Audience as Co-Creator: The New Age of Interactive Creation

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On April 30th, TikTok creator Megan Broni, AKA Girl on Couch, uploaded a video asking DJs to remix a song she wrote: “I’m looking for a man in finance, with a trust fund, 6’5, blue eyes.” The song went viral, and the rest is history, with dozens of remixes and interpolations of the catchy tune over the past month. Even brands got in on the fun.

About a month later, famed hip hop producer Metro Boomin tweeted a SoundCloud link to “BBL Drizzy”, a beat he created sampling a parody song by King Wilonious bearing the same name. Boomin invited the public to add their verse for a chance to win a free beat and, later, an additional $10,000 for the winner and another free beat for the runner-up. Artists from all over the world rushed to the booth to come with their beat Drake diss. There was a salsa remix and a Gregorian chant. A couple played it at their wedding. And, of course, the brands made an appearance. A winner has yet to be announced (understandably so, a lot of the music is very good).

The History of Crowdsourced Remixing and the Rise of Interactive Co-Creation

“BBL Drizzy” and “Man In Finance” may occupy differing spheres in the cultural zeitgeist, but both Song of the Summer candidates are products of massive online crowdsourcing. Music created through online crowdsourcing isn’t necessarily new. In 2010, DJ Shadow launched the DJ Shadow Remix Project, inviting his fans to remix, mashup, and cover his music to pay tribute to his 1996 album Endtroducing. Remixes and covers were a major part of the blog and SoundCloud era of the early 2010s. Most recently, TikTok, being an audiovisual social media platform, is a machine for viral sound remixing.

What makes this era of online remixing different from those of the past is that rather than fans and netizens referencing songs that have already been created, they are invited into the creation process. Both Boomin and Broni released an unfinished element with the intent for their audiences to turn that element into a finished song. The audience transcends their traditional station as passive consumers and fans to active co-creators and collaborators alongside their favorite artists. This is especially true with the BBL Drizzy Beat Giveaway, where participants not only get to asynchronously collaborate with a top producer and benefit from the visibility that comes with it but also get to claim their small part of pop culture history.

Benefits and Opportunites of Interactive Creation

Interactive creation has clear benefits for large artists and creators. It can be a powerful discovery engine and mechanism for community engagement. Fans who are creators themselves have an opportunity to build their own platforms with the help of their fellow fans and artists they look up to. Artists get to build on their lore and further engage their communities. I predict that we’ll see more artists and online creators co-creating with their audiences because it’s an impactful, low-cost form of marketing. That is especially useful as corporate marketing budgets that fund celebrity and creator brand deals have started to dry up due to interest rates remaining high for the foreseeable future.

What does this mean from a founder or VC perspective? There is an opportunity for blockchain-based solutions tailored for online creators. Interactive co-creation, like all forms of online creation, can get messy on the IP front. Using someone else’s work without proper attribution is, unfortunately, the path of least resistance on the internet because there are few embedded solutions that acknowledge creators’ ownership, stated terms, and compensation requirements. Blockchain technology, with its immutable ledger and programmable smart contract, is uniquely able to address this problem.

As an investor, I’d look into Story Protocol and Lukso. They are both creating decentralized, embeddable solutions that enable creators, artists, and fans to easily interact with works they love in a way that’s fair to the original creator. I think both companies have a good chance at scaling since they are building blocks meant to support multiple consumer-facing applications. I’ll go deeper on this in a future post. Overall, I’m excited about interactive creation, the opportunities it can create for web3, and how it can make a better, more interactive internet and cultural landscape.

Song of the Week

News

TikTok creators are suing the US government over the ban on 1st Amendment grounds.

ChatGPT pulled the Her voice. The company denies it knowingly copied Scarlett Johanssen’s actual voice for the soundalike voice, claiming it “belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.” Do you think ScarJo really has a vocal twin running around?

Bumble acquired the group messaging app Geneva in a bid to expand further into friendships. Those vows of chastity seem to be working.

Spotify is getting sued by the Mechanical Licencing Collective. The MLC claims that the streaming giant’s bundled subscriptions created a $150 million loss for songwriters.

Speaking about music, Sony Music is warning AI developers not to use any of its content to train their models. This is a response to the EU’s AI Act, which requires developers to disclose the content used to train their models.

Trouble in paradise at Social Capital? Famed investor Chamath Palihapitiya is struggling to raise his next fund.

Web series Chicken Shop Date and Hot Ones are now eligible for Emmys. YouTube takeover, anyone?

Microsoft-owned game developer Activision is opening a standalone studio in Warsaw.

Kevin Parker of Tame Impala fame sold all of his work, including future work, to Sony Music Publishing.

Deals

Polymarket, a NYC-based web3 betting market, raised a $45mm Series B round led by Founders Fund and $25mm in a second round led by General Catalyst and Polychain. Additional investors include Dragonfly, Vitalik Buterin, Digital Currency Group, and Naval Ravikant. Read more at Beincrypto.

InstaAstro, a Noida-based astrology platform, raised a $2.3mm pre-Series A round led by Artha Venture Fund. Additional investors include LogX Ventures, IR Capital Partners, Singularity Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Aloke Bajpai. Read more at Funderlyst.

Cross The Ages, a Marseille-based mobile gaming platform, raised $3.5mm in early-stage funding led by The Sand Box. Read more at Chainwire.

DunTeng Network, a Changsha-based web3 game ecosystem, raised a $3mm Seed round led by Sequoia Capital. Additional investors include DWeb3 Capital and Foresight Ventures. Read more at China.com.

FaZe Media, a Frisco-based media company, spun off from GameSquare and raised $11mm in angel funding from Matthew Kalish. Read more at VentureBeat.

Goalai, a China-based web3 fantasy football game, raised $3mm in early-stage funding at a $25 million pre-money valuation. IDG Capital led the round and additional investors include Kucoin Ventures, Optajoe, and Chain Captial. Read more at Bitget.

Kasagi, a Singapore-based creative and animation studio, raised $12mm in early-stage funding led by Burda Principal. Additional investors include Sfermion, CMT Digital, Superscrypt, Hashed, and Gold House Ventures. Read more at Tech in Asia.

Morph, a Singapore-based L2 ecosystem for consumer apps, raised a $19.3mm Seed round led by Dragonfly and an additional $1mm in angel funding. Additional investors include MEXC Ventures, Everyrealm, LayerZero Labs, Symbolic Capital, MH Ventures, Pantera Capital, Foresight Ventures. Read more at CityBiz.

Multipool, a UAE-based decentralized exchange, raised $650k in early-stage funding led by NxGen Ventures. Read more at Derek T McKinney.

Param Labs, an Abu Dhabi-based game studio, raised $7mm in early-stage funding led by Animoca Brands. Additional investors include Merit Circle, TRGC, Double Peak, MH Ventures, Artemis Capital, Delphi Ventures, Cypher Capital, P2 Ventures, and Mechanism Capital. Read more at Funderlyst.

Sekuya, a Singapore-based, raised $1.06mm in early-stage funding led by SingularityDAO. Additional investors include OIG Capital, Gains Associates, SingularityNET, R1n, W3GG, Newtribe Capital, Seedthrift Ventures, and Bigger Than Race VC. Read more at FinanzNachrichten.

Steel City Interactive, a Sheffield-based boxing video game company, raised $10.03mm in early-stage funding, led by Novator Partners. Additional investors include London Venture Partners. Read more at 30Gram6.

Zest Protocol, a London-based onchain Bitcoin lending platform, raised a $3.5mm Seed round led by Timothy Draper. Additional investors include Flow Traders, Trust Machines, and Binance Labs. Read more at Beincrypto.

Zeta Market, an NYC-based De-Fi derivatives trading platform, raised $5mm in early-stage funding led by Electric Capital. Additional investors include AirTree Ventures, Selini Capital, Marius Ciubotariu, Genia Mikhalchenko, Anatoly Yakovenko, Mert Mumtaz, Richard Wu, Stepan Simkin, Alex Smirnov, Nom, JMR Luna, and Digital Asset Capital Management. Read more at E27.

Jobs

Farcaster is hiring a React Native Staff Engineer (DM your resume or LinkedIn to Dan)

Nylon is looking for a Freelance Music Writer (Remote)

Taylor Poindexter is looking for an experienced Backend Staff Engineer (Remote - ET time zone)

Ben Tossell is looking for an Assistant (AI whizzes are encouraged to apply)

Daybreak Ventures is looking for candidates for their portfolio companies (engineers, operators, and designers are encouraged to apply)

Swimply is hiring a Chief Pools Officer (Travel Required)

Party Favors

Looks like Vince Staples is dropping an album later this week. Here’s the tracklist.

Childish Gambino also dropped his new album, Atavista, last week.

Get your tickets to the Visions Summit by Future Commerce. It’s worth it - the speakers include many interesting figures in consumer tech and culture.

BADBADNOTGOOD dropped a new EP.

Learn more about Base’s Onchain Summer from Raven Trammell!

Read Cardi B’s profile in Rolling Stone.

Need spontaneous plans? There’s an app for that.

A brand’s guide to navigating coolness in 2024.

DJing in the metaverse.

Disco Ball of the Week