Today I’m releasing the first single “An Unending Season” for my new solo project Glamour Dog, an experimental project for exploring what it means to be a musician in the digital internet age. This first song is also the first that I’m releasing into the Creative Commons with the “CC BY” license. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, l will explain.
⚠️(It won’t be boring I swear🫡)⚠️
❓”What is CC by and what’s the point?”❓
The “CC BY” copyright license is a copyright license that is one step above content that exists in the Public Domain. Similar to public domain content, if you want to utilize, modify, or resell my song, you’re allowed to do so and you do not have to ask for my permission. The only thing required to do so is attribution, or in other words something that gives credit for original creation.
Why would I do this? Well, I think The Commons (collectively shared resources) are a thing most that most take for granted. These common resources include things like Water, Air, Land, etc but also extend to include content like Stories, Music, Photos, Paintings, Movies, etc that have passed into the Public Domain.
Content that is public domain is content that anyone can utilize as a resource and leverage. One great example of this includes a lot of the Disney Animated movies which are based on public domain content, including films like Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland.
By contributing this song, and all songs that I write under the pseudonym Glamour Dog to the common collection of goods that are non-rivalrous, non-excludable, and free to use; it helps shift the needle ever so slightly from a world that is hyper competitive and rivalrous more towards one that is non-rivalrous and collaborative.
❓“But how do you make money?”❓
Well, this is where the experiment comes in. You see, if we continue to play by the rules of the game that we are currently playing (🤮profit seeking🤮), we will continue to neglect The Commons which is the one thing we might agree is incredibly important to protect, especially if one day it were to be upended. Does the phrase climate change ring any bells?
Well, what if I told you we might be able to play by a new set of rules? A set of rules that makes contributing to and building the commons a sustainable process. Rules that potentially could kick start a flywheel of a regenerative cycle as opposed to a destructive cycle.
So with that being said, I want to tell you about a potentially new game that I found, albeit a small and primitive one, a game nonetheless.
The Rules of the Game
1️⃣First Step in this new game is contributing something of value to help fund a public goods project or increase the size of a collective pool of resources that all may use without permission. Goods must be contributed without expectation of return. In my case, this song, I hope u all like it 🫣.
2️⃣The Second Step is creating a mechanism that can measure the value of how important the aforementioned asset, piece of content, or idea might be without any intermediaries having control or influence on the mechanism (no hands on the scale, u feel?) In my case, I will be minting 40 digital collectibles of this song for people to buy and trade (yes, an NFT lol).
3️⃣The third step is making a pledge to redirect a certain portion of profits derived from said asset to help fund future works that can be considered a contribution to public goods or beneficial to the commons. In my case, I will be taking 50% of traditional streaming royalties and Bandcamp sales, 50% of NFT sales and 50% NFT royalties and automatically redirecting them to a commons fund stored in a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. It’s important that these funds exist in a blockchain contract so that the finances are public and auditable (you can monitor the process every step of the way).
4️⃣The fourth step is to establish a new body for managing and directing those common assets. In my case, each person who holds one of the collectibles gets one vote in how the Glamour Dog commons pool is used. You don’t have to vote, but it is one of the initial perks of holding the collectible (there will be many others as well, free access to shows, etc?? 👀).
5️⃣The fifth step is to repeat and refine this process until we find better and more innovative rules (these are rudimentary at best, but better than nothing). It’s important to remember that together we can change the rules of play at any time.
6️⃣The sixth step is continuing to play until the game becomes fun for everyone involved not just those who have spent the most time playing, started playing earliest, or collected the most in game resources.
❓So how do we start playing? ❓
Well, I did my part by writing and contributing my song to the commons. I have no expectation that any of you will want to buy the collectible or support me, but if you are interested in supporting my creation of content for the Creative Commons and increasing the number of free and open resources people have access to, you can buy the song on Bandcamp (name your price), or you can buy an NFT via Zora.co (.01 ethereum/roughly $25 + gas fees). Link in bio.
⚠️(If you want to buy the NFT please DM me before, so I can give you a few steps on how to do so!)⚠️
Lastly, let me finish by saying, the games we play dictate the future world we build and the future games that we play, so I really hope you all will take part in building something that we can share together.
This song is yours, do with it what you want. 🕊