Published
Wed, Mar 23, 2022, 13:50
- Featuring tracks by Surgeon, Bergsonist and Boys Noize, the mix will go live this Thursday, March 24th.
French DJ and producer Maël Péneau, AKA Maelstrom, has curated a DJ mix NFT that will pay all the contributing artists equally.
Ensemble Mix, which features 14 tracks across one hour, is available now on sound.xyz, a platform that allows users to "buy timestamps on a track, something like a SoundCloud comment, in order to support the artists and show how they were here first," Péneau told Resident Advisor.
Fans will be able to listen to the mix after this Thursday's listening party at 10 PM CET, hosted in collaboration with the DAO Friends With Benefits, which helped conceptualize the project and create the artwork.
To pay the artists, Péneau created a contract stipulating that once the NFTs are sold all the contributors will each receive 5.7 percent of the auction price straight into their ETH wallets. Péneau will receive 15 percent as the curator and Friends With Benefits will receive another 5 percent.
Alongside the option for fans to buy the timestamps, "we'll also place some kind of golden ticket within the NFTs where one collector will be picked at random to be allocated a 1/1 NFT of an exclusive Maelstrom track," Péneau continued.
While it can feel overwhelming to try and keep up with the latest Web3-related news, more and more artists are now experimenting in this space to identify new revenue streams and tools to support the underground. Péneau has been a vocal advocate for the relationship between blockchain technology and DJing.
"I had been thinking quite often about how the dance music scene has become more and more centered around DJs, when producers have seen their sources of income basically disappearing in the last two decades, with the switch from vinyls to digital files," he said. "I started releasing records in the late '90s, and it used to be quite easy to make a living out of it, even without any kind of PR or press, you just got the records pressed and distributed to as many record stores as possible, and they found their audience on the shelves."
Due to the industry's instability during the pandemic, there have been more conversations about the financial relationship between production and DJing. Manchester-based DJ Finn started Mixtape Club, where DJs get paid to make mixes through a Patreon account. There have also been attempts to address lost revenue for producers through collective rights organizations like SACEM (Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music) and BPI (British Phonographic Industry).
But according to Péneau, these responses have been piecemeal. "[In] practice, it never happens," he said. "Most DJs have gotten used to filling in these information sheets with their own music, but even for those who'd wish to play game, it's painstaking to track down all the music you've played during a three-hour set, let alone find the proper names and credits for all the producers and artists involved in the production of each track."
To put together Ensemble Mix, Péneau first sought music from artists who were already involved in creating NFTs. When he later tweeted asking for submissions, he was overwhelmed with the response.
"I received much more music than I expected from all parts of the world," he said. "I ended up keeping something like six tracks that I received thanks to this Twitter post."
This excitement suggests a larger seachange afoot with a new generation of producers already fluent with the vocabulary and technology of Web3. Although the mix collects household names such as Boys Noize, Bergsonist and Surgeon, it also showcases younger artists, like Glasgow's Governmentfun and Indonesian duo Random Brothers.
Péneau is optimistic about Ensemble Mix as a concept and is entertaining the idea of a regular NFT-based mix. But he's also realistic about the possibilities of what comes next, underlining that the tools themselves aren't necessarily radical.
"It seems like things are moving fast, and that producers and electronic music artists are starting to understand the possibilities that these tools can offer, so it's getting easier to communicate about Web3," he said. "The conversations are getting more nuanced, despite the bad rep this space is getting because of scam projects or bad actors."
He added: "I'm far from being an evangelist though—for me these are just technological tools, and what's interesting is how people use them."
Find out more via the Ensemble Mix page.
Tracklist
01. Space Dimension Controller - 2076 AD
02. Jacquès - Eclipse
03. 0x-Jitzu - Artificio Naturale
04. Bergsonist - Breakthrough
05. Nautiluss - Exit Strategy
06. Bagvs - Untitled 13
07. GovernmentFun - Squelch
08. CRISPR - Locus Structure
09. Boys Noize - Detune
10. Thys - DoomTimelineTM
11. Random Brothers - BUDAKKICK
12. Surgeon - Jet Pack Mack
13. Maelstrom - Hand in Hand
14. Void Palace - Brainwave
Ensemble Mix is out on March 24th, 2022.
Photo: Elizaveta Porodina
