something new, it’s part of experimentation. So I think you’re spot on with that.
Sorry, just one note. I hope that I’m the dumbest person in the room for the rest of my life. Like that’s the best case scenario, because then you can learn from everyone.
Overstimulated
That’s spot on. Let’s talk about Overstimulated. The reason why I have you here and also we’ll get into the party bid stuff that you’re messing with too, which is super, super exciting. But for starters, overstimulated, the EP. The monumental post, making a hundred K in one hour, 20 ETH in one hour, and filling your crowd fund, in what about 24 hours? Less than 24 hours. 12 hours. Take me from, start to finish. What is overstimulated? What is over stim? How did that come to fruition?
All right. So I’m going to go back just really quickly to the Cooper story. I had started mentioning on catalog because I wanted autonomy in the NFT space. What minting on catalog did for me, was it kind of showed me the super bare essentials. I set up my Metamask, I got on Uniswap, you know, just very simple stuff. And after about a month of posting on catalog, and people, gauging some sort of interest and it’s like my art and like what I’m working on. When I went back to Cooper, this was about may, and I was like, “okay, man, I am ready to drop.” Like the songs are all ready, let’s send it. And he was like, “absolutely not. You have to spend months in the community.” So for three months, really all I did was talk to people and say hello. And it was stuff behind the scenes. It was like most of my days were on Twitter and discord reaching out to people individually. So in terms of overstimulated, after I had kind, I think, paid my due diligence in that sense, when we were ready to go, I mean, there were a lot of Setbacks. I mean, we had to find artwork people. We had to find canvas people and, you know, we had to make sure that the distribution was set. But in terms of how it came together, I think that Cooper kind of had assigned things to me. He was like, look, I can take care of like the tokenomics and things of that nature so long as you write a story, and for me, I’ve been a passionate music maker for all my life, and I’ve enjoyed writing as well, but even then, I felt a lot of pressure to make sure that I really got the story right. Because for me, like I said, this was the first time outside of, I guess, blogging like a big artist, like a small artist like myself was going to do something like this. I mean, if you want me to talk more about what overstimulated is for people who don’t know I’m happy to do that.
I want you to take me from a to Z. So keep on going where you’re going, because I think that’s also a good point to bring up the whole comparison to Blau again. But continue.
Yeah. So, I mean, I think that for me, the first thing that we had to kind of go through was the logistics. I think that most major label deals are like an 80 20 split. For me, I was like, okay, look, I’m just going to give up 50% of my artists share, and I just want to gauge the interest to see who’s down. Maybe the people who I’ve spoken to over the past few months are interested. Maybe there are other people in the project management network or whatever the case may be. Maybe there’s some people in FWB. I think that a lot of the way that these things work sometimes is like, here’s a sum of money, whether it’s a label or whatever the case may be, and then we want you to give us an album down the line. Some people have the album ready, some people don’t. For me, it was like I had the music ready to go. I think that the craziest thing of all of this is that people believed in the project without hearing the music. I think that’s pretty crazy to me.
Let’s pause there. They believed in the project, they believed in you without actually hearing the music. They might have searched you up on Spotify and saw over a million streams on this one song, and you’re active, you’re publishing stuff. So you have some type of presence, but people believed in you and the idea of the model that you presented to the crypto world, right? Continue on that.
And I think that that’s something that I was a little bit scared of at first, because in some of my preliminary meetings, I was like, man, I want people to really mess with the music. And I think Cooper just kind of reassured me on it and he’s like, trust me. If they believe in you, then when the music comes out, it’s only going to be a cherry on top. So, I thought of some artists for example, and one artist that came to mind is Lil Yachty, right? A lot of people just really like him as a person, music aside, cause he just does cool shit. He has a cool personality and he’s just a fun guy to be around. Or even like Omer Fedi, right? A lot of people just know that he’s the super sick energy in a room, and then when his music comes out, it obviously speaks for itself, but it’s just like a cherry on top of him being a cool person, you know? So for me, I kind of wanted to reverse engineer it that way as well, where I was like, look like I’m trying something totally new, here’s the story. I have 200 Twitter followers. And if you guys believe in this, I promise that the music will be worth it, you know? And because to me, this is definitely ,without a doubt, my best body of work. I’m incredibly, incredibly proud of it, and that’s why the risk was so big to me early on, because I was like, man, I don’t want to jeopardize the music doing well. This is like me, my thought process, like six months ago, really. But I was like, man, I don’t want to jeopardize the music doing well on traditional metrics because I’m so immensely proud of it. But I just tried to explain that in the post. I tried to like, bring that emotion over into it and hoped that people bought into it.
And one thing that you brought up that cannot go looked over is that beginning component of spending time in crypto, and being in the trenches of all these different collector communities, discord communities, et cetera. So walk me through those first three months too. I remember when we were talking behind the scenes, you’re like, that was the most critical thing that I feel like spiraled the success of overstep. And by the way, I think that’s something that people look over and they’re like, okay, I’ll draft your post. I have this idea. I’ll put it out there. Let’s get the money, you know? But, it’s not like that.
I think it’s not like that because it’s not glamorous. Like I said, I came to Cooper, and I said the music is ready, and he was like, you’re not even close. That three-month window. I had put out music once a month for 15 months. And someone who I barely knew came up to me, Cooper, and he was like, yo dude, you have to focus on this. Like you have to go all in. So for a three month period, all I was doing was, one figuring out what discord was cause I had no reference point for that, two, figuring out the servers and just doing my research on Twitter. I would say 10 hours of my day, probably like 8 to 10 hours of my day was individual outreach. I think that some people had tried doing the crowdfund or similar things to it, and I think that that’s the missing component, that because it’s not something that’s advertised. It’s not sexy or cool to get laughed at for asking stupid questions for like six or seven hours out of your day. But as soon as I made my first friend there, early on, was Jeremy Stern, who’s one of the guys on the dev team at catalog. And he was down to help me, and then Brett shear who bought some of my first early NFTs. As soon as I met those people, they were just down to help me, and these are people who were very knowledgeable in the space. Like they work on life-changing platforms or with super prominent investors. When they were down to help me, then that just gave me all the confidence thatI needed. Just the first and second friends. So then when I was getting all those nos for three months, it was no biggie to me. Cause I was like, I know there’s another Jeremy and another Brett out there that are just down to help me down the line. And now I’m at a point where like, if I have a super specific question, I know which friends I can rely on, and that’s a pretty great place to be.
That’s awesome. I looked at the amount of collectors, if I recall, there were 87 exactly. I want to ask you this question, because I think new people coming to the space don’t realize the proportion between how many collectors, you know, versus how many are your friends. So for those who put a dollar where their mouth was and supported you, how many of those did you know and how many of those did you not know?
So I need to look at the list, but I would say it’s probably between 40 and 50% of the people I had spoken to in one way or another, and I think the rest was organic after it took off. I would say that’s where it’s at.
And did you get any legal help before?
Yeah, I mean, I had asked a lot of music industry friends, and just had asked a lot of my lawyer friends just like, is this okay? How do things look? But I never hired a lawyer to actually look at everything. It was more just asking me favors and just being like, yo, does this section make sense?
Selling out in 12 Hours
Can you walk me through your emotions at the first hour of seeing 20 ETH? What were you doing? Where were you? Like walk me through that day.
Funnily enough, I was at my friend Grady’s. Grady is also a musician who’s pretty involved in the space. It was me, him, and bloody white who is also super involved. Grady had just dropped an album yesterday and he was showing it to us. He wanted us to come in and listen to it, and I had heard it a few times cause he had sent it to me. So this was kind of my third time listening through, and I think the weird thing about the fund is we dropped it at a weird hour. Like me and Cooper went back and forth on when to do it. We were going to do it the next day. Actually the morning of when we were doing it on mirror, we were going to drop it at 11:00 AM. The way that it was structured was there were the three categories, silver, gold platinum, and then there was one winner. Then we realized that you have to do a podium and then you have to have a big pool for all the other bidders, but you can’t have one winner. So we needed two additional NFTs made that day. So because we had the NFTs for silver, platinum, gold, and winner, but we had to make two more. So shout out to Metsa, because he made the other two podium NFTs that day. He sent it to me after he got off work because he has a full-time job, and it was like 7:00 or 8:00 PM and we were still making edits to it after months of staring at this stuff. I think it was 9:00 or 10:00 PM, something like that in the evening when we had to put it up. So I was in the other room, and I had clicked submit, published this crowdfund. I was on FaceTime with Cooper, had published this crowdfund, and then I sent the link to my phone just to make sure that it worked. And it was at 1 ETH. Just from sending it to my phone. Cause I had published, hit the tweetstorm, texted it to myself, and checked and it was at 1 ETH. I was like, okay, crazy, whatever. So I go and I sit down and Grady’s gonna show us his album, and I was like, yo, I just published it, now I can chill out, relax. But of course, I have the urge to check because I saw that I texted it to myself and it was at 1 ETH. He plays the first song out. It’s like two minutes long, and I check it. It’s at 3 ETH. I show bloody, Lucas sitting next to me was like, “yo, this is crazy.” And the album just keeps going, and Grady is just kind of vibing out. And he just looked back at me, and my eyes were just huge because it was like 3 ETH , and then it was like 7 ETH, and then it was like 10 ETH. I’m just like sitting here, and Lucas was just like, “yo, this is nuts.” Then I go on Instagram and everyone’s posting about me on Instagram. And then I go on Twitter and everyone’s talking about me on Twitter. And this is all within like the 40 minutes or however long Grady’s album is. By the end of the album, it was maybe 15, 16, Ether or something, and I’m just sitting there. That’s when Grady was like, “oh man, tell me more about what you’re doing.” That night it was just a blur because I felt like everyone in my life called me, you know? I stayed up just talking to people. Everyone’s asking questions. Everyone’s like, “oh, how did you do this?” Yeah, dude, it was a trip. That’s the way that it all happened. I remember the feeling very well. I texted my parents. It was a proud moment.
So today’s Saturday, October 16th. This is the day we’re recording. Overstim crowdfund finished what, september 28th? What has the progress been like so far? What has went down? Talk to us. As a collector, and as others who are listening. Because in that mirror post and I’ll link it into the show notes, you go very detailed into what are you spending my money on, how long the timeline’s going to be from when you guys are actually going to see the EP, et cetera.
So right now we’re six days out from the first single, which is coming out October 22nd. So the way that it’s set up is there are three singles. Say what you want with Deegan is out October 22nd, feel like that with Idarose is out November 12th, too close with bloody white is out December 3rd, and the project is out January 7th. I think so far, what we’ve done is I have all of the artworks ready for every project. I’m still working on finalizing the visualizers for it, and I just got someone on PR. So we’re finalizing, just the general marketing push and things of that nature. I think that for me, the music part to me is pretty standard. I’ve always understood how the distribution has worked. I’ve been in music, I think, for a few years now. I think that to me, the biggest learning curve and the things that I’m personally focused on the most is making sure that I’m being active and to kind of hold the attention of everyone. So I’m just being as active as I can on Twitter and really, really, really hyper-focused on the discord community. For the first time in my life, I have this responsibility to 87 people. I don’t necessarily like to think of them as shareholders because I think that that’s a little bit too proper for the scenario, but even some people that believed in me and I kind of have this duty to be like, “yo, like I’m working my ass off.” So for me, I’m trying to just live on the discord and I’m trying to make that as cool as I can and make sure that really every single part of the project, people feel like they got their money’s worth for essentially, you know? So yeah, for me, that’s about where it’s at. It’s really exciting. I mean, there is definitely this awkward buffer period of like a month, from the fund ending to the first song coming out. So it’s kind of a relief that I can finally be like, “yo, here’s the package and it’s coming soon.” So we’re making really good strides and I’m really excited about it. I’m doing an Overstim call in like 15 minutes.
Getting the Fans Involved
And before we pivot to this new project that you’re working on as well, while you’re pushing this project, me being a collector, 86 other people in the discord being collectors and contributors, do you imagine including them in the creative process? For example, do a live stream in a discord and be like, “yo, this is track number three what do you guys think? Should this snare be on it, it or that snare? Do you imagine yourself doing stuff like that?
I mean, I think for overstimulated, I already have the masters for it, but I think that in general it goes beyond overstimulated. And I think that there’s still plenty of creative ways for people to get involved. Like on the artwork, front on the visualizer front, especially. Like there’s a drop that I’m going to do in there that’s like, okay, here are artists, here are people that I want to work with, I want y’all’s thoughts. I think that that’s definitely the development of what I want in my career. I essentially want to have all the people backing me and all the patrons would be as involved in the creative process as possible. Like I want to send 30 demos and be like, which of these are the sickest? Let’s do a poll. Like, do you guys have any thoughts on who this can sound like? Who could be on this song? The big picture thing is to have the patrons involved in the creative process. A hundred percent.
Launching on Party Bid
I think that’s the way to go. I really think so. Let’s pivot for a minute. Party bid. So catalog, party bid, new songs that you spun out of nowhere, and you just published and tokenized and spent what you told me behind the scenes, like $5k uploading and making sure they’re on chain. What is going on there? You published a tweet storm too a couple of days ago. Walk me through that, and how does that differ from Overstimultated?
So kind of to preface that, overstimulated is my number one priority. I think that it’s definitely the biggest project that I’m working on. It’s the one that means the most to me. It’s all of my music. I think at the same time, and I got this advice early on, I think that a lot of people think a lot in this space and don’t necessarily do as much, and I’m for better or worse, just an executor at heart. So I just like, if I have an idea, just acting on it, and if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I think that generally speaking, like everything I’m doing, hopefully will lead back to Overstim because I’m giving a percentage of all of my sales from NFTs back into Overstim. So, the project that I just dropped was more of like a passion project to drive eyes back into it, but generally it’s called Idlewild cause we did it in Idlewild. We as me, bloody white, and my creative director, Lisa. And so bloody and I guess this is my first time publicly saying this, but we’re starting a band next year called pollen. It’s going to be all after overstimulated comes out. Totally separate thing, but we wanted to do a soft debut to kind of get ingratiated into the Web 3.0 world in general. So, in 36 hours we did five songs together. Lisa did all of the artwork for it. It’s probably, I think, the coolest shit that I’ve put out on catalog in terms of, definitely height, like from an artistic and musical perspective. I think that it was the first music that I’ve been able to put out since the whole crowd fund has happened, which has obviously been very creatively liberating for me. So, yeah, these five songs. We threw them into a project and we wanted to kind of act quick on it because Overstim is coming out next Friday, and that’s what my week is about. But yeah, I’ve never done party bids before. I wanted to experiment with that. So all five of the songs are up on catalog using their new spaces feature, which I wanted to experiment with, and there was a party that was set up for every single.
For those who don’t know what party it is, give us a quick recap, and why is it so critical to music?
Yeah, I think that party bid is sick. This is my first time using it, but I think it’s critical because to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong, I think that you can contribute any amount of ETH and then you essentially just own a percentage of that NFT. Typically I think that their biggest one was a zombie punk, which was like 3.5 million USD, but it’s like people can contribute X amount and just own X amount of the NFT. I think that the thing about my crowd fund is I think the lowest contributor was 0.05 ETH, which is what like $170 bucks give or take. To some people, I mean, I think that is a lot of money in general, but what if someone wants to contribute with like 30 or 50 ETH on a smaller scale? That’s why I think part of it is really interesting, and the other thing about it is it definitely creates community because it’s like, oh, like, I feel like I am involved in this regardless of my stake. It’s not necessarily a competition or whatever, or about the money per se. It’s just about creating a group. Some are owners of a crypto punk. So I think that’s what’s really interesting about party bid and why I’m super keen on experimenting with it.
Just to add more context for creators who are listening, part bid is basically a way for you to collectively bid on an asset that you want to own together. So you basically have an asset, there’s a shared link, you access that link, and then if the community reaches a threshold of what they want to purchase, then collectively split that asset. So if it’s an NFT, it’s fragmented and split it to everybody that bid on it. So in the use case of a song, you crowd fund the success of an NFT from even your micro collectors, your macro collectors, or like everyday fans, right? That’s the inspiration, from what I understand, right?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I just want everyone to feel involved, even if they don’t have the financial leverage of a whale, you know?
And how is that going so far?
I mean, I need to promote it more for sure. Like I said, it was definitely a quick window of experimentation, but I’ve had people hitting me up about it, which I think is super encouraging. I want to talk about how it’s like relating it’s Overstim a little bit more because I don’t want anyone to be confused. My portion of sales on this is going to go back into the Overstim treasury. This was like more of a passion project for me.
I think that’s important because that was my next question. How do the two tie together? Also behind the scenes, when we met up yesterday, I was like, it all works together. It’s all tied together. And you take the Gary V approach. Gary V tells people to just post shit. Just post content. Nobody cares. Post post, post, post, post. You know, you’re taking that approach.
Yeah, dude, it’s just like people remember the W’s, you know? That’s kind of my approach here. Like have I had NFTs not sell on catalog? Sure. Have I had things to do well? Of course. When I was in college, I did this thing where every single day for my entire career in college, I sent out five emails to music industry people a day, weekends included. So the way that the breakdown was, it was 35 emails a week, five of them would respond, three of them would respond with a no, one would re would respond with a maybe I’ll get back to you, and one would respond with a yes. And over the course of the year, that’s 52 new people and new approaches that are involved, but you can’t find who that one in 52 is if you don’t send the other 35. So for me, like I said man, this is so much of the wild west right now that I am just going all in on experimentation in general. So I think that in a way they all tie into Daniel Allen, like myself as a project, whether it’s Overstim or it’s not. It was also kind of the last thing that I’m going to be doing before Overstim in general, so it’s just something that I wanted to get out there and not wait until later. Because my next few months are really just, you know, 110% focused on Overstim.
That’s awesome. Before I let you go, I want to ask you a little more technical questions for anybody else that wants to follow your footsteps, and is exploring this independent route of crowdfunding success, successful project album, whatever may be and building a team around it. So for starters, how do you go about pricing a song? What goes into that? How do you determine if something is like $100k a song or like one $1k? How do you feel about it?
Are you talking about a catalog post or for a mirror crowd fund?
For example, like a catalog post.
So a catalog post, the thing about digital assets is, the value is only created by the creators. Like before that, a value doesn’t necessarily exist, so it’s kind of up on the onus of the creator to decide. So if you throw something up on catalog, which I would encourage people to do, you just need 0.05, ETH in gas, maybe with how things are right now, 0.07 ETH. You don’t even have to set up an auction. People can just throw offers at you. My first NFTs were selling for like 0.2 ETH and I was so grateful that anyone was even interested in doing that. So I think that for artists who are looking to get into it, you’d have to invest like a couple of hundred bucks to cover your gas fees, but you’d be surprised because catalog is still very early on, even though it’s starting to gain a lot more traction. You could just put it up and see what offers come at you. Because at first I also had no idea what to price mine at. I only decided on pricing for the crowdfund and things of that nature, after I found out that there was interest in general, but any new artists can just post on there once they got onto the platform.
And how much does it cost to put something like Overstim together?
I mean, are you referring to putting the project out?
The project has variable costs depending on the artist, depending on the project. I’m talking from the point of view, the project is ready now, let’s bring it on chain, mint it, start a mirror campaign and go through that process.
Dude, I think the main thing was like 0.1 or 0.15 ETH. Like it wasn’t crazy. Like I said, the kind of crux of all of this was my individual reaching out to people and just making sure that there was a really dope story behind it because the price of putting it up wasn’t too crazy. I don’t think it was that heavy of an on-chain lift because it’s not like I was uploading the actual WAV files. All I was uploading was a document.
I love it, man. What an example to future creators, future musicians. What an exciting time to be in the space, throw shit at the fans, see what sticks, and have success come from that as well.
One note I just want to give to every creator is like, you guys are early. You can play outside of the rules and kind of make your own job description and do it your own way. I know that it takes a leap of faith, not to be cliche, until you jump your parachute won’t open, you know what I mean? So you should definitely go all in on it and just see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and you can go back to trying your own thing. But I think that it’s such an exciting time. For me, after my crowd fund, the money was cool, but the coolest part was the 250 plus artists that have reached out and were like, “man, I want to try this, like, I feel like there’s a new way now.” That way exists if you really just put time and effort into it, and I don’t think that it takes a super smart person. I just think it takes someone that is down to experiment and down to try things out, because there’s definitely a way that isn’t the traditional label that owns your masters and you just kind of see what happens.
Outro
I think that’s a perfect place to end off. Daniel, you’re the man, bro. Where can we find you? Where can we learn more about you and your upcoming EP? Shill yourself. Shout it out.
So definitely join my discord. I’m sure we’ll find a way to link that in here, but on Twitter, it’s @imdanielallan. I’m on Instagram as Daniel Allen music. And yeah, I think that hits everything. If you want to look on my mirror posts, it’s DanAllan.mirror.xyz. Carpet.
Perfect. And we’ll have you again soon, after the EP comes out, and we’ll do recaps every now and then kind of following your career, following your journey in Web 3.0. Bro, I appreciate you being on. Much success, you’re going to kill it obviously, but we’ll get you next time peace.
Awesome. Thank you for having me brother.