Weekly Update: SXSW @ The AlgoRanch, Forbidden Deck Slides, Art Bounty w/ ZestBloom!

Wipe your cowboy boots on the front mat before you cross the threshold into another edition of Dequency’s weekly update. Subscribe to be the first to hear about product releases, company news, coin news (👀), and other important updates. YEEHAW!

Mom, can you pick me up? I’m at the intersection of Music and Crypto

This week, we’re coming at you live from ATX, where we’ve been IRL degens and appreciating the creativity that happens when you introduce artists to new technology. Let’s dive in!

Greetings From the AlgoRanch

From virtual galleries to charity NFTs to on-chain congressional campaigns, it’s clear that the Algorand universe is exploding with creativity. Algorand hosted several panels featuring founders, operators, and leaders in the space — it was conversational, lively, and informative for the crowd that gathered in the backyard of “The Bungalow” on Rainey St.

Team Dequency was lucky enough to participate in a panel entitled “The Greatest Disruption: How a Decentralized Music Industry Puts Power Back in Creators’ Hands” alongside our friends from STOI, MetaGood, and ANote Music. We love that we’re one of many puzzle pieces when it comes to building an ecosystem that truly supports artists, giving them the tools to make a living on their own terms — and we love how much Algorand is supporting that vision.

We’re going to talk about building more opportunities for creators every chance we get

Blockchain: It’s Tricky 😏

One of the many cool things out of the AlgoRanch was that iconic hip-hop/rock artist DMC teamed up with STOI to premier his new song, “Million Scars”. STOI uses Algorand smart contracts to govern individual songs, in essence creating “on-chain LLCs”. We find this fascinating when it comes to digital ownership, and it’s cool to see an IRL artist with the level of acclaim of DMC getting experimental with us crypto folk.

We’re excited to see how the STOI framework enables other on-chain opportunities (sync, perhaps?) and look forward to the next wave of artists who see the value in this movement towards transparency and community.

video courtesy of Algorand (well, I didn’t ask, but I assume they’d be courteous)

Up Next: Reach Summit!

Dequency CEO Keatly will be presenting at the Reach Summit this weekend in Austin, chatting a bit about the broader on-chain music landscape and bringing it home to our favorite collaboration engine, sync (for the uninitiated: music + visuals = synchronization aka “sync”). Because this is a very casual blog, I’m just gonna screenshot a few of these slides he’ll be sharing… tgif, right?

(all dudes, tho… who are the biggest + best IRL to URL lady music artists?)

“the hockey stick of opportunity” is a thing I’d have to be stopped from saying if I were presenting

If your tweet doesn’t get the appreciation it deserves… screenshot that shit and throw it on a deck.

Check out the Reach Summit here, and make sure to follow our friends at Reach on twitter! They have the ambitious and critical goal of onboarding a million new devs into blockchain… LET’S GOOOO!

Just For Fun: Contest in partnership with ZestBloom

Presently, the Dequency roadmap is a bit like a buffet of all of our favorite foods, and our capacity is like a small plate. As much as we’d like to gobble down everything all at once… we need to pace ourselves. That means that we have to leave some of our fun ideas for later down the line. One of these “second course” ideas being a competition engine of sorts, where visual artists basically compete to reverse score a song with video, motion graphics, illustration. The winners could collaboratively mint the NFT and share royalties, which is really cool (esp. if you’re an emerging visual artist working with a well-established musical artist).

SO! While the fully-realized version of this is still a few months out, WE HAVE AN ORGANIC BOOTLEG VERSION RUNNING RIGHT NOW! Inspired by a twitter comment, our friends at ZestBloom have put a bounty on art to accompany any GoldFish song on Dequency.

So, what are you waiting for? Find your favorite GoldFish song, bust out your camcorder and mint something cool this weekend! Also, if you’re a developer and want to make our metaphorical plate a little more expansive… email us.

Thanks for taking time to catch up with us — have you clicked around the beta (we just lowered the prices on most sync license NFTs, btw)? How about joining the convo in our Discord, where I occasionally DJ and make everyone listen to “sad girl folk” while they demand Drake and BurnaBoy? It’s a good time — see you there!

Your Friends,

Team Dequency