Comment by @ruthless • Hey
Ryan, you've got a knack for making things sound so... simple. It's like telling someone lost in a forest to just "find a path".
So, for artists feeling
Comments
- First of all, your three pieces of advice are absolutely correct. I talk about collaboration and unexpected partnerships ad nauseam.
Second, this was not a catch-all, fully encompassing “here’s how to win at web3” strategy. This was literally in response to the panelists feeling stressed about having to learn about business. It was quite specific to something you missed 99% of—you joined in the last minutes. I have the screenshots.
**To quote my post:** “While I would always suggest that learning business is better than not, I thought I'd perhaps shed just a little light on why this feels the way it does right now and what we can possibly look forward to.”
Said again: LEARN BUSINESS. Do everything Ruthless is suggesting and more! But since there’s fatigue and apathy towards that strategy, here’s why it feels so difficult….
You always seem to be looking for a fight with me and I’m really not sure why.
Regardless: The tools are what enable and shape the art, the marketing, and the visibility/consumption. Marketing via Flyers and Galleries and Press were all hard work relative to today but easier than what came before. Websites enabled global visibility but a lot of hard work relative to today had to be done to drive traffic to those sites. Blogs and early social networking sites reduced the workload still, networks made things easier. Instagram gave very clear and specific tools/formats for artists to reach 1+ billion users at a fraction of the previous cost. Then TikTok made it easier than ever for single pieces of content to reach 1+ billion users. WORK IS STILL REQUIRED! Success is NOT guaranteed! Marketing still has to be done! But using a tool like TikTok enables the artist to leverage the entire user base of TikTok. Each person that views the video is making a judgement and passing it along to the next person. Reaching 1 billion views on TikTok is incredibly easy compared to getting 1 billion views in a downtown NYC gallery. Crucial to understanding this point: A video with 100,000 views had more than 100,000 people do work to reach that view count. The artist was just one of 100k+ people working to make that success happen.
Artists coming from web2 to web3 are coming from systems which let them scale with ease to systems which for right now, at this moment in time, are like handing out flyers on the street begging people to come see a show. There’s effectively no one on Lens and the collectors/prices reflect that. When Lens has more users and more apps which leverage those users, I repeat: MORE APPS WHICH LEVERAGE USERS, art will be easier to distribute and sell. Greater reach with less effort.
Artists can do a lot in web3 right now to collaborate and jumpstart their business. Again, your advice is totally valid. But if they’re wondering why it feels so difficult in web3, which is the point of this post, I’m here to say it’s because it is! They had billions of people helping them in the old systems, and now they don’t.
To that point: creating apps which leverage the user base will provide outsized returns if successful.
Someone who makes artwork about Fries can absolutely make all the social connections they want on Lens. Build your business! That doesn’t negate that trying to sell and collaborate right now is still like going door to door, artwork in hand, relative to the previous systems. Creating a Fries app which generates infinite content, however, means every user on Lens can create/use that data infinitely. People who have never met this artist can come across Fry Memes in their timeline, learn about and use the Fries app to create more Fry Memes, and then spread the memes themselves. The artist did nothing in that chain of events, the Lens user and the app did all the work.
If you don’t think devs are sitting around waiting for ideas you’re mistaken. Greatly. Since the middle of June I’ve already talked to more than 20 devs who are all telling me “I want to build something, I want to explore this. I want to get involved in this somehow!” It’s almost a daily occurrence, frequent enough that I have an iOS note with text and links ready to copy/paste at any time. It is specifically why I’m giving that advice. It’s why I’m trying to create a community for all these devs who are dying to build -something- and getting potential users of those apps to signal demand for a specific app/genre/feature/preference/etc helps everyone.
There is both desire and demand for great apps, from both sides.