This episode about web3, NFTs and the metaverse was previously published on the Profitable Musician Show.

Technology might seem a bit challenging for some, especially those on the older side. Web3, NFTs and the metaverse are the buzzwords now and we have Isabelle Bedoya from Fame Hackers to talk about those stuff in a language we can all understand.

She used to be a private chef and had to fly out to LA when she got a job as a live-in chef in Beverly Hills through social media. Her end goal was always music so she went to every networking event he can find on Facebook back then. She met people in the industry and ended up landing a job as an A&R for a label under Sony. She realized how much social media is a big factor even as they transitioned into web3, NFTs and the metaverse.

One of Isabella’s major focus with Fame Hackers is building a fan base. This goes back to Creator’s economy wherein the first layer is about the rise of social media in the early 2000s. The second era was when influencers started growing their audience. Brands saw the opportunity to monetize them. The third layer is when influencers and creators realized they can monetize their audience too. The fourth generation is where Web3 comes in because it’s ownership, NFTs, owning your data and stuff like that.

This is a high-level overview of why it’s important to grow your fan base because we are in that era of personal branding. Those who create a good personal brand and establish their own fan base, they are going to be super successful and way more successful than general brands because people are getting tired of seeing the big corporations win.

Web3, NFTs and the metaverse

Web3 is such a big buzzword. It’s a bigger buzzword than NFTs now. Web2 is the internet as we know it. Web3 is based on ownership. If I post something, it’s going to be on the blockchain. It’s different than the sense that Web3 is based on the blockchain. Whatever you do, post, interact with, you are buying or selling, it’s attached to you. You can prove ownership due to the blockchain.

The metaverse is like the virtual world. It’s crazy because you can buy virtual land and virtual real estate. Some people are building, especially if there are companies that are building virtually, because we all know that this is the future. This is happening. The metaverse is this digital world where you have avatars. You can buy your land. You can do virtual shows and all these different things. One of the biggest platforms for this is Decentraland. Again, it’s all crypto and blockchain-related. If you ever got the chance to go on Decentraland, it feels like a video game.

How do NFTs fit into all of this? NFTs, if you can think of a jump drive, and when you plug in the jump drive to your computer, you have all this information and content. That’s basically what an NFT is but virtually. When you buy an NFT, the NFT is like a vehicle to the contents that you are buying.

NTFs are more inner circle, people that are super fans because also, as an NFT holder, you can be part of what’s called a DAO, which is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. It pretty much means that as an NFT holder, as a token holder or coin holder, whatever it is, you can vote on decisions that they make.

In the traditional method, you have the CEO at the top of the pyramid and then shareholders, gatekeepers, and then the people, the consumers, whereas in the DAO, it’s upside down. The people govern what’s going on, and then that trickles down to the actual decision-maker. If you look at that from an artist’s perspective, your fans could have 100% full investment and say into what you do, which will only increase the fandom.

Everyone, if not jumping in, should at least be educating themselves on this. We are all learning as a whole world because it’s new to everyone. It’s new to humanity. Maybe it has been around for the past several years but it’s starting to make a bigger impact now. This is a whole transformation of generational wealth.

Do you have any recommendations of where artists can learn a little bit more about NFTs or figure out how they can explain this to their audience? Someone that does an amazing job at this, and he also has a YouTube channel, and I know he does quarterly virtual events. His name is Death Beach. It’s literally spelled like that on Instagram, @DeathBeach_. He is always sharing so much valuable information about this. He’s also helped a lot of artists already launch their tokens and stuff like that. He’s an amazing resource to learn from. The other thing to look into is Twitter and Discord. A lot of people in the Web3 space look for Web3 servers and crypto servers. It’s all about building community. It’s because there’s so much that needs to be built in this new phase of the internet, everyone has that mentality of like, “We want to help each other out.” It’s still a point where even coders are dropping their open-source codes on GitHub, so people can swipe the code and keep building on top because there’s much that needs to be done. It’s an awesome community.

It does boil down to community and fan engagement. If you bring your fans into the journey, then you are not going to be wasting your efforts because you are building everything like, “Do you guys want to see an NFT or do you want to see a Patreon?” You run polls, ask people, and make them a part of it. In that way, you will you start building the buzz.

You can even share the box stories of like, “I worked on my NFT. I was working the art.” You are having issues or whatever the case is. You can share those things, so people can get an insight and learn as you’re going through it. Katie Zaccardi, for example, does an amazing job at that whole fan engagement then showing them behind the scenes.

That’s important because it doesn’t matter if you are launching a Patreon, an NFT or whatever it is. It’s bringing your audience into it. A lot of the time, taking your product aside. Forget about the product and the offer. What is the community that you are building? What is the messaging? What is the vision? What is the mission? Why are all these people congregating?

A lot of the time, those messages will come through your lyrics and music. That’s how you start bringing a tribe together. A quick example is Taylor Swift. Her fans are either going to be hopeless romantics or people going through breakups. That’s her music. Think about the subjectivity of your music as you are building your community, your NFTs, and your Patreons in those spaces.

Find Isabelle on all her socials at @IzzWord.

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