Owning your music as an independent artist

An artist-track conversation with Joseph Goats (Jose Cabrera), a Venezuelan musician who has built a music life out of internet tools when there was no local industry to plug into - and, in 2017, not even a bank card. His model is what he calls digital street music: he plays for free, peer-to-peer, so anyone anywhere can support him directly. He traces the journey from discovering blockchain contests on Steemit (later Hive), to learning English along the way, to running impact concerts with Izzy and reimagining festivals for social impact and education. A wide-ranging talk on decentralization as a fractal - everyone has a fingerprint and something to say - on musicians as the bards who connect one community to the next, and on aligning music with nature and biology (Humberto Maturana and autopoiesis). He closes by playing a song.

• Digital street music: Jose plays for free, peer-to-peer, so anyone anywhere can support him directly - a model that worked when his country had no music infrastructure and, in 2017, no bank cards at all.
• Decentralization as a fractal - everyone has a fingerprint and something to say, and the tools let each person create their own space and connect it to others. The real problem decentralization has to solve is fragmentation.
• He entered through writing and blockchain contests (Steemit, later Hive), and watched the community fork Hive after a hostile takeover - proof that a community can branch and keep going.
• Musicians as bards and nodes: the role of the artist is to travel between communities, vouch for people, and bring them together - turning a peer-to-peer connection into a real-world visit, tour, or festival.
• He wants music aligned with nature and biology (Humberto Maturana, autopoiesis), so a song can carry knowledge to anyone regardless of titles - and the work that matters is reimagining festivals for social impact and education.