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Background
Mint Season 4 episode 7 welcomes the Overstimulated duo Daniel Allan and Henry Chatfield who are setting the example for how a music creator DAO should look and feel. Here’s an end-to-end recap of their journey, analyzing the last three months of their work where we break down October’s crowdfund as showcased in a previous episode and the day-to-day of bringing this on-chain EP to life.
In this episode, we discuss:
- 00:44 – Intro
- 05:26 – Artist Management/Community Management
- 09:56 – Evolving Role of Record Labels
- 17:17 – Songwriting Camp
- 27:37 – Reinvestment of Earnings
- 34:22 – The Live Performance of Overstimulated
- 41:19 – What’s Next?
- 46:07 – Outro
…and so much more.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
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Intro
Let’s go guys. I’m excited to have this power duo on mint. I think you guys are the epitome of what communities will be like and feel like in the future specifically for music. So excited to kind of deep dive into the last few months, Daniel, I had you on in October. Okay. Right. When the mirror, the infamous mirror campaign launched and started all of this. How are you doing, man? How’s it been since October?
Daniel: Whew. I’m good, man. It’s definitely been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I think the at, at first it was tough to adjust. I remember when we spoke whether I was admitting it publicly or not, I realized that I was having a tough time trying to figure out how I was gonna recruit part of our stimulated what the roadmap is. And I think one thing that I’ve kind of learned since then is there is no roadmap and everyone’s kind of just building in public and trying to figure things out as they go. And I think once that kind of made itself clear to me, I was able to move forward a little bit more efficiently, but yeah, that first, that first month window of just being uncertain, not knowing what’s happening next was rough, but I think I’ve kind of entered a clear patch here, which has been nice.
How did you achieve that level of comfort of like uncertainty? Like how’d you get to that conclusion? Because I feel like when you raise that amount of money, you’re forced to kind of be like, okay guys, here’s the next plan? Here’s the roadmap. Here’s what we’re doing next, but you’ve actually embraced uncertainty. And I think that’s also made part of your project really unique.
Daniel: Yeah. Well, I remember like I was talking to a lot of people in my circle and just like telling them my complaints. And at the same time I had so many people that were hitting me up asking me for advice. And just like for the sake of transparency, I wanted to be like, yo, this isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Like one of the things that I did afterwards was I wrote a mirror post called sunshine and rainbows where I was saying like, web three is an amazing resource, but it’s not necessarily necessarily the silver bullet. Right? Like it’s not like it solves all your problems. There’s still a lot of things that I wanna accomplish. And a lot of things that, web three is taking away from it. And I just wanted to be real about it because instead of just calling all my friends in the middle of the night to talk about it just made sense to treat it like an open diary kind of, and use mirrors that platform
Makes a lot of sense. Henry, what about you how long have you been in crypto for, I usually do these formal intros. Like tell me about yourself. What were you doing before crypto? Where are you now? Let’s, let’s start that off with you. Because you’re new to the show, new to the podcast. You did the audience, give us a quick brief about yourself.
Henry: Yeah. I’ve been in the music industry for quite a while. Now, I would say about 10 years professionally, about twice that doing something in some capacity started out throwing a lot of shows. Then in college I really kicked into full gear, did a lot of shows, sort of unofficially and officially. After college I got into artist management and that was sort of my main thing. The last couple years I’ve had this really debilitating back injury and that’s actually sort of how I started getting an interest in web three and crypto is I just, I couldn’t do really much. And so I was lying on my back, just reading and slowly, the more I learned about it, the more interested I got I realized that there’s just this amazing way for it to potentially help music. And that’s when I really started going down the rabbit hole. So April of 2021 is when that started and every month I just get more interested, more excited, more inspired by it.
So how’d you come across Daniel’s project? Like what’s the story behind entering the world of overstimulated? Walk me through that.
Henry: So I think, I think Daniel’s project happened on September 27th towards the end of the month. I, at that time was deep down the rabbit hole. Twitter really was sort of my main source of information at least to of get started and find little snippets and little signals to go explore other stuff. So at the time I really think it was just good timing where Cooper or someone else said that it had just launched on Twitter. I was right there. I think, it sold out very quickly and I think I barely, barely got to be a backer. I think I was number 72 of 87. The project just really struck me as very unique and having a lot of potential for the future for artists. So I just DMed Daniel, like the next day or in the next couple days, I know that he had mentioned he was looking for a community manager and really, I just wanted to help in any way I could. And when I see artists doing creative, new things, it makes me wanna, just also try to support them. So, yeah.
Artist Management/Community Management
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. I like the duo that you guys have because something that I’ve been talking about on Mint a lot was I think the role of artist management, community management, and just this whole like centralized point of view of like bringing an artist to life to record labels is gonna decentralize and democratize. And it’s gonna feel more like a startup than it is a big corporation kind of thing. And I think you guys have really embraced that ethos, Daniel, when Henry hit you up. Okay. What were like some of the initial thoughts? What were some of the expectations you had to find the right candidate? Like, walk me through that.
Daniel: Yeah. I mean, I think along what I was saying earlier, there was really no roadmap. And so for me, what was most important was like, are you a good guy or girl. That was like, what was important to me because I don’t think that anyone, I’ve learned pretty quickly that if you are in web three and crypto and you say that, everything, it’s very likely that that is not true. I think it’s because no one knows. I remember like I’ve I went through a conversation where someone really prominent web through was talking and he’s been in it for like 15 years. And he was like on the grounds of the early work. And he was like, it’s the wild west. And after that moment, I kind of realized like, no one knows. And so when I was like doing these things for community management, like obviously I had seen some semblance of what a community manager looks like, because like I was building my first discord and I needed someone to help me do that. But like my first thing was just vibe honestly. I think that’s how a lot of people view, like their investment portfolios is like, oh, I’m just going by vibe of the founder or whatever. And for me, for community management, it was like, none of us know, so you’re just down to like help out be a good dude and that’s kind of what I went off.
So what does a day to day look like at $OVERSTIM internally, you guys actually build in public and you’re very vocal about that, but I feel like there’s some form of internal communication or organization structure that happens to build an open public community. Can you walk me through the day to day? And I want you guys to focus on this question like Daniel, how do you prioritize creating Henry? How do you prioritize community building? How do you guys not overlap each other between the two skills? Because I think this is gonna be an important example for other creators and musicians that want to enter down this route.
Daniel: Sure. So, I’ll start to answer this one then. Henry, I think you could pick it up a little bit from your perspective for me, I absolutely love web three, but what is most important to me and the vehicle for everything is creating? I find that even if everything is going amazingly well for me in the web three world, I’m not the happiest that I can be if I’m not making songs, because before all of this, before I had even made money, like I was making songs out of happiness, I was broke living in, like, I was splitting a bedroom in Hollywood with my friend paying $600 a month with like fugitives living downstairs, and I was so absolutely stoked that I got to like wake up and make music every day. And so for me, when that started exiting my life in a way, for the first time, in five, six years, when I got super into the web three rabbit hole, that’s when I had to reset be like. Henry and I never had a formal conversation because things were so up in the air of like, oh, well, let’s like, this is a problem. Let’s go fix that. This is a problem. Let’s go fix that. But I was like, wait, wait, I need to stop focusing on problems and start focusing again on music. So it kind of just became, I’m gonna be doing, I don’t do music at the sexiest hours. Because I have like responsibilities to like talk to web three and like just be in the space as much as I can and help other artists. So for me that just moved from 7:00 AM to noon. Like right before this, I did five hours of music stuff? So it’s maybe not the cutest hours to work on music, but it’s like, as long as I’m doing it, I found myself in a really good mood and happy, and then I can kind of actually have more energy to move into web three stuff. I think Henry can to talk a little bit more about the random FaceTimes that I give to him, but that’s Henry, if you wanna take that away, go for it.
Henry: Yeah. We really don’t have a very defined schedule, I would say. Outwardly I think the most important thing is trying to get back to anyone who reaches out to us as quickly as we can, which is something I’m still learning and finding cadence with. Daniel and I have had many late night FaceTime conversations. I think for me when we first got started there was first sort of like this initial, like, okay, what are we trying to do here? What sort of assets or infrastructure foundation do we need to have built and then that we can kind of rely on? And then from there we can kind of figure out and navigate. So the first thing was the discord. Qe came on board, we just sort of touched it up. We reorganized the channels a little bit , added some emojis to them. I had this like big Daniel will probably laugh, but like, I really like taking notes and my Google docs get out of control. Like all of a sudden we’ll be on a FaceTime and it’ll be like 17 pages long. Sort of my creative process. So I think that’s sort of like a lot of times when we come up with a new idea or working on something new, it will start off as just him and I talking on the phone or on FaceTime. Notes will happen. We’ll think about it, iterate, do another copy, iterate, and then just sort of keep, consistently working on it like that.
Evolving Role of Record Labels
Got it. I’m curious. Okay. And I’d love to hear your point of view. As more and more and more musicians enter crypto. I think at some point it may become like an artist’s market. I feel many times artists are going after record labels for getting their big break. Maybe it’s the other way around, depending on the artist, of course, but I feel like at some point more and more artists are going to be basically doing a startup mentality like you guys are right and operating very lean, issuing assets on chain, having their fans be collectors. And actually these record labels coming into the picture and like community management and capital as a value add. Just like Henry, like you’re the very lean version of that and myself and a bunch of other collectors and $OVERSTIM are like the banks kind of thing. Right. Do you imagine that kind of like progressing over time, do you imagine that the same model kind of sticking with what we’re seeing record labels doing right now? How do you kind of imagine this like unfolding in the future?
Daniel: Yeah. I mean, I may have like a little bit of a hot take on this, but I think that essentially like the, the record labels will just, I think that what they will provide more than anything is kind of the infrastructure rather than the funding. Okay. Because obviously like the bank, I think like you were saying is to have web three, is to just have like web three fans. I was talking to my friend verte about this, she’s absolutely brilliant when it comes to stuff like this and her thesis was, I think that what it’s gonna trend towards is having like 1000 true fans and having 30 to 50 web three fans. And then what I kind of built on top of that was taking like the web three fans using those as resources to be able to bring up a web two following that’s kind of like a win-win for everyone, right? Because that way more and more people can hear the music more and more people can then funnel into like what I’m doing in the web three world. And then it kind of helps the web of three world. But to me, I think where record labels can kind of insert themselves in that is like essentially being a super fan. But being a super fan and providing more infrastructure than they would capital, because a lot of the times the trade off is here is capital. Here is some infrastructure we have in case you need it. Whereas for me, I would need the infrastructure, but I’m less interested in the capital.
What about you Henry? How do you feel about this?
Henry: Yeah, this is a great, great question. And I think we’re all still kind of figuring it out. I mean, in the future, what is a record label even gonna be? I mean we’ve got the big three, who still have a lot of power, they still have huge catalogs. But in terms of an independent artist like Daniel, I think we’re figuring out the services that we can kind of build amongst ourselves, which is really, really exciting to have that. One of the things that is really appealing to me in web three is just sort of like this optionality in artists, being able to choose how they get funding, how things are funded and then yeah, what that looks like afterwards. I hope that in the future, I, I don’t think that labels are just gonna go away, but I think that there is a possible future where it can be a little bit more a la carte or more like buffet style, where you can go in and you say, I need help with marketing, or I need help with distribution or funding, and then you can you can create a deal based on that.
Yeah. Makes sense. Daniel, what’s more important to you? The 1000 true fans or having millions multimillion listeners on streaming platforms?
Daniel: This is a tough question because that’s like one of the things that I wrote about in my mirror crowd fund, I think that they both kind of allocate themselves to different goals. I think that if I were to play a Lollapalooza, which has been one of my biggest goals since I was a kid going with the route of having millions of listeners, I think would be a little bit stronger. I think one of my other big goals for a long time has been creative liberation. And I think that web three has enabled that far more than anything else. I think that if I were forced to pick one, I would say I would prefer the web three side, because I think it also lends itself to more sustainable lifestyle. I’m able to kind of not be a crazy person and like just kind of make music whenever I want to, and not necessarily have to um I would rather, make the music that I want to, and not play major festivals than not play the music I want to and play major festivals
Interesting trade off. I don’t know because there is a lot of value, like you have to think about. Why do you create music? Okay. There’s a, a component of having your song, reach the, the hearts and the souls of people and resonating with many and having that creative energy reach thousands to millions to even billions. But then there’s also the trade off of not making a living from that. And getting sucked up into all this corporate bureaucracy of not being able to showcase who you are on your own your own terms and all that stuff. So there’s definitely trade offs. And I guess, how do you go by optimizing for both? Because you have, you have a good amount of listeners, like a solid amount of listeners on streaming platforms. You have a solid collector base in web three. There’s a couple questions here. How do you kind of mitigate the trade off and how do you combine the two, right? How do you do it in a way where you don’t have different audiences on different platforms and somehow merge? And this could also be like one of those like 40 chess type of questions where we’re figuring this out. Walk me through that.
Daniel: Sure. I mean, I think that it’s a little bit cliche, but the best way to answer this is I can only control what I can control. And I think that what that looks like for me is just trying to have a hand in each basket. Right. I think that when I put the sound drop out that I recently did for overstimulated, there were a few things that I did. I mean, I put it out and then I got like a lot of people like listening to me on the web three front, but I also put up a TikTok that took me like five minutes to do. Cause I sent it to my friend, Ryan to put it together and that got like a bunch of plays. And then some people are gonna funnel in through the web three story, but if some of them become fans of my music, then I’m absolutely happy for that because I do think that that’s really important. And I don’t mean to minimize that, like you guys are saying, I don’t think Spotify or major record labels are going anywhere, over, like a three to five year time frame, they’re here to stay. They’re like absolutely industry giants. And I, I still have to play within a certain game, which is like optimizing my music or optimizing what I’m doing or the story in some way to be somewhat consumer friendly. I totally get that. But I think the best thing that I could do is just control what I can control in terms of the, like the output in me, making music every day and then whatever happens after that happens. But as long as I’m staying diversified in each bucket, that’s kind of the max. I can control you now. Henry,
Henry, Do you have any thoughts to add to this?
Henry: So the other day I actually, I had a past management client reach out to me. I hadn’t talked to him in probably two years. He’s in a string band. So not the type of artists that you see in web three, at least not right now. And he’s a really smart guy. And just asking me like how, how could I get involved with doing stuff? And the question that I asked him was like, what, what do you wanna do? Like, not just like getting involved with web three and doing NFTs, but like, what’s the goal behind that goal? Is it to raise money? Is it to sort of like bring your fan base together to potentially use new technology to, , better communicate with them or trying to build community. I think that’s like the important question and the first step to ask, because I think that this can look a little bit different for everyone.
Songwriting Camp
Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. One thing I want to talk to you guys about is kind of like the journey since October. Okay. And I’ll throw this really quick for those who haven’t seen the first episode of Daniel Allan. We published it, I think October 19th, again, it was right after the mirror campaign where raised nearly 180 K in 48 hours you gave up 50% ownership of your EP called overstimulated. You were gonna use those funds to kind of bootstrap the birth of the EP Bring that to Life, which you just released this week. So first of all, like congrats on that. Okay. We’ll start with that. Like, congratulations on that. I’ve been listening to the songs I got into the sound drop for the 100 editions, like been buying the assets left and right as much as I could. So walk me through the timeline. Okay. Because you started off with the mirror. Okay. But before mirror, you even started selling songs on catalog. Okay. And the reason I’m introducing this question is because I wanna understand the timeline and use this as a roadmap for other people that want to do what you’re doing. Okay. So from what I recall, Daniel, you started posting on catalog, right. Then you issued the over stimulated mirror campaign, raising crowdfunded 50% of the EP. Right. Then you continued dropping songs on catalog. You got involved with the sound. Okay. And then you even introduced the songwriting camp that you and Henry collaborated with. Right. So let’s take a pause right there, the songwriting camp. What is that? How did that come to life? What’s the goal behind that? I know I even bought into that. So full disclosure for everyone that’s listening. Walk me through that.
Daniel: Yeah, actually I think that’s a really good segway. Good job, Adam. It’s almost like you’re a pro at this. I was at a point where I was just at a juncture of like, I have web two goals and I want to go on tour. I want to be able to make a song in a random city in Arizona, in the back of a tour bus with three of my best friends. I mean, I think that that’s something that I idolize as a kid, and I realize that there are certain things in the web two world that I have to play into. At same time I was meeting so many of my like favorite artists through web three, because fortunately it was kind of like my story and what I attached myself to. And I was just really lucky to be able to meet so many amazing people with it. And I was like, oh man, like, what if I could do a songwriting camp where I just make music with all these amazing artists. And then I, think the reason that we did it, like as an NFT model is something that Henry could speak to. And then at the same time I was working with Henry on stuff. And then I came to him with the idea of like doing the songwriting camp, but then he was like, oh, like, , we’ve been working together. Maybe we can find a way to make this like, equitable for both. I don’t know. I think that the songwriting camp was really interesting because I’m using, it’s the prime example of using like web three resources to be able to funnel some of my web two goals. And Henry has a lot to say about this cuz, he played like a huge part and I definitely have been open about like viewing him as like an equal partner on this?
Henry, walk me through.
Henry: Yeah. When Daniel first proposed it to me, first of all, I had known him for a month and a half, I think at that point or maybe two months. So for him to come at me and say, Hey, do you want to do a project together? Is just like the biggest honor to me. So I was really excited about that, we were trying to figure out initially, like what does that look like? So what Daniel just described, he’s gonna be recording new music and we’re raising money to pay for the expenses for that. Like, how do I, especially when we were talking about it being written mostly in my voice. And so like the question was why, why my voice and something that I’d been starting to think about a lot at that time also was just compensation models in the music industry. We talk a lot about screw the major labels, screw Spotify. There’s a lot of, I mean, and fairly so there’s a lot of sketchy stuff that happens behind the scenes and something that I think Daniel and I both really respect and appreciate about web three is that there is a way that you can set it up where it’s much more accountable. It’s much more transparent and hopefully in the future it will also be more accessible. But, we were trying to kind of keep those things in mind as we designed this new project. And so for me, I wanted to sort of explore from the artist management or business side of things. What does it look like for those other team members to be compensated in a fair and transparent way in the music industry? And so that’s sort of where the project went from there.
So before we continue on the timeline, the songwriting camp, you guys raised money for that. I remember we were in like Twitter group chats, like voting on stuff and talking actively about everything. What were the economics behind that for those who aren’t familiar with the songwriting camp. So you guys raised money to rent out, out the studio in Malibu, from what I remember, right. Bring together like some of your favorite artists to create some dope music. Did the people who put money into that? Did they get anything in return? Like, and I asked that in a very like dumb way, right. To kind of like better understand for others listening, walk me through that.
Daniel: Henry, you got this, or you want me to, or you want me to get it?
Henry: You can throw in any comments that I’m happy to jump in after, for sure.
Daniel: So I think that one thing that we wanted to experiment with, and this is absolutely not to sound tone deaf here. I went through a project for overstimulated where we created a social token around it. And then I didn’t want to dive in to making another social token before overstimulated came out. Frankly it felt like a money grab and it just felt like a little bit too much. So we decided to do these strictly as NFTs as patronage based NFTs, because we wanted to explore like how many people would be down to support the project if they were just patrons. And another thing that we did that was very important was there are a few apes in the music NFT world. Some of them were like my closest friends, obviously who I’ve met over the past, like six months. And we, I think that what we wanted to do is $OVERSTIM sold out very, very, very quickly. And some people just found out about it and they weren’t able to contribute. So we did, we set it, so that 0.1 E is the maximum contribution per transaction. If you wanted to make multiple, like you couldn’t a few people did, but you had to pay gas for each one. So we kind of wanted to be like, look, how much would people be down to just support as patrons for this project? And our ultimate goal was like, how many people can we get involved into this? Like we wanted to break the record of the $OVERSTIM crowd fund, which had 87 backers. And ultimately we did break the record by two. We got 89 backers last. Outside of that, I think that one of the ways that we also like did did compensation is like the first five Eth like 100% of that goes to the expenses like that was like the Airbnb. And then like getting people’s flights and like food and like everything and like putting on like the events at the very end, cuz the people who bought the NFT, like at the very end were gonna do like a listening party for everyone to be able to come. After that we did 25% of everything after five Eth was 25% was a stipend to me, 25% was a stipend to Henry, which was important because we both wanted to highlight that like this kind of relationship, like we’re very much like partners in. Another 25%, which is very important and well another 25 went to the overt, went to the overs, stem treasury. And then that’s kind of me being like, oh, like I am still very much providing value to the initial backers. And it provided me that cushion to be like, I’m not just like grabbing money here. Like I’m here like to put on a project and still like return value to like the people that believed in me first. And then the most important bit is this is 25%, which is one Eth very close to one Eth is a resource allocation pool. So that resource allocation pool is a place where artists, when they are going to mint. Like when they go mint their first NFT and they need gas money or whatever it is, they can just pull from there. I think the overall incentive that I forgot to mention here is like the writing camp while it does align a lot with like some of my web two goals. One of the things that I’m providing is, I’m saying there are so many web two artists that are scared of getting into web three and Henry and I have had so many open conversation on Twitter spaces of how we’re supposed to bridge the gap. Because we kind of have this responsibility in a way to help artists get involved after like I’m doing things like this and telling the story of how it happened. And the thing is, what I have to be transparent about is I got lucky with timing. Like I was one of the earlier ones, so it was easier to get on catalog. It was easier to get on sound. And what we started doing is for these artists who come to the camp, we’re gonna help them a little bit like fast track away onto like web three. So what that looks like is like, like if I drop a song that I make with an artist on catalog, than they get a creator share, when they get a creator share, then they’re able to like be a little bit more involved in the platform, be able to talk and network to more people because their name is on it. And I think that was one of the, very important things that I forgot to mention.
Henry: I think there are a couple things that we did differently with this campaign than even like what’s common in the web three space with other mirrors, which is kind of silly to say, because , these mirror campaigns have only been happening for a few months or, , three or four months now but yeah. Like Daniel said, we, it was important to us to try to have accessibility. And also recognizing that the entry point was still around $375 to $400 for the 0.1 NFT. But yeah, the goal was to try to get as many sort of people into the community as we could. Daniel actually, I think we got one more right after I texted you that screenshot. So I think we ended up closing out at 9 Eth, which is great.
Reinvestment of Earnings
We say 9Eth like it’s like no big deal, but like I reflect on that, like it’s crazy how one deep pocketed people and two how aligned they are with these types of visions and how supportive they are, to help bring these up and coming artists, whether it be you Daniel and Henry, whether it be someone like Latasha, whether it be someone like Valencia, the list goes on and on and on just bringing their visions to life and acting as a support vehicle to make that a reality. It’s very inspiring. And it makes you think like shit, like there’s another whole world that’s kind of appearing that many people don’t know about, which I hope ends up being like a vehicle for that. Okay. Let’s continue on the timeline. So the song camp came in. Okay. Around that time you started posting on sound right around that time, your first sound drop came out and you started putting those sales into the treasury? So how did that process work? So like from all the money that you made from that sound drop, it was like 10 K or something, pulled out in less than like 30 seconds insane. How much of that went back into the treasury?
Henry: 50% of it.
So, and then from there you went into doing, the release of the actual $OVERSTIM album, right. How did you kind of like, and I guess you’re building in public here. Cooper Charlie, by the way, tweeted about this as well. Like the perfect like use case for music down. Okay. This was obviously like learned throughout the process. When you look back at this entire thing, are there any things you would’ve, done differently, anything you would’ve added to, anything you would’ve subtracted, lessons learned, I’m trying to like get like a summary from this entire process. Right. And it’s why I also outlined it from like the get go to where we are today, kind of thing.
Daniel: I would say, I think I may have said this in the first interview and if I didn’t, then it makes even more sense. I think just way too many people in the space spent too much time thinking and not enough time executing. And I will say that very publicly for a long time, because the biggest takeaway for me was that we just kept moving forward and we did not have, like, I think that some people look at the projects that we’ve done or the projects that I’ve done and they’re like, oh, like, Daniel’s so smart. Like he had this, he had this thought, like he had it planned out. Like I genuinely didn’t have any of this planned out. Like I just kept going with it. And like kept seeing like, as a new, as I was turning over a stone, I didn’t just kind of like turn over and be like, ah, like nothing’s there, I’m gonna move on to the next one. I turned it over and I was like, oh, like, this looks like shit, but let me like, keep scraping away at it and keep cleaning it. Maybe there’s like a diamond under it. And sometimes there weren’t right. Like I’ve had a project on catalog that didn’t do as well. And that’s okay. Like it’s, I think like people don’t necessarily look at the Ls and I think that way too many people are like a little bit scared of being judged in this space. I was talking to a good friend of mine recently who manages like these amazing artists. And I was joking at the end of our call. I was like, when are you gonna, when are you guys gonna hop in and do some web three stuff? I was just trying to like, red pill them a little bit. And he was like, we’re just trying to think of like the perfect campaign and like how we can like get in. And I’m like, man, just don’t worry about it. Just kind of get in. And like it’s still so early that like, it doesn’t matter. And just having your face and your name involved, I think is gonna pay more dividends.
It’s enough to leave a stain to show that you’re getting it and you’re with it. I agree with you 100% for sure.
Daniel: Totally. And then, yeah, man, the only thing that I really would’ve done differently is like, it took me about a week to get the discord up and running. I think that if you’re about to drop something and this is the advice I tell to people, if you think about dropping your first NFT or your first social token or whatever, it is, put a pin in that and do it in three months and then spend the three months building out everything. And then once that hits run and go full speed ahead and don’t look back and just experiment, but take those periods to ingratiate your yourself similar to what I did the summer before my mirror post. And then when it’s up, like you’re okay, discord, is there, boom, like telegram, is there, boom, like everything’s ready to go. All the resources are there because you’re gonna have this moment where you’re funneling everyone in. And I think good karma Grady. Like one of my close friends did a great job of this. As soon as you dropped Good Karma, like everything was there. Like Roe, his community manager was there and they were like running it all together. And I think that that’s also very important just to capitalize on that initial momentum.
Henry what about you? You joined the process, right? You were part of this community, obviously very vocal and very hands on and very supportive. Anything. When you look back now that the EPs out now that this release party’s about to happen next week, and there’s gonna be a crazy live performance that I’m so excited about and we’ll get to it in just a second. Any learning lessons, any tips, any advice, things you do differently, your biggest takeaways, et cetera.
Henry: Yeah, definitely. And so part of the mirror crowd that Daniel and I just did we really emphasize that we’re trying to build in public as you said. And so a sort of the next component to Daniel Allan and friends, which we kind of unofficially call Malibu. One of the next components of Malibu for me and Daniel is gonna be to kind of write up our next post is gonna be about what we’ve learned so far, what went wrong, what went well. So stay tuned for that. Get a look at, get some stuff in there. But one thing that I wanted to, to touch on with Daniel is that he has this really interesting, unique combination of skills that I think almost kind of give him this superpower to be successful, which is one he’s incredibly focused on goals that he’s set. And then he’s incredibly hardworking and extremely consistent in trying to move towards and execute those goals. And like you touched on, on the outside, it kind of feels like this just happened overnight, but, he’s been grinding, every day and just keeps moving forward. He’s one of the most actionable people that I know. We actually, I feel like our strengths sort of bounce off one another because,I’m the type of person who’s like, all right, let’s think about this a lot more. Let’s sit on it for another week. Let’s edit it down and write more. And Daniel’s like, Nope, let’s ship this. Like, it’s good. This is good, good work. Let’s ship it. See what works, get our spots and then keep it writing from there.
The Live Performance of Overstimulated
It’s very Russian of you. Daniel. I feel like it’s like super embedded in your culture. Like, that aggressiveness. Next week, the grand release live performance overstimulated $OVERSTIM holders are gonna be there. I know people flying in. I know it’s gonna be this crazy event. You rented out an entire thing. There’s bottle service. There’s an entire experience around it. How do you feel like coming up to it? What’s going on through your head? I remember, dude. I even remember a few months ago, you hit me with like, this is my first live performance. Like you were playing somewhere. Like you were just, I think it was at NFT NYC at Brett’s like music NFT party where Latasha and Verde and all these people were playing. Like, you’re just like on there with like your drum pad and your stick are just like rocking out. And now here you are today. Okay. So how are you feeling what’s going on?
Daniel: Yeah, man, look, I mean, I’m a little nervous. I think, I think every time, I mean, I try to always turn my nerves into excitement. I think that the experience I’ve had with playing shows has been like that where I’m like a little bit nervous, but as soon as I press play on the first song and like, nothing goes bad. It’s totally good. But man, I’m, I am, I’m so incredibly excited. I feel like everything has led up to this and I feel like it’s also so interesting and it’s gonna be such a big moment for music NFTs. The cool thing about music and why I think it’s gonna work so well on chain in 2022 is the consumer experience that you get to have. And like, you can do that in so many different ways. Like, yeah, you can stream the music. That’s amazing. You could be a patron and have like a fan relationship with the artist via like being a patron of their NFT. But to be able to see it come to life, right. Like I’m like debuting my first like visuals package, , that’s gonna be just like so insane that was like custom made with my friend, Zach. It’s just like, it’s the full experience. And I feel like everything has kind of led up to this. I mean, I know that I had like a big day, a couple days ago when I was, when I dropped the bonfire site. But this is also like, this is, I don’t know, like live music, dude. That’s this is what it’s all about. That’s like the moment where I get to connect with people the most. And I feel like so many people who maybe have questions about what $OVERSTIM is and why they got into it early on. And I think a lot of those questions will be answered at the show and just being there. And that’s what I’m really excited about. Yeah.
I guess one thing we didn’t touch upon really quick, like leading up to the show that happened this week is the the EP drop. We touched a little bit about it earlier, but I want to go more in depth into that as well. So you sold a hundred editions. I got lucky enough to buy one as well. Hell yeah. Let’s go. I’m be excited. So that sold out also within like less than a minute. How many Eth?
Daniel: 10 Eth and then I put five Eth back into the $OVERSTIM tray.
Okay. Okay. Crazy. Like also, like what?
Daniel: I went to sound about three weeks before it happened. And I was like, Hey, look after you guys are done, I mean, I know that you have plan for season one. David had the idea of doing it as like a feature. And then I came to him and I was like, look, let’s try it. Let’s just see what happens. And it took some convincing, but I’m really stoked with how it turned out because I don’t think any of us expected it to kind of sell out like another sound drop, obviously like a hundred editions is a lot, man. I gotta tip my hat to sound here. I think that they rolled out an incredible kind of idea for this, because normally sound does from 1:30 to 2:00 PST. You get into Twitter spaces talking, and then it drops right at two. And then everyone’s in panic mode to like keep going. And sometimes like, people don’t even get to listen to the music. I think that what sounded so incredibly here is 1:30 to 2:00, we were talking, got a lot of people like interested and just having a conversation about me and my journey, like how important this project is to me. And then like, I got to sit there for 12 minutes and like, just wait, anxiously as everyone was listening to my music. But like I was, I was in like the sound telegram chat and like a few other places, the sound discord. And everyone was like, oh man, like this song’s crazy. Like, who’s this thing or this production’s wild. What are these scents? And I was like, oh my God, like, it kind of cured some imposter syndrome that I’ve had in a lot of ways, because like so many people were I’ve always been so confident in the project musically, and I’m so thankful for the web three resources and tooling that I was able to build around it, but part of me has always thought like, do they love the music? Or is there some thought here that it’s just like a really dope web three experiment? And I think that while that’s kind of left my rain more and more over these past few months as I’ve built a community around it, that moment was a really gratifying one. Cuz everyone like these amazing artists, like Iman Europe and sassy black and whatnot were like talking in the telegram they’re oh dude, like this song’s crazy. This is crazy. And I was like, wow, like that’s cool. I got emotional, like sitting there listening to it, thankfully like my video wasn’t on but dude, it was just nice, like play the whole thing through and I almost got closure, I like let go of my baby.
And now we’re gonna enjoy it live on the 13th. Okay. So gimme a little bit more detail. So what can we expect from the 13th? What’s the layout? What’s the structure? Free for $OVERSTIM holders, right? Let’s go. What can we expect? Like what’s the structure? Walk me through it.
Daniel: Should I drop some alpha
This is gonna come out next week before the show.
Daniel: I’m gonna drop some alpha then first time. I’m gonna be dropping my first merch at the show. It’s gonna be these guys and it’s gonna saw that on your story. It’s all gonna be custom sewn $OVERSTIM on the inside. That me and my girlfriend are sewing together.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. You’re sewing this yourself.
Daniel: Me and my girlfriend. Yeah, right here. As you can see.
Oh. Okay.
Daniel: $OVERSTIM.
Nice.
Daniel: Custom sewn owned by us. I knew it’s on the right way. I have some special guests that are gonna come to the show that are gonna play. We have an opener who’s playing doors. I did a competition in my discord, but I wanted to get someone to open. I ended up getting one opener from the discord and one person that’s gonna DJ to close the night. The two other people on the bill before me. Sober Rob is gonna be the first act and then Oshi is gonna be up next and then me. Wow. It’s gonna be a pretty cool three nights for sure.
That’s exciting. I’m excited. Henry. Are you gonna be, I know you’re in SF right now. You’re gonna be down for that.
Henry: Sadly. I’m not still working through my injury a little bit and travel’s pretty tough, but I’m definitely gonna be there in spirit.
We’ll FaceTime you. We’ll keep you there. We’ll keep you there. It’s gonna be good. I love it. Please.
Daniel: I’ve always told Henry that’s the goal is to one day, get him to one of the shows, which is gonna be amazing. I’m excited for that to happen.
What’s Next?
Okay. Before we wrap up. Okay. You issue this entire project around the EP. The entire social token was centered around the name of the EP, this entire performance experience, all the MITs, all the songs, the live performances, the merch, the excitement, the energy was all around this project. Now that you’re performing this project, it’s gonna be out everywhere to listen. Your holders are gonna be there. People are gonna buy tickets and enjoy and listen to all these other people perform live. What’s next?
Daniel: Putting me on the spot. Not kidding. I think what’s next man is I have some very, very big projects planned for this year. One of them, I’m not gonna go into detail for a while, but there’s definitely something very, very big that I’m working on. Outside of that, man, I have a responsibility to myself to make better music every day. And yeah, I’m working on music every day. I’m gonna start putting my next music project together soon. I think that a lot of that is gonna live at Malibu during, with the writing camp. I recently dropped like the custom storefront for $OVERSTIM with bonfire. They’re an amazing company. I worked like super closely with them to make sure that it’s the most user friendly experience that we can have. And I think that that’s gonna serve as like a big central hub that we’re gonna continue building for $OVERSTIM and for all Daniel Allan stuff down the line. But I think the only thing that I can say now is just like continue making music and just trying to get better. I think that when I dropped overs stem or when, a few months after the crowd or a few weeks after the crowd-fund happened, I was like, man, like I know I can make better music cuz they’re like artists up there that I really look up to and I still have this feeling, but I’m like, oh, like I want to chase like that level of like proficiency. But I think I’m like starting to discover like a little bit of a new Sonic palette that I want to do moving forward. So for right now I’m keeping it simple. I’m gonna keep bringing value back to $OVERSTIM holders, just like I always have and in tandem just trying to make as good music as I can. I
How about you Henry? Like what are you excited about as community manager for the Overton community for Daniel Allan’s like future as a whole walk me through your thoughts and some ideas that you may have even if they may be like in the open air right now.
Henry: Yeah, sure. I think that these last couple weeks have brought a lot of really amazing new artists actually into Daniel’s discord and the amount of. Gms has skyrocketed GMs are booming but like also a lot of like very organic, interesting conversations are starting to happen in there. And it’s sort of become this place for artists who are either already in web three or in web two and trying to transition in to discuss just ideas. And, that to us, I think feels like a success cuz we’re sort of fostering this community or nurturing this community, and growing it. And, it’s really important to us for other artists to be able to not necessarily replicate this, but be able to sort of build on what we’re doing too. So I think it’s happening. I’m really excited about Malibu cuz for me, for my part it’s not only just the writing camp, but it’s getting this opportunity to use the camp as an example, to look at these other, other parts of web three. And so I’m looking forward to doing some more writing about that more reflection. Yeah. And just seeing, where the experiment goes.
Awesome. guys,
Daniel: One more, one more, one more thing that I want to bring up outside of just outside of the macro is over the course of the next week. As I’m leading up to the show, obviously it’s gonna be on Thursday the 13th, really excited for that. I am doing two more drops that are surrounding $OVERSTIM before moving on to another series of NFTs. The first one is I’m doing a foundation drop, so I’m doing the six canvases for the songs. The canvas are like the background visuals that you see on Spotify. I’m gonna drop those as visuals on foundation. Over the past three months, I have been doing a short film for over stimulated. Basically every song, think of it as like one huge music video. It’s a it’s six and a half minutes long. It’s basically condensed versions of each song. All kind of tell a story. It was directed by girl of the year. Who’s someone that she’s my creative director. I’ve worked a lot with her Lisa Morale with the really like, since we’ve met and that’s gonna be dropping on Glass Protocol whether it’s gonna be this week or next, those are kind of the two projects surrounding $OVERSTIM that I forgot to mention that I would feel remiss if I didn’t, that are coming up.
Outro
I’m excited. I’ll be taking a look and checking it out and keeping my eyes on the pulse with everything related to you guys. Congratulations on everything. Congratulations on these last few months from October till now and seeing it come to fruition, I can only imagine how good that feels and how excited you must be. So props to you guys. I hope you take a moment to celebrate and enjoy, but for now, before I let you guys go, where can we find you show yourselves? Show destinations. Let it go. Go ahead, Henry. We can start with you.
Henry: Yeah, pretty active on Twitter. It’s just my full name, Henry Chatfield. Also in Daniel’s discord and a variety of other discords, so you’ll probably see me around, but Twitter’s the best place to connect and follow.
Daniel?
Daniel: Gotta hit up to Daniel Allan discord. That’s where everything lives outside of that, I’m @imdaniel on Twitter and @danielonmusic on Instagram.
Guys. Thank you. And hope to have you guys again soon.
Daniel: Awesome. Thank you so much for having us, Adam. Thanks