We hosted exclusive interview with Taka Perry for talking about Music NFT, DAO and Future of Music.Taka Perry is collaborating with MODA DAO for releasing Music NFT for exploring new way to engage, communicate with fans and audiences.
As members of FRIENDSHIP. DAO, Yuto from The fin. and Takayuki Suzuki from ParadeAll hosted the interview.
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Takayuki Suzuki, ParadeAll
I'm working with Yuto for FRIENDSHIP.DAO, a better music ecosystem as a community of the independent artists and musicians to engage global curators and listeners as tokenized and incentivized community
We are looking at Web3 movement for the near future so this dialogue will be interesting because Taka Perry is working with MODA DAO which is also an emerging and prominent music DAO in the industry and backed by music industry heavyweights players as well.
FRIENDSHIP. DAO is backed by HIP LAND MUSIC who is the one of most cutting edge Japanese music artist management.
We would like to interview what Taka Perry is doing and thinking for Web3 and NFTs with Yuto from The fin. who is an independent artist touring Asia and Europe.
Q. Could you introduce yourself?
Taka Perry
My name is Taka Perry. I'm an Australian Japanese music producer, songwriter, and artist. I split my time between releasing, promoting and touring my own music. Then also producing and writing for a range of other artists, both here in Australia, as well as in Japan and internationally.
Yuto
I think I'm pretty much the same. I have my band called The Fin.. We tour and release music internationally. I produce music and I'm a singer-songwriter. I also do mix engineer too.
Q. How did you start your career as an artist?
Taka Perry
I was playing in orchestras from primary school, playing clarinet and playing in rock bands through high school. And I just loved playing instruments and the idea of being able to play one instrument and then play something else over it. Forming a one man band is what led me into production and recording music when I was 13 or 14 years old and the passion never stopped.
10, 11 years later it's just been a lot of small steps leading up to where I am now. But it was all about instruments and rock music when I first got into it.
Q. Who are the artists you have inspired from?
Taka Perry
I draw inspiration from so many artists. I think when I was first starting from a lot of old school rock bands like Pink Floyd and Genesis.
Old school prog rock and then going into Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and J Dilla, early sample chopping producers. I've never thought about genres too much. You know, it's been just wether or not I liked it. So there's been a lot of different influences over the years.
Q. How and when did you enter the music business or the music industry?
Taka Perry
All-through school, I wanted to make this a career and I never knew how to do it. When I was in grade 12, I joined a song making program as part of my school. So we have an organization here in Australia called APRA, a performing rights organization. I guess the equivalent of JASRAC in Japan, and they ran a camp where they brought a couple industry producers to teach high school kids about songwriting and production. And one of the producers that came to my school ended up kind of mentoring me in my early career, and helped me get my foot in the door in the Australian music industry.
From there, it's just been a long period of trying to network with people and connect with different managers, artists, labels. Collaborating with all kinds of different artists and bit by bit. it's been able to grow into something that can sustain my moving.
Takayuki Suzuki
When did that songwriting camp happen?
Taka Perry
That would have been in 2015. So 7 years ago, I was in grade 12.
Takayuki Suzuki
Wow, that is really great and progressive if we look at the Japanese music industry ecosystem.
Takayuki Suzuki
Yuto, how did you start your career as an artist and how did you enter the music industry or business?
Yuto
Actually, I started playing guitar when I was 13 or 14 years old. And I like the 60's rock music like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles as well,
It was so easy to access all of these old music because of YouTube in our generation. And I started playing guitar and I liked it a lot. Then I actually wanted to become a guitar player, like John Frusciante but I couldn't make it and then suddenly I started writing music.
I started singing and then I formed the band around 2010 and I released some music through SoundCloud and my music got hooked up with some web music bloggers, in US, Europe and Japan. Then I met the company, Hipland Music Group Corporation, and we got signed.
Q. How and what you've been involved with Web3 space?
Taka Perry
My involvement with Web3 and NFTs has been pretty recent. I put out a single called DON’T about 3 weeks ago. And that was the first time I involved that whole Web3, NFT into the single release campaign.
Mostly it's been something that I've been really interested in for a long time and I came to the conclusion that it'd be better to just dive in the deep end and kind of figure things out as I do it rather than to try and research things ahead of time. So it's early days for me at the moment, but it's a really interesting world that I've kind of been getting right into.
Takayuki Suzuki
Yuto, how and what you’ve been involved with Web3?
Yuto
It's pretty recent. I didn't have any experiment with releasing NFT or Web3 things but I joined FRIENDSHIP. DAO as an artist I’ve been talking about what is a bright future for artists.
Takayuki Suzuki
What is the bright side of Web3, and what are you going to expect?
Taka Perry
I think, personally, what excites me most about Web3, is it's going to put a lot of power back into the hands of the Creator. The business model for a lot of major label recording artists is to sign a major record deal, get a whole bunch of funding, give away the bulk share of your earnings as well as the copyright to someone else. I think once this NFT and Web3 starts to become more and more accepted in the mainstream, we're gonna see a big shift in the way many artists run their businesses. By being able to release music as NFTs or release singles with NFTs its going to change how artists fund their own careers. But the copyright is back into the hands of the people who are making the music.
Takayuki Suzuki
Yuto, how do you see the bright side of Web3 and what do you expect?
Yuto
Of course, I had experiences with the Web2 platform and ecosystem because I think I'm an artist coming from and totally native to Web2. I think the current ecosystem has taken all the power from artists so we need to take back or we need to find a great balance between artists, musicians, producers, engineers and everyone. It would be the possibility of Web3
Takayuki Suzuki
Yuto, do you see any possibilities of releasing music NFT?
Yuto
I'm learning and looking into the possibility of music NFT.
Takayuki Suzuki
Taka Perry, Do you have any advice for Yuto?
Taka Perry
I'm probably on the end of receiving advice, but from personal experience, I think just putting NFTs up, inventing things and working with whether it's FRIENDSHIP. DAO or MODA DAO taught me so much more than I could have learned trying to work out how things work. It's totally fair to understand and grasp that people are not aware of the concept of Web3. It is going to take a bit of time. I think it's going to be as big a disruptor as when the music industry went from predominantly physical sales to things like Napster and LimeWire and the internet coming in. So I think it's just gonna take time for people to get educated to sell NFTs. I think a lot of people are still at the stage like “Okay, cool. How do I even buy those? What is blockchain?”
Once those barriers break down, It will start gaining a lot of momentum very quickly.
Takayuki Suzuki
MODA DAO and you collaborate for releasing DON’T. Tell us how MODA DAO works and improves your career?
Taka Perry
MODA DAO was firstly, educating me in kind of the basics of how web3 work, how to market and bring out as an NFT collection or, or a single with NFTs. S
It's been really great working with them. super agile team. And we're still trying to explore going into the next EP and other projects. It's really great to have them on our side, guiding us through things to be aware of in the NFT space.
Q. For your DON’T release by NFTs, how did it go and what's coming next?
Taka Perry
DON’T was the first single we involved in NFTs and worked with MODA DAO and with Mint Songs as well as Emanate. We were partially using it to test the waters and kind of see how we can build an audience in NFT space.
Twitter is the most active platform when it comes to web3. The next single which is out around June, we're trying to grow slowly in NFT space. We are still releasing things on more Web2 platforms, typical DSPs. We're also making sure that we are looking into the future with how we're marketing and releasing music. For me being outside of making the music, also doing 3D art, 3D animation lets me visualize everything from the music to how I want it to look and put together entire audio visual experiences for web3.
Takayuki Suzuki
I was impressed that your minting site is called KAKOMIRAI.io (the past and the future in Japanese) .
Taka Perry
Yeah, the web portal I've set up is KAKOMIRAI and that's also the name of the EP that I'm putting out. It means a lot of things from a musical perspective, like I'm influenced by a lot of old music and as well as future hyper pop kind of music elements. So for me, merging KAKO(Past) and MIRAI(Future) musically, is a big part of my identity as a musician, but that also carries into who I am as an artist and how I want to be releasing things. Web3 is the MIRAI element of this release of the EP.
Takayuki Suzuki
Wow, that's really impressive.
Yuto do you have any questions for Taka Perry?
Yuto
I just want to ask him questions about releasing NFT. How do you think people take NFT music? If you release music, it's for everyone on streaming. NFT is always limited. How do you feel about it?
Taka Perry
There are so many ways to set up an NFT like you can have one NFT or you can have 50 that splits the rights or 100 or whatever really is just kind of striking that balance between the amount that people are willing to pay and the scarcity of the tokens.
For example, with DON’T, we minted a run of 50 NFTs and didn't really have any expectation at any sales. So when a few started selling, I was “Okay, well, I guess there is like a market out there”. And then that led me into connecting with people through Twitter and discord and trying to be active. Buying NFTs is building a network of people that are across Web 3 and chatting with them and seeing what kind of things are happening in the sphere at the moment.
Yuto
In Asia, China or other Asia, I'm not really sure how people take it as an NFT music. Because especially in Japan, like people are skeptical about NFT and some people think it is a fraud. If I release NFT, maybe some fans might think I need money. I'm kind of scared of it. How is it like in Australia or Western world?
Taka Perry
It's it's still similar in that everyone knows the term NFT but not everyone kind of understands those the market there are other ways you can incentivize people to buy NFTs and that's something that I haven't personally done yet, but for example, if you own an NFT as early access to tour tickets, or you get a free ticket for you get to hear the EP 3 weeks ahead of public release.
So I don't think NFT necessarily has to come with a stake of ownership and the copyright. There's no rules so it's really about finding what your fans and audience wants from an NFT. Some people will buy it just because they appreciate the art and the music and then other people will probably buy it from the perspective of selling it later and making a profit. So it's a really interesting space and I feel like we're all still working out how that intersects with being an artist and a creative.
Q. What’s your upcoming things?
Taka Perry
Other than my EP, coming out in July. I am planning to spend the second half of 2022 traveling and working with different artists in different industries in around London, Europe, Tokyo, North America and just to get out of Australia and experience working with different people from different cultures especially with COVID over the last couple of years, who haven't been able to get out and meet many people outside of the internet. That's the main plan that I have.