Deadmau5 Manager Dean Wilson Talks DAOs, NFTs, Crypto and IP in Web3

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Dean Wil­son and Joel Zim­mer­man (bet­ter known as the artist deadmau5) are estab­lished inno­va­tors on the fringe of music and tech­nol­o­gy. Wil­son is Zimmerman’s long­time man­ag­er and the pair have been push­ing, in lock step, the enve­lope of music pro­duc­tion, per­for­mance and the rela­tion­ship between artist and fan. Zim­mer­man, a native of Cana­da, is a cre­ative tech­nol­o­gist long dri­ven by his love of gam­ing to explore all facets of tech­nol­o­gy in search of ground­break­ing new music and ele­vat­ed fan expe­ri­ences. Even before the term Web3 was com­mon par­lance, Wil­son and Zim­mer­man man­aged their com­mu­ni­ties with a vari­ety of dig­i­tal tools.

“We were the first on Minecraft,” says Wil­son. “It was way before NFTs and blockchain. The fans love that they can talk to Joel. They can put some­thing in Dis­cord and sug­gest things.”

They noticed ear­ly on how these tools offered fans a means of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty with their favorite artist. In fact, after launch­ing their col­lectible pin series, Wil­son began to see how Web3 was poised to change their busi­ness and the music indus­try at large.

In 2019 dur­ing the Cube Tour, they placed phys­i­cal vend­ing machines near the con­cert venues and announced the exclu­sive pin drops through their Dis­cord and Red­dit chan­nels. It was a huge suc­cess, so much so that Wil­son start­ed see­ing a sec­ondary mar­ket emerge for these phys­i­cal col­lectibles. Years before many of us would hear the word NFT, Wil­son and Zim­mer­man were unknow­ing­ly exper­i­ment­ing with a phys­i­cal ver­sion of it.

These insights unleashed an insa­tiable curios­i­ty to under­stand all facets of Web3 and how they could apply to their work. Wil­son and Zim­mer­man are now involved with mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies and projects in the space includ­ing DAOs, blockchain music plat­forms, NFTs and gam­i­fied music experiences.

Says Wil­son: “With Joel, it was obvi­ous what he want­ed to do. He want­ed to build an amaz­ing show; he want­ed to be a world­wide act and a brand; but he also want­ed to be the first … espe­cial­ly with tech­nol­o­gy and pro­duc­tion. I’ve nev­er met any­body in the music busi­ness who is as intel­li­gent when it comes to all things technology.”

With so much hap­pen­ing at a dizzy­ing pace in the Web3 space, many artists are look­ing to under­stand how it all works and what it means to them. In an inter­view with Vari­ety, Wil­son shares his expe­ri­ence and insight.

You and Joel seem built for Web3. How did it all unfold for you?

We had a blockchain strat­e­gy because Joel’s a tech­nol­o­gist. He is a huge gamer and under­stands cod­ing. He absolute­ly got it as a tech lay­er. When we did the Por­tu­gal the Man NFT drop, Joel said it is my respon­si­bil­i­ty where I am in my career to do new risky things to show what the future can be for fans and artists. Our friend Ray Lee, who’s part of Audius, built some­thing called Upfront back in the day. It was basi­cal­ly Only Fans before Only Fans exist­ed. Joel said he want­ed to do that. He want­ed to pull every­thing off of every­thing, and you have a sub­scrip­tion mod­el. Once you are in the door, you have access to every­thing I’ve ever done. You can down­load it, you can stream it. Every­thing behind the deadmau5 world is here now. We didn’t own enough rights then, and it was so ear­ly. We were so far ahead of our time and we couldn’t make it work. That start­ed sev­en years ago. We are going to end up there. All the tools and the tech lay­er are com­ing for this to all make sense.

What are some lessons you learned from your first few NFT projects?

It’s not about spin­ning up an NFT and mak­ing a lot of mon­ey. That’s not going to help your brand in the long term, because at, some point, peo­ple are going to go back and say, “Well, I bought an NFT, but what does it do?” So with the deadmau5 5555 series, we took some risks and it def­i­nite­ly hurt us, but it will help us in the long run. We decid­ed to do it on Poly­gon. And it’s com­pli­cat­ed if you’re not real­ly into the Cryp­to space, but we want­ed our fans not to get ham­mered on gas. And then we want­ed to tell this whole sto­ry. We did a deal with Ready Play­er Me, and you’re going to be able to put your deadmau5 head into these mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent worlds and have ongo­ing util­i­ty. Well, now you say, not only have I got some val­ue, I love it. Now I can go and use it. That’s fun­da­men­tal­ly key for what we are doing with every project that we do. I don’t want to do projects that don’t have future ongo­ing use. It’s real­ly impor­tant. Anoth­er exam­ple is some­thing like the Mad Dog Jones drop. Natal­ie & Mike who run our merch busi­ness found Mad Dog Jones in Tokyo in a col­lectible toy store. We loved his art. It was real­ly impor­tant for Joel to do these col­lab­o­ra­tive pieces. To bring in great dig­i­tal art, bring in his brand and like­ness and add some music to it. And then it’s a true col­lab­o­ra­tion — 50/50 and we’ll man­age it. Those have been real­ly suc­cess­ful for us. Plan­ning as far out as we could for the util­i­ty and con­nec­tion with our fans while feel­ing like we’re giv­ing our com­mu­ni­ty real val­ue in the future. This is our future. This is the strat­e­gy. Web3 is every­thing to us.

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Leah Sems

How can Web3 help address the music industry’s biggest challenges?

The busi­ness mod­el is com­plete­ly bro­ken for the cre­ator. It has to flip at some point, and it will hap­pen with blockchain, smart con­tracts and Web3. It is the true way that we can con­nect direct­ly with our fans and not have some­body telling us what we can and can’t do. You sell a show and you are hot. You sit there and look at the sec­ondary tick­et sites and you go, “Wow, This plat­form is mak­ing more mon­ey than me, with no risk.” That’s not fair. Trans­paren­cy? There’s nev­er been any of that, has there? The length of time of account­ing makes no sense. Or any clar­i­ty on that set of account­ing as well. Our strat­e­gy is to build what we think the future should be, and then do proof cas­es to show that this is how the music busi­ness should work. We are not try­ing to rebuild the lega­cy sys­tems, because that’s not going to hap­pen for years. You’re not going to change the way that multi­bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness­es run. It’s too much mon­ey, and it’s too com­pli­cat­ed. If you own your cat­a­log, there are more and more excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties of what you’re going to be able to do with your IP in the Web3 space. At some point, we are plan­ning to cre­ate a DAO where the fans are tru­ly invest­ed at that point. The DAO owns and con­trols the IP, and the fans have vot­ing rights with­in the DAO. Once you get to a cer­tain point in your career with your fan­base, why would you ever not want to do that?

Your com­mu­ni­ty is pret­ty Web3 savvy. How do you dri­ve adop­tion for those new to the space?

Secu­ri­ty and usabil­i­ty are the two biggest things that we have to solve. Coin­base was kind of the first step for most peo­ple from Web2 to Web3 by step­ping into cryp­to right on your phone. It’s now a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny with 74 mil­lion users. They’re about to launch their NFT plat­form and we’re help­ing with that launch. That will be the first kind of NFT project that goes back the oth­er way, where you don’t have to have a dig­i­tal wal­let, and you don’t have to use Ethereum to pur­chase NFTs. They’ve done a deal with Mas­ter­Card where you can actu­al­ly pur­chase your NFT with fiat, not just cryp­to. Here’s the bridge between Web2 and Web3 and that bridge needs to be big­ger and stronger. And that is how we slow­ly cre­ate mass adop­tion. It is trust and usabil­i­ty with­out big scary tech.

What would be your advice to inde­pen­dent artists look­ing to explore Web3?

First of all, do some research and ask a lot of ques­tions. Don’t make any moves. Don’t do any deals. If you want to stay inde­pen­dent, use all the tools that are cur­rent­ly out there. Don’t sign any long term con­tracts. Ulti­mate­ly, don’t do any­thing with­out find­ing out who’s involved; what it does; where it’s going; who the investors are; what your returns are going to be; and how your IP will be used.

What projects are a good place to start learn­ing and testing?

You can test out cer­tain things on plat­forms like Audius right now. If you own your IP and you’re com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent, then open an Audius account and test it out. It’s like the Sound­cloud for the blockchain. There will be an eco­nom­ic side built on Audius over the com­ing months. We’re advi­sors over there and there’s a lot of excit­ing stuff that we know is com­ing. Just be patient and use the tools that are there right now. And don’t box your­self in. With deadmau5, Seven20 or what­ev­er, if some­one tries to put the word exclu­sive into any con­tract, I will walk away. We’ve nev­er done it. We will nev­er do it.

You are involved in the MODA DAO project that is cre­at­ing open source tool­ing for musi­cians in Web3. What are some impor­tant things to con­sid­er regard­ing start­ing your own DAO?

The the­sis is to build the new busi­ness using the tech­nol­o­gy lay­ers and not just change the old. One project we are in the process of launch­ing is a Web3 blockchain fin­ger­print­ing tech­nol­o­gy for music. We do have to be care­ful about the SEC and some Web3 assets being con­sid­ered a secu­ri­ty. Peo­ple need to do their legal home­work. Don’t just spin up a coin because you think there aren’t any reg­u­la­tions right now. They’re com­ing. When they come, they’ll start work­ing their way down. And if you start to get some suc­cess with your token in any capac­i­ty, there’s a chance it could be cat­e­go­rized as a secu­ri­ty. Please do your research. We’ve been doing it for months, if not years, oth­er­wise we would have launched our token a long time ago. I won’t do it until we are but­toned up legal­ly 100%. And that’s gonna take a while.

MODA DAO is explor­ing things like a glob­al decen­tral­ized licens­ing orga­ni­za­tion. What could licens­ing and rights man­age­ment look like in Web3?

We have to build the new, but what does the new mean? Does it com­plete­ly break all the old norms? Do you even need col­lec­tion soci­eties? What are they actu­al­ly col­lect­ing in the dig­i­tal sphere? If you are an IP own­er not play­ing the Top 40 game and you’re not on radio, why do you need the col­lec­tion soci­eties? If we are doing it in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way than the cur­rent busi­ness, then why would you need the old mod­el? We’re going to build what we think our vision of how music will be in the future with the con­nec­tion from the tech lay­er to the fans. We are head­ing to a direct con­nec­tion with the fan base who are involved and own­ing some­thing. There’s been a com­plete dis­con­nect there today. You used to be able to buy a piece of vinyl and then you own that piece of vinyl. We did it with CDs, and we did it with dig­i­tal down­loads. Then it dis­ap­peared. There’s no con­nec­tion to any­thing. It’s just there on Apple or Spo­ti­fy. deadmau5 is the per­fect exam­ple of fans crav­ing this con­nec­tion. Our Dis­cord group, Mau5chord, is grow­ing expo­nen­tial­ly every day. Every­thing we do is linked to the com­mu­ni­ty. Back­wards and for­wards to the fan and us. We ask them what they want, and we ask them how they want to be involved. Red­dit was the first aha moment for me. We had our five super­fans as our Red­dit mod­er­a­tors. Here are the rules and here is how to act. If any­one acts inap­pro­pri­ate­ly or does any­thing wrong, they are boot­ed. I thought, why is that not the busi­ness model?

There are a few plat­forms offer­ing frac­tion­al own­er­ship in songs to fans. What’s your take on shar­ing own­er­ship and rev­enue streams?

I don’t feel com­fort­able doing that right now. I got real­ly excit­ed in the ear­ly stages, and then I thought, why do I want to be on these plat­forms for them to frac­tion­al­ize it? They say they have the legal side of it set up, but I’m giv­ing them this and I’m giv­ing them that. It kind of defeats our Web3 the­sis. We need to keep build­ing it inter­nal­ly and con­nect direct­ly with our fans, not again through anoth­er plat­form. I think we’ll end up with our own DAO hav­ing this token linked to it where the DAO pur­chas­es the IP of mau5trap and deadmau5’s music. And then every­body can get involved and be invest­ed in the IP, whether it be stream­ing, licens­ing or sync. Every­body has a chance to vote as well because they’re part of the com­mu­ni­ty. The obvi­ous step to me here is a DAO.

Where do you see the future of Web3 and music going?

It’s so excit­ing. It real­ly is. Every day, I feel like it’s Christ­mas. I talk to so many amaz­ing peo­ple who are now in this space, and every one of them is this excit­ed. Most of them have been in the music busi­ness for 10 to 15 years, and they’re like, “I’m so jad­ed by what I’ve had to deal with, and being told what I can and can’t do. This is the bright new future. … It will change all of our lives.



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