“Say It’s Possible” Now a Programmable & Customizable Crypto NFT Song!
Terra Naomi talks about the song that inspired thousands, how it works as an NFT & how she paved the way for other musicians on YouTube
Rare Digital Bird, Episode 10
Interview with Terra Naomi about her new programmable NFT, “Say It’s Possible” — the song that inspired thousands, how it works, how she paved the way for other musicians on YouTube, how crypto / finance helps artists build a solid future, getting the rights back to her music and more.
An angel of a voice; a trailblazer who somehow finds herself involved in the next big things; a fighter, and as much an independent as she is an independent artist; a musician to the core — multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and an octave range that’s hard to compete with — this is Terra Naomi. And we haven’t even covered how she’s also a composer, meditation facilitator, multidisciplinary artist, including an NFT visual artist! Get some popcorn and get comfortable — we’ll be unpacking a few of Terra’s adventures in this interview!
🎸 Purchase a Limited Edition here! TBD https://bit.ly/SayItsPossible-LtdEd
Follow Terra Naomi
💖WEBSITE https://terranaomi.com/
💖ASYNC ART https://async.art/music
💖TWITTER https://twitter.com/TerraNaomi
💖DISCORD https://discord.gg/U9NVFmESeh
💖INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/TerraNaomi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00:00 Coming Up!
0:01:44 What’s Rare Digital Bird?
0:02:21 Using salads to explain the basics of Async Music
0:10:12 Who is Terra Naomi? What is “Say It’s Possible”?
0:12:27 How Terra got into music
0:13:06 Terra’s story about performing for the first time
0:14:31 How Terra manages stage fright
0:18:36 What inspires Terra
0:21:59 Terra blends her meditative practice with her art
0:24:31 Terra’s Creative Process
0:29:05 How Terra paints with sound
0:30:50 Terra shares the history of and story behind “Say It’s Possible” 0:39:06 Terra explains her “Say It’s Possible” project with Async Music
0:41:01 The interesting thing about recording the programmable piece, “Say It’s Possible”
0:44:12 How long it took Terra to work on the Async project and how she reflected on her experiences to build the visual side of the piece
0:47:32 Terra explains the audio and visual parts of her Async project in detail
0:51:24 We discuss the different type of collectors and Terra’s plans for collaborating with them.
0:54:19 The time between when Terra drops her piece on Async and when she accepts the highest bids for the stems of her piece.
1:00:42 Terra shares a story about the wild ride with Say It’s Possible and what is most interesting about what happened around the song.
1:07:27 The people who were inspired by “Say It’s Possible”
1:08:26 How Terra got into the blockchain space
1:12:18 Terra’s strategy with crypto
1:13:35 Terra talks about finance from her perspective as a woman and as a career artist
1:20:14 What Terra’s advice would be to musicians and artists coming into the space
1:26:56 Terra makes a strong statement about the supportive nature of the NFT community and how she’s helping her audience
1:28:34 How the recent world happenings effected Terra creatively, socially and mentally
1:34:27 Terra’s current and upcoming projects with some of her favorite artists and photographer in the space, and re-recording her songs to have the masters owned collectively in a way that it doesn’t run into securities problem and more!
1:39:56 Terra talks about how in the NFT space, the conversation has shifted in favor of paying for artists’ works
1:46:24 Where can you find Terra’s work?
You can read all this, or you can click HERE instead for Episode 10 of the “Rare Digital Bird” Series — with closed captioning!
🙏 Appreciate this transcript? Help me reach other readers by smashing the 👏 button for up to 50 claps at the ⬇ bottom of this transcript, please and thank you.
[00:01:44] What’s Rare Digital Bird?
Hey, peeps! What’s up? I’m Ann Marie Alanes, and this is Rare Digital Bird — a series about artists, their creations, and their experiences — both good and bad — using blockchain technology.
In Episode 9, I followed up on the results of Async’s first wave of musicians. Who were the lucky bidders, the winners? And how much ETH did each musician take home? You can find out up here via the link to Episode 9. As many of you who are subscribed to my channel know, I’ve been featuring a number of musicians using the Async Music platform at Async.art.
[00:02:21] Using salads to explain the basics of Async Music
Async Music makes it easy for artists to program their songs or music pieces so that they change over time. Well, I’ve been told that people are still having a hard time understanding this concept, which is understandable. And it never hurts to find more ways to explain it, so today I’m going to give you the basics of Async Music using food to help explain, because I love food. So, today we’re going to make an Async salad song. Just go with it.
Now, a salad song is made up of different ingredients, or what Async calls variants. A salad usually has leafy greens, dressing, toppings, and it can also have fruit. In fact, it will have fruit because I’m the salad artist here. I get to decide what ingredients I put in my salad song. But this is an Async salad song, so instead of just one type of leafy green, dressing, fruit, and topping to make one salad song, I, the artist, can include many varieties under each category. This allows there to be several same same, but different versions of my salad song by choosing an ingredient from each category, or what Async calls a stem.
For this particular salad song, there are four stems: the leafy greens category, which we’ll call the leafy drum stem; the salad dressings, which we’ll call the vocal dressing stem; the fruits, which we’ll call the guitar fruit stem; the toppings, which we’ll call the effects topping stem, because my salad song is more Eminem-inspired than Ed Sheeran-inspired, except for that one dance-y song that he made.
Anyways, now, with the leafy drum stem, just like there are many types of leafy greens, there are many types of drums: snare drum, tom-toms, congas, steel drums. Those could all be under one stem or category. Here we have Romaine lettuce, a wet, crispy type of drum. Is that the right word? Baby spinach drums. Versatile drum. Popeye. Muscles. You guys remember who Popeye is? No? I’m the only one? Anyways, baby kale drums. Nutritious, popular. Lots of people like it. They like to beat these drums. Chips? Yeah. Nope, not as crispy as potato chips. Yeah, pretty weak. Arugula drums. Who bought this? No. All in all, these are the ingredients for each stem. They are all a part of my Async salad song.
Next topic, there are three types of owners at Async Music: the stem owner, the master owner, and the limited edition owner. Let’s start with the stem owners. Since we have four stems, we can have four stem owners. If you are the highest bidder for this vocal dressing stem, you get to be the owner of this stem, and you get to decide which dressing goes in the salad. If someone else is the highest bidder for the guitar fruit stem, they get to decide which guitar fruit goes into the salad bowl along with your chosen dressing.
Let’s say you chose toasted sesame Vogel dressing variant of the dressings, and the other person chose mandarin orange guitar fruit. Those would go into the salad bowl. I would still own the leafy drum stem and the effects topping stem. So, I’ll choose the Romaine and crispy chow mein noodles, and we collectively made an Asian salad. Did you guys guess that? Did you guess it before we put it all in there? I figured the toasted sesame Vogel would give it away, but these chow mein noodles, that’s a dead giveaway. They’re not very inclusive. They only want to be in Asian salads. They need to grow up, get with the times.
Now, let’s say you really wanted ranch dressing. You can only have one ingredient or variant in the salad bowl at a time, so the sesame dressing would get switched out. Ranch dressing is great and versatile, by Midwest standards anyways. Did you know that they put this on pizza and dip their fries in it? Yeah. Hey, Siri. “Yes.” Is ranch dressing on pizza a Chicago thing? “Yes, and it’s what’s wrong with America.” Oh. Okay. “I heard that.” Whatever, Siri.
So, those are the stem owners. Now, on to the master owner. There can only be one. Yes. Someone can even put a bid on the whole dang salad song with all the ingredients. The highest bidder wins all of this, but has no control over what the stem owners put into the salad bowl. That could be fun to just let go and see what salads the stem owners come up with.
The last type of owner is the limited editions collector. There are three edition blanks: platinum, gold, and silver, the most affordable of the three. They are aesthetically different, but essentially do the same thing: record the current salad song version that’s currently in the bowl. There are no bids involved here. Anyone can purchase a limited edition blank. Like the master owner, limited edition owners don’t get to decide what’s in the bowl, but they can keep an eye on any changes to this salad song. In fact, if the stem owners are actively changing these salads up, watching the stems can be like a sport, especially if the changes are quick and unexpected.
For instance, as the stem owner of the toppings, I could wait until there’s downtime and change out the effects from crispy chow mein to pecan pralines for 15 minutes, and then change it back. If you were lucky enough to be keeping an eye on it at that time, and you’re ready to record with your limited edition blank, you might have recorded yourself a very rare salad, because who knows when the stem owner will do that again, especially when there are 107 other combinations.
So, those are the basics of how Async Music works. Hopefully, this helped you understand it. And if not, at least this has inspired me to make some weird ass salad combinations. Speaking of inspiring, let’s get back to my desk so I can introduce you to a very talented musician who’s making her own Async salad song. So, see you there.
Hey there. Have you hit that Subscribe button yet? What about that notification bell? By the way, if you want me to do another visual metaphor for something else in the NFT space that you don’t understand, please write it down in the comments right down there.
[00:10:12] Who is Terra Naomi? What is “Say It’s Possible”?
Okay. So, this New York-born singer, songwriter, composed, sound meditation facilitator, multidisciplinary artist, currently residing in L.A., has inspired hundreds of people to cover her song, “Say It’s Possible.” The YouTube video for the song went viral overnight, garnering millions of views. She wrote “Say It’s Possible” within minutes of watching the Al Gore documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Her name: Terra Naomi.
Consequently, she was invited by Al Gore to perform at Live Earth at the Wembley Stadium in London. She was the only new artist who was invited, performing alongside big name artists, such as John Legend, Metallica, Madonna, and the Foo Fighters. She also played Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair and won the very first YouTube Award for Music Video of the Year. She low-key created a new way of composing music alongside her visual art in the NFT space, and has high-key reincarnated “Say It’s Possible” into a programmable NFT song using the Async Music platform, which dropped today on Async.art. Make sure you check that out.
And she’ll be performing different combinations from that same programmable song tomorrow, debuting as the first artist on Minted Music Live, a simulcasted show solely for NFT music and performance artists, which CryptoBarman, Weinbagz, and I will be hosting on Clubhouse. The link to that event and to Terra’s programmable song is in the description below. There are so many things she’s been a pioneer in and has accomplished that would take the whole show to talk about, so I’m going to leave it to her to tell you the rest.
[00:11:59] Interview begins
Ann Marie Alanes (AMA): Well, hello.
Terra Naomi (TN): Hi.
AMA: Well, you look great.
TN: You do, too.
AMA: Thank you. How does it feel to be a year older, having gone around the sun one more time?
TN: I don’t feel any older than I did yesterday or two days ago.
AMA: That’s good. So, this is exciting. I’m very excited about what’s coming up. So, I guess we can start at the very beginning and just tell me how you go into music.
[00:12:27] How Terra got into music
TN: How I got into music was I was a child, and I was kind of a performer of a child. I would like to stand around in the living room and sing Annie. I was that kid. And my parents put me in piano lessons when I was about four, and then French horn when I was eight. And meanwhile, I was in all the school plays and musicals. So it was kind of just from the very beginning of time, I was making music.
AMA: Do you have any stories around that?
TN: I do. I have so many stories around it.
AMA: Let’s pick one.
[00:13:06] Terra’s story about performing for the first time
TN: I think, as far as the intersection of music and my childhood goes, I would say one of my favorite stories is when I was about 10 maybe, I entered this talent show. And I can’t remember the name of it, but it was in this, like, strip mall space and I sang this Whitney Houston song. It was “The Greatest Love of All.” “I believe the children are the future. Teach them well, and let them lead the way.”
AMA: Beautiful song.
TN: I was so nervous. I had never sung by myself. I had never sung with a microphone. I had never sung in front of like a crowd and judges and all this stuff. And I sang this song, and as I walked off the stage, I heard this woman say to her friend, “She had no range.”
AMA: Oh.
TN: Which is hilarious because I actually have about a four-and-a-half octave vocal range and I went on to be a lyric coloratura soprano, so that’s like being able to sing all the notes.
AMA: Wow.
TN: Yeah. And I just thought it was really funny. And I like to tell that story to people, to kids and stuff. And it’s like you just really don’t know where your talent will take you and how you can develop as a singer. And when people say…they said that, it was sort of like…I think I… I don’t know. It really hurt my feelings for a while. I mean, obviously when I was a kid.
[00:14:31] How Terra manages stage fright
TN: I mean, I was just terrified. I had such bad stage fright as a kid. I was terrified to perform in front of people. I was terrified to speak. I was so afraid of speaking, public speaking. And so, once I got over some of that, I realized, “Oh. I can sing any note I want to sing.” You know? So it was kind of cool.
AMA: How did you even get over that?
TN: I don’t know. I mean, I still get it sometimes. And more speaking than singing. In fact, with Clubhouse, when I first started speaking, like just going into rooms in Clubhouse. And in Clubhouse, you’re completely anonymous, like they don’t see you. But I was so scared whenever that was. I guess I joined in December at some point. And I would go in, and I was so scared to, like, jump in and start talking. And my voice would start shaking, and my heart would start pounding. And I was like, “This is weird. It’s an app. I’m like talking into my phone. Who cares?” But I was so freaked out by it.
And I think… I don’t know. I’m always nervous. It just depends on the situation. Even when it’s like my hometown, like the Hotel Café, where I’ve played hundreds of times at this point probably, I still get a little nervous when I get on stage. But I kind of learned that there is this feeling of excitement and energy, and that the feeling of nervousness is actually not really…it’s kind of the same feeling as excitement, so I kind of try to look at it as that, like, “Oh, I’m so excited.” I just try to, like, reframe it now. I always get this, like, burst of energy, and I think reframing it so I don’t look at it as a negative, and I look at it as like, “I’m going to go up and share with all these people.”
And that’s another thing that I do is I think about what I’m about to give versus I think a lot of the early part of my career was trying to prove myself, trying to prove that I was worthy, that I was good enough, that all the voices of people who told me I couldn’t do what I wanted to do occupied a lot of space in my head. And I think the first part of my career really was almost reactionary, as opposed to taking action and doing what I wanted. It was more of like a reaction of being like, “I can do this. I’m good enough. You should accept me. You’re going to accept me.” It was like looking for this outside approval and validation. And so now, I really have learned to sort of flip that around and be like, “Oh, I get to share with all these people tonight. I get to give them…I have this one opportunity with this person, this person, this person.” All these, whether there’s 20 people in a room or 20,000 people in a room. Well, not in a room, but in a venue. And it’s sort of this thing where I get to say, “Oh, you know, I have, in the grand scheme of things, this really short opportunity to give these people this experience that might somehow move them, might help them connect to their own emotions, might help them express their own selves, and might inspire them, might encourage them to do something they want to do.” And so, if I can, like, reframe it that way, then I chill out.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: So it’s like managing the anxiety, because I always have anxiety. I have an anxiety disorder, so I’m like full of anxiety most of the time.
AMA: Wow.
TN: And it’s just a matter of, like, learning how to deal with it.
AMA: Well, you deal with it really well. I mean, you look very relaxed.
TN: So it seems.
AMA: Yeah. Reframing. That’s such a great point with turning anxiety into excitement. Let’s talk about your music, “Say It’s Possible,” “Machine Age.”
[00:18:36] What inspires Terra
AMA: I know that you’ve talked about how it was almost like you were a medium for the music. It kind of wrote itself through you. Can you tell me more about those things that inspire you? What inspires you? Who inspires you?
TN: Yeah. I mean, the way I see it, the way I understand it now is that we’re sort of…there’s all this energy. For creatives and artists, whatever you want to call yourself, people who make music or visual art or dance or whatever, there’s all this information floating around out there, almost like radio waves, if you can imagine it like that. And we’re sort of these antennas, and we can pick up on all this creative energy that’s just out there. And I think that’s kind of what happens when I write a song in that way is it’s like I’m… And I think it’s like filtered through my experiences and things that have happened to me, things I’ve done, things I’ve seen. But my favorite way to create art of any kind is to sort of clear myself and then just let that creative information that’s out there, let it come in.
I mean, mostly I’m inspired by life experience. I know I have friends who sort of read books or tap into something that they’ve read, and create from that place. For me, it’s really all experiential and things that I’ve gone through or just experiences I’ve had, things I’ve seen. I’ve been out in the world a lot, so there’s a lot to draw from. I’ve had a lot of relationships. I’ve had a lot of excitements and disappointments, everything from big, massive things to just like the day to day. And it all inspires me equally. So I just kind of pay attention and wait for something that catches me, catches my imagination.
But then, a lot of times, it’s also…I think I tend to write more when things are upsetting. I don’t write a lot when I’m overjoyed. I think for the most part, I see things that just really upset me. And whether it’s personally to me or whether it’s something bigger, like with “Say It’s Possible,” seeing Al Gore’s film and being really affected and terrified by climate change and not knowing how to reach people. Because I find it really interesting how there’s this sort of when something is so massive, our natural setting is just to sort of tune it out, and to kind of back away from it. Whereas, if it’s one little thing that’s happening, it’s like “Oh, we’ll fight for that.” But we get intimated or something…it just feels too big and too separate from our little personal lives a lot of the time. Yeah.
AMA: That’s definitely a struggle to somehow get people to act on those types of things.
[00:21:59] Terra blends her meditative practice with her art
AMA: You talked about clearing your mind. That’s really interesting to me because I did see that you’re doing something with the whale community as far as like wellness and singing bowls and things like that. Is that a part of your daily routine?
TN: It’s a meditative practice. The thing I’m doing with the whale community is called sound meditation. And you can even see, like there’s my gong back there.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: And there’s some bowls down there as well. They look like plant things. So, I think about a year and a half ago, I trained in sound meditation. But I’ve been practicing meditation and various forms of meditation and yoga for about 15 or 16 years. And so, last year, I finally was like, “You know what? I need to figure out how to share this part of what I do,” because it’s been so healing for me and so helpful for me as far as just accessing a place of calm and also accessing other parts of creativity. And so I did a training so that I could feel comfortable sharing my sound meditation practice with anyone who wants to experience it. It’s kind of the newest piece of creativity for me. And it’s like instead of having my own personal practice and then my art, it’s a really nice way to just blend it. My whole life, as long as I have been singing, people have always said that they found my voice to be very healing and comforting, so I thought, “Okay. I’ll share that.” We need it. We need all the healing we can get right now. So I’m really excited to start. It’s newer for me sharing this publicly, but it’s exciting.
AMA: That’s awesome. Yeah. Actually, it’s newer for you. Also, I think it’s new for the crypto community overall. You don’t usually see that in this space.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: And there is a lot of anxiety with the ups and downs, the rollercoasters of Bitcoin and…
TN: Yes.
AMA: …and trading and all of that, and just the crypto Twitter world and its drama.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: So we need you. We need you in this space.
TN: Oh, thanks.
AMA: So, I appreciate that.
TN: Thank you.
[00:24:31] Terra’s Creative Process
AMA: So, let’s talk more about your thought process, your creative process with creating your music, and even your art. You do have art on Foundation, Hic et Nunc. Why don’t you talk more about that, the process?
TN: Well, when I was a kid, my time and my creativity was split pretty evenly between visual art and music. And so, when I went to college, it was like, “Oh, well, now you have to decide. Are you a musician, or are you an artist?” And it wasn’t like “Oh, you can do everything.” It was sort of now I feel like people are…everybody is hyphenate, like “I have a million things that I do, and I love them all equally.” But at the time, years ago, it was like, “Oh, no. You need to focus on one thing. You have to do it really well. You can’t spread yourself too thin. Find that thing you’re the best at, and then go after that.” And so I just was like, “Well, I guess I want to be a singer, and I’m not going to really do visual art anymore.” And for a while, I didn’t. I would do little things for myself. I wrote a children’s book that I haven’t published, and I illustrated that. And I would just do little things that were fun for me. And sometimes, I guess, part of my crowdfunding campaigns, I would paint portraits and things.
But as I started diving into this world of being really at home and sitting still instead of being out touring, or during the pandemic really is when I started getting back into other parts of my creativity. And when I saw that there was actually a place to share this where people would appreciate it, and I just got really inspired by the NFT community. I started going on Clubhouse and listening and contributing to these conversations. And I had been into crypto for a few years already, and blockchain, but I hadn’t done anything with my music around it. I’ve just been kind of researching different projects and buying little bits of crypto as I could, and learning about it, and kind of like thinking, “Wow. This is the future, and I can see where this is going.” And I didn’t ever think that there would be a way for me to be part of it. It was more like, “Oh, this is this thing that I’m interested on the side,” kind of like my meditation practice. And now it sort of feels like everything is integrated: the music, the visual art, the sound meditation, and the crypto, and the blockchain. It’s like all kind of coming together, and it feels amazing because I feel like I get to be all the parts of myself. And even like sharing information, because I have a lot of information about a lot of things, and sharing that with people who are newer to the space. And it’s just cool. I feel very whole these days, if that makes sense, you know?
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Because I’m just like, “All these pieces are integrated.” And as far as like the art that I’m creating, it really all starts with music for me, at least right now. Although, I have to say, I started making something yesterday that started with… Well, but it also started… So it’s going to be audio-visual. Yeah, everything is pretty much audio-visual for me. There’s like some little collectible things that I was playing around with making, but my heart really is in bigger audio-visual projects, because I also scored for film and television. My background is classical music, and so I love using all…strings and orchestrations and all kinds of different instruments along with, like, electronic instruments and synths and different sounds and textures.
I was actually working on a collaborative piece with Sabet, and I discovered this new way of composing for me, and super excited about it. So it just kind of pushes… I don’t know. It’s just different for me, and I haven’t heard anything like it out there yet, and so I’m excited to share that. But what that did was open up this door for me to say, “Oh, I want to explore more of that composition method that I kind of stumbled upon.” And so I started making something yesterday that I’m making a visual for it, and then I’m also going to then orchestrate it in this new method that I found that I’m excited about.
AMA: Can you talk more about that, or you have to kind of keep it secret for the project?
TN: No. I mean, it’s basically…
[00:29:05] How Terra paints with sound
TN: To me, it feels like painting with sound. So it’s a process video. The one that I did with Sabet, it’s a process video. And I found myself, like in my brain, assigning different sounds to every sort of different element that I was seeing as it came up. And so the composition feels visually what…it sounds like what I see, because my brain, when I see stuff, kind of turns it into sound. What’s that word called? It’s like synesthesia or something. I can’t remember.
AMA: Yeah, synesthesia.
TN: Right?
AMA: Yes.
TN: So, that basically happens to me, and I basically see everything as sound. And so, I was watching this process video, and I just had this experience while I was composing, and I’m like, “Oh. That’s this, and that’s this.” I mean, I think it definitely is rooted in my film and television scoring because I can look at something and see the movement of a scene and kind of then get an idea for how the sound should go visually. So, yeah, the best way I can describe it is to say that it’s like painting with sound.
AMA: Interesting.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: I can kind of relate with that as dancer.
TN: Oh, yeah.
AMA: Because when I hear sound, I try to, I guess, reflect that in my movements.
TN: Yeah. You’re interpreting it. It’s like the way that we interpret it through the medium that I guess is most organic and natural for us, right?
AMA: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That’s so interesting. I love that.
[00:30:47] Terra shares the history of and story behind “Say It’s Possible”
AMA: So, speaking of all these projects, you have something going on with Async, which is…
TN: Yes.
AMA: …really exciting. Programmable music. And the particular song you chose is “Say It’s Possible.”
TN: Yes.
AMA: And it has a history. So let’s just, I guess, start from the beginning, for people who haven’t heard of this yet, are not familiar with it, and then bring us to Async.
TN: Well, so, “Say It’s Possible” was the first song of mine that really blew up on YouTube and blew up anywhere. In 2005, I was posting songs on Myspace. And then in 2006, I started posting songs on YouTube, and they were just acoustic songs, me in my guitar or me in the piano, like very basic setup. And I guess I didn’t realize this, but I was the first person to do that. And so people started watching, and I would get like a thousand views or whatever. And I was kind of thinking, I started putting stuff up on YouTube because I couldn’t afford to tour. Gas was too expensive. So it was just an option. It was like, “Okay, well, if I can’t afford to drive around in my car and go play music for 20, 30 people in different cities, like I’ve been doing, how am I going to continue to get my music out there?”
“Good morning! It is day six of the virtual tour. I’m Terra Naomi. I’m coming to you live from my apartment in Hollywood, California.”
And so I started posting these little acoustic videos on YouTube. “Say It’s Possible” was one of those. And just around this time in 2006, so like just 15 years ago, right around now, I think it was like June 16th or something like that.
AMA: Wow.
TN: Yeah. And so I posted it on YouTube. And it’s a really weird story. I was meditating a lot at the time, and I was on my way to a meditation retreat in Espanola, New Mexico, and I was looking at this Rolling Stone Magazine on the plane, and I was looking at a picture of Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who were the founders of YouTube. And I remember looking at this picture of Chad and being like, “I feel like he would really get this song, and he would really like it. And if he featured it on the front, if he could just somehow have stumbled upon it and featured it on the front page of YouTube, I think people would really…it would really move them. This song would resonate with a lot of people.”
And then I fell asleep, and I woke up in New Mexico, and I got this van and went up to the top of this mountain. It was like pitching a tent which I had borrowed from a friend. I had no idea what I was doing. And as I’m pitching this tent, my phone starts buzzing, and I look and I have a text from a friend, and she said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but you have tens of thousands of Myspace plays suddenly.” And I looked on the front page of my Myspace. You’re not featured. I can’t figure out where it’s coming from. And I was like, “What?” And so, she’s like, “Let me look around some more.” And so then she got back. She said, “You know what? ‘Say It’s Possible’ is on the front page of YouTube.”
And long story short, what I just told you exactly happened, exactly that way. And in fact, I started sort of consulting with the team about… YouTube Music didn’t exist yet, so I was sort of consulting about what musicians might want and whatever. And so I got to be friendly with those early YouTube employees through that process of talking about how they could make it a good space for…essentially how they could build YouTube Music. And at one point, a few months into my relationship with the team, I was like, “How did that happen? How did my video wind up on the front page that day?” And one of the women forwarded me an email, and Chad had literally been like, “I stumbled upon this video. And what do you think? Should we feature it?” And so then they featured it, and the rest is history.
And so, the cool thing about the song was that all these people, hundreds and then thousands of people around the world started covering and posting their own versions of the song. And I was an unknown artist, no label, no manager. I was working with a producer in L.A., but I didn’t have any… His demos that he had been making of my songs kind of weren’t…nobody was really interested in them. I just was like, “Well, I’m just going to put these acoustic songs up because that’s really who I am. And we’ll see what happens.” And all these people around the world started covering the song in multiple languages. And yeah, that’s really what got the industry excited. And so, the song has this sort of… Oh, and then the YouTube community voted, and I won the first YouTube Award for Best Music Video. So, it really was this collaborative song that felt like, “Oh, there’s this push. There’s this community push behind it now.” And it was the fact that this community embraced it and embraced me and started covering my song. That’s what really launched my career.
And so, when I heard about Async.art, well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, I was like, “Whoa. Collaborative, interactive art? I’m all in. I love this.” And then it just so happens that I got my publishing rights back from Universal Music this year. So it was really funny how that happened. I was like, “Oh, I’m going to have to fight to get them back. I’m going to have to buy them back.” And it turned out that it was in my contract that I would get them back this year. So I was like all prepared to figure out how to crowdfund and raise the money to buy back my publishing so I can release my songs. Because I made this album with Island Records that they didn’t like, and it got shelved after a few months, and the songs just never had a chance to really be out in the world. And so now I have the publish — And I couldn’t rerecord them. There was no point. It was like I didn’t own the rights to them. So what, I was going to put all this effort into recording these songs that I don’t even own? It doesn’t make any sense, you know? So now, I have the rights back. I can rerecord them. And it just felt like the perfect way to kind of celebrate that and start this new chapter where I get to take these songs that were so…they were some of the first songs I’d ever written.
And I can’t really explain what that feels like. Hopefully, not too many people have had this experience. I hope that people don’t ever have this experience. But when your art is, in a way, held hostage, and you have all this… I mean, that whole experience was so just soul-crushing and painful. And it was like I had built all this stuff on my own. I had this whole YouTube community behind me, and it was so exciting. And I got to play at Wembley Stadium and all these things. And then I handed over the rights to my music, and it was kind of a disaster. And then I couldn’t just take my songs and move on. It was like, “Well, you signed a deal, and that’s that. So, go write more songs,” which I did. And I love the songs that I’ve written since then, but there’s always been this kind of missing piece, which is I loved those songs, and they meant something to me. It wasn’t like I sat down. I mean, I love pop music, but a lot of times, pop songs are like a bunch of people, and they’re like, “Oh, here’s an idea for a hook. This would be a really great thing to write a song about.” And my songs all come from, like, deeply personal events in my own life, my own history, my own experiences. And to have them just kind of like “Oh, well, that didn’t work. Go write new ones.” It just didn’t really sit right with me.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Yeah. So now I have them back, and the first song is going to be this collaborative project with Async, and it’s exciting.
AMA: That’s so great. It seems like everything just kind of fell into place, and that’s awesome.
[00:39:06] Terra explains her “Say It’s Possible” project with Async Music
AMA: So, let’s talk more about this project with Async and all the intricacies of…
TN: There’s so many intricacies, right?
AMA: Yes.
TN: It’s a little complicated. I’m really happy that you’re here to help explain it.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Okay. So, I feel like the first thing to understand when you’re talking about this kind of a project is when you record a song, you record different layers of a song. So you record the drums. There’s a track for the drums. There’s a track for the bass. There’s a track for the guitar, for the vocals, for the keys, for whatever other elements. Everything is separated. And so, with this project, I recorded three different versions of the vocals and five different versions of the drums and percussion. And every version, every part, like the three vocal parts, for example, every different version of the vocals has a corresponding different piece of art that goes with it. But it’s all the same. So, like the vocals, for example, if you look at the art, the self-portrait that I did where I’m like laying down, that represents the vocals. And so there’s three different versions of that self-portrait. And depending on which one the person who ends up owning the vocal stem category, depending on which version they choose, that will change the art.
[00:41:01] The interesting thing about recording the programmable piece, “Say It’s Possible”
TN: And the interesting thing about recording this piece was usually any mix you do, like if I took a song like “Say It’s Possible” and I recorded an acoustic version, and then I recorded a full band electric rock version, we would mix those two really differently. So there would be parts in the acoustic version where maybe the vocal came up and the guitar came down, and the way you blend that together is quite different than the way I would blend or mix the vocals if I were recording a track that had 10 different instruments on it. And so, with this project, you can’t do that, so we had to create…I had to write parts and record them in such a way, and then I have an engineer who helps me mix my tracks, and then he had to mix them, get them ready to be mixed in such a way that it was modular. And it didn’t matter if the mix that we had was just acoustic guitar and vocals. It had to sound as good as a mix that was all the instruments, nine different tracks.
And so, it was really challenging to record in this way because there’s nothing…you can’t…it has to sound good in any configuration, and there’s 480 different configurations that are possible. So, it was a challenge. It was a challenge for us writing the parts, because normally I would write something that maybe it just comes in a little bit here or a little bit there, but this, I had to assume that there could be a scenario in which that track was isolated along with the vocals. And it’s like, “Well, that has to sound good.” Although, I have to say, in the way I designed it, acoustic guitar and vocals are always in the mix, because I wanted it to sound good always.
I didn’t want there to be something that was like just…I didn’t want someone to, like, turn off my voice, for example. Like I wanted the song to still sound good. I still want it to be my art. I didn’t want to create something…because I could have created something where you had the option to turn off the vocals or turn off the guitar, but I didn’t. I made it so there’s three different versions of the vocals and there’s two different versions of the guitar, but one of those is always playing. And so, that basic underlying guitar and vocals is always there. Because I didn’t want it to sound…I wanted each of the 480 versions, I wanted them to sound like something I’d be proud of, you know?
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Because, also, it’s not just an ambient… Ambient music is awesome, and I do that too, but it’s not like that where it makes sense, no matter… It’s like this is a song in a pop song format. It’s an indie folk song. And I wanted it to sound like… I wanted to preserve the integrity of the song, no matter what was going on. So it was pretty complicated.
AMA: Yeah.
[00:44:12] How long it took Terra to work on the Async project and how she reflected on her experiences to build the visual side of the piece
AMA: How long did it take to work on this?
TN: I worked on it for about two months, pretty much every day for about two months, because I created all the music and all the art.
AMA: Wow.
TN: Yeah. So, I started with the track, because I think everything for me, being primarily or more…being music has been a bigger part of my creative life, and now visual art is coming back in, but it’s really all been centered around music for so long that I started with the music. And once I got the track to where I thought, “Oh, I like this. This is cool. I see this coming together,” then I started on the art. And the first version, I actually did two versions of the visual art. The first version, I didn’t end up liking. I went through the whole thing and made all these different things, and then I kind of was like, “I just don’t like this.”
So then I went back and sort of thought about the story and everything around that song. And that song was like this moment in my life that had so much promise and so much excitement and so much anticipation and this massive success around it. And then it was such a heartbreaking, crushing experience with the label. And when I thought about that, the reality was that I didn’t understand who I was. I didn’t feel confident in being able to say, “I’m this. I’m not this.” And so I ended up in a situation where the music that was produced for my album didn’t feel right to me and was sort of at odds with who I was, and it didn’t work. It can’t work. It’s like it wasn’t authentic to me, but I didn’t know how to stop it and be like, “Wait. No. I don’t want to do that.” I was like, “Well, these people know better. They’re the professionals. What do I know? I’m this new artist.”
And so I started thinking about that, and that time really felt like just all this confusion around who I was, and these different versions of myself, and like not knowing how to stand up for myself, you know? And so, the art that emerged was this image of myself, a self-portrait where I’m sort of just lying down, and then in the background… And now, all these layers change too, so some versions you won’t see this background at all. But the background, if it ends up in the mix, is these different silhouettes of different pictures of me at different times. And it feels like this sort of lying down, overwhelmed, confused. Or maybe it’s like just resting and dreaming. It’s like the versions of ourselves that are in the background, and whether we see them or not, and how do we step into authenticity, essentially, is what the visual art piece of it, kind of where that came from.
AMA: Yeah. I’m looking at it now. It’s really beautiful.
TN: Thank you.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Thanks.
[00:47:32] Terra explains the audio and visual parts of her Async project in detail
AMA: Let’s talk about the different parts. So, you talked about having vocals, guitar. There’s also bass and strings?
TN: Yeah. There’s vocals, and then there’s acoustic and electric guitar in one track. There’s drums, like a drum kit, and percussion on one track. Then there’s bass and strings on another track. Or not a track, but like…what’s it called?
AMA: A stem?
TN: A stem. So, a collection. Yeah, a stem. So, there’s bass and strings, and then there’s bells and keys. And the reason that I put those together, like bass and strings, is because in the mix, they kind of occupy the same space. So, if somebody wanted to have a full indie rock sound, they could have the bass and drums. And if someone wanted to have more of like a coffee shop trio kind of sound, they could have just like strings and cajon.
AMA: What are the other elements visually? What are they connected to?
TN: Yeah. Okay, so the people, there’s just sort of people, silhouettes of people in the background. That’s bass and strings. The second layer and stem are the black outlines around those people.
AMA: Oh.
TN: And that is guitar. So, we’ve got acoustic guitar, or we have acoustic and electric guitar. And one of those two options is always in. The third layer and stem is there’s like a white fill over the whole thing, and also shadows around the figure. And those are drums and percussion. So, there are four different variations, four different variants of that. There are no drums, then there’s like drum kit only, there’s like percussion only, and then there’s everything (drum kit and percussion). And then the fourth layer and stem group is the sort of white luminescence. There’s just little…there’s like the faces get sparkly, or there’s like sort of a neon bright white outline. And that’s all based on the bells and synths. And there’s five different variants for that. And then the final layer in the foreground is the main body image, the self-portrait. And there are two options for that.
AMA: And that’s just the lead vocal and [50:19]?
TN: Yeah.
AMA: Okay.
TN: And the other thing about this that I realized, because I did want it to sound good, I wanted each of the possible 480 versions to sound great, no matter what configuration, so the way that I wanted it to sound was just guitar and vocal in the beginning. So every version has just guitar and vocal in the beginning. And I sent a bunch of them. I made like a bunch of different mixes and sent them to my brother, and I was like, “Check this out. It’s so cool. They all sound so different.” And he’s like, “I think you sent me all of the same one.” And I’m like, “Oh, you didn’t listen past the first chorus, did you?” Past the first verse, because everything sort of changes in the first chorus. And so he was like listening to just the beginning and being like, “It doesn’t sound any different.”
AMA: Okay. Good to know.
TN: Yeah. That’s the other thing. Yeah. It all starts out acoustic, and then it kind evolves into something different, depending on which variants you choose.
AMA: Okay.
[00:51:24] We discuss the different type of collectors and Terra’s plans for collaborating with them.
AMA: So, people are going to have a chance to bid on these stems and own them.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: As well as the whole master, where they can just own it and not have control over it…
TN: Right.
AMA: …if you were a layer owner. So it’ll be exciting to see people actually own this, and be able to play with it, and hear and see all the different combinations.
TN: That’s the best part to me, because I want to be active with my collectors. Hopefully, the people that collect it will be game for this, because I have this vision of being like, “Okay, collectors.” And I have a Discord, and I’ll make a channel on my Discord for the Async project. And I would just love it if we could kind of work together. And so, one day, we could be like, “Hey, let’s make like an indie rock version. Guy who has the vocal, pick this. Person who has the drums, do this.” And just kind of do it together and then announce to the rest of the community that is my audience or however we get the word out, like “Hey, everybody. There’s a coffee house trio version up today.”
And I feel like whatever version… Well, the first version that is going to be live will be my mix, which actually has everything in it. So I really wanted something that had this big, lush… I wanted people to hear what it would sound like if with all of the instruments in it. So, that first day that we launch it, folks can collect that version, which is the way I wanted the first master to sound. But then, once people buy it, it’s up to them. And so, I’m just kind of hoping that we can do fun things with it, because I think there’s all this stuff beyond just sort of collecting it on that first day. The thing that really makes Async so interesting and so cool and exciting is this ongoing relationship with the song and the collectors and the artists, and being able to work together to change it. There’s 480 different versions.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: So we could do a different version. We could change one element a day, and we wouldn’t even hear all of them in an entire year. So, I just think that’s really cool.
AMA: Yeah.
[00:54:19] The time between when Terra drops her piece on Async and when she accepts the highest bids for the stems of her piece.
AMA: Do you think you’ll play with it before it goes into the collector’s hands?
TN: I guess it depends on how quickly people buy the stems once the project is live. I get to play with it in the testing. There’s a test on the platform. And yeah, I guess, to be honest, I don’t know how that works. I don’t know how soon after it goes live, I don’t know when the bidding starts. So I imagine… How does that work?
AMA: So, there is some time between when it launches and then when…because usually someone will put maybe a bid in. They may not put it right away, or they may. It depends. And then it takes a while before it actually finalizes. So you have that time in between to maybe interact more with your fans by changing something or…
TN: Oh. Cool.
AMA: You still have control over that. And a lot of the artists from Wave 1…well, more Wave 2 because they saw with Wave 1, there wasn’t really a lot of action. So, Wave 2, it seemed like more of the musicians were into, like, “Okay, let’s see what we can play with, and how we can interact with the public, our fans, or the collectors,” or the potential collectors.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: “And see what they like and what gets a lot of activity.”
TN: Oh, that’s awesome. I’ll definitely do that.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: And I’ll definitely do Clubhouse rooms around it. And it would be really fun to be in a Clubhouse room and have someone be like, “Hey, do this,” and do it, and turn the drums off, and just trial…
AMA: That would be amazing.
TN: And people could mint it too, right? People can mint? So, while that’s happening, before someone buys the stems, I could make different versions, and people could mint them. Because the other thing I’ve seen a lot of is just kind of one version. Like when I flip through the versions that people have minted, I’m like, “It seems like they all just minted the same version.”
AMA: Yeah. That’s one thing that has come out of this is the limited edition blanks that you can do, that you could record whatever combination is currently playing or active.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: There have been several people that have seen certain things come out of that. A lot of people really value the fact that it’s still in your hands. So it is recorded on the blockchain, but it’s still owned by you, and it’s that combination. So a lot people value that.
TN: Oh, interesting.
AMA: And then another interesting thing that I noticed is sometimes you can change a combination for just maybe a limited amount of time.
TN: Right.
AMA: And that makes it very like “Wow, this is a rare kind of edition. We don’t know when it will ever, ever play again.” Especially once it leaves your hands, it’s in the collector’s hands. So, that type of edition that gets recorded could be like, “Oh, my gosh. I have this particular one.” You know?
TN: That’s cool.
AMA: And it’s kind of exciting. Yeah. So, cool things like that have come out of the whole limited edition type of blank recording things.
TN: Oh, I’m definitely going to do that, then. I didn’t even think about that time in between the time that I post it and people collect the stems, because yeah, it could. I could just… It might be fun to hold off a little bit on promoting. We just don’t know. I mean, I could launch it, and people could be like buying up the stems right away, right? I mean…
AMA: I mean, yeah, they’ll bid on the stems. They may bid on the stems, but then there’s the actual point where there’s like this end of auction time, and it’s like, okay, this is where all the, I guess, the hype around it happens.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: It’s like, “Okay, better bid now.”
TN: Yeah. Do you know how long the option is between the time someone puts a bid on? Is it 24 hours, like Foundation and stuff?
AMA: No. No, it’s longer than that, I think.
TN: Oh, that’s great.
AMA: Yeah. You have definitely several days to put a bid in, from experience from the past two waves.
TN: Great. Well, that’s exciting.
AMA: Yeah. I’d have to confirm it with Async, but usually there’s some several days before.
TN: Oh, my god. That’s so cool. So I’m definitely going to do a bunch of playing with different versions and changing things and making some… I think it would be fun to make some that people wouldn’t know about. Because if you don’t have the other… It’s not like you can scroll through all the variants and decide. If you don’t own that variant, you can’t access the other… If you don’t own the stem, you can’t access all the variants.
AMA: Right. Well, you can listen to the variant by itself.
TN: Oh.
AMA: You can definitely do that. You can’t pick and choose all the different variants to listen to.
TN: Right.
AMA: But you can definitely listen to, like go into a stem and then look at all the different variants for that stem…
TN: Oh, okay.
AMA: …and listen to it.
TN: I don’t know how I missed that.
AMA: Yeah, you can definitely do that.
TN: Well…
AMA: Yeah.
TN: But someone wouldn’t be able to mix them together and hear what it would sound like?
AMA: No.
TN: But I know what they would sound like, so it would be really fun for me to be like, “Oh, I’m going to take the bells version three and put it with…” Yeah, I’ll definitely do that, and make some cool mixes.
AMA: Yeah. I think it would be interesting to look at what the past musicians have done, too, with their art.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: I think it was Richie Hawtin. He actually even had people vote, like “Okay, which one do you want me to play next?” I think that’s what he did. So, yeah, it will be interesting to see what you come up with and…
TN: Oh, my god. I have to plan some cool things.
AMA: …and how you play with it. Yeah.
TN: Yeah. Now that we have a release date, a launch date, I’m going to… I’m like, “Okay, I’ll go backwards and plan some fun things leading up to that to really help educate my audience.” And then also, I love… Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about being able to change it. I thought about what I would do with the collectors once the stems have been collected, but I didn’t think about what I would do with everything while I was waiting for them to be collected.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: It sounds kind of fun.
AMA: It’s a lot of fun.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: Can’t wait to see that.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: So, did you want to talk about anything else regarding “Say It’s Possible”?
[01:00:42] Terra shares a story about the wild ride with Say It’s Possible and what is most interesting about what happened around the song.
TN: I wanted to just tell you briefly, the ride of “Say It’s Possible” was so wild because it was like this song blew up on YouTube, then I won the YouTube Award for Best Music Video, and I signed with Island and Universal. But I think in the story of this song, the thing that is the most interesting to me about it is that it kind of put me in this place where I was known enough to be offered all these really kind of strange and amazing opportunities, but it’s like I wasn’t well-enough-known that I had a team of people being around me saying like, “You can’t do that.” So I ended up playing “Say It’s Possible” in the most unbelievable places, like on top of the Gulmarg Glacier in Kashmir.
AMA: Wow.
TN: Yeah, like riding this chairlift. Because the Gulmarg Glacier is in the Himalayas, and it provides water for like a billion people. So, basically, that’s part of the reason that Kashmir is such a disputed territory, part of the reason, is because if you look at it geographically, you’re talking about this glacier that supplies water to the continent, to India, China, and Pakistan. And so it’s a very valuable piece of land. And so, that’s part of the problem. Obviously, there’s a lot of problems, but it’s a conflict zone. And so I went there. I was invited to go there to play my song as like this climate change anthem after Live Earth.
And Live Earth was wild because that was Wembley Stadium, and I was playing by myself in front of 85,000 or 90,000 people live, just playing solo onstage with my guitar. And I thought I was going to pass out, but mid-song, it all kind of was like, “Oh, this is okay. I’m not going to die.” But I literally was like imagining what I would do if I passed out onstage, like who would pull me off the stage. There was this guitar tech, this big burly guy, and I thought to myself, “Okay.” And before I went out there, he was handing me my guitar, and I was like, “If I pass out, just come get me, grab me, pull me off the stage.” I was so nervous.
And so, there was that experience. But then the experiences that I didn’t talk about as much were like these wild experiences touring in India and playing on this glacier where it was absolutely freezing. I’ll send you a picture of it. We had to take this chairlift up the Gulmarg Glacier. And the chairlift looked like…I mean, I don’t think it had been serviced in a long time. Because Kashmir had been a tourist spot. It had been a place where people would come to vacation. It’s so beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Absolutely stunning. But there’s such massive, horrible conflict and war, so tourists weren’t going there anymore. And so, there were still sort of some of the remnants of tourism, like this chairlift up a glacier where I guess there had been skiing. I don’t know. But this chairlift, it was like there was a power outage, like, every five minutes, and you’re dangling above the glacier, and the chairlift is going up and down. And there’s no safety bar or anything. I was just like… And so, we get to the top of this glacier, it’s freezing, and they wrapped me up in blankets, and they put this, like, sheepskin hat on me because I was so cold. I’m like coming from Los Angeles, and all of a sudden, I’m standing on a glacier, and they’re like, “Okay, play.” And I’m like… And my fingers won’t work.
AMA: Oh, right.
TN: So I just found this picture of me just wrapped in these blankets and this hat, and just standing in the snow, being like… So, that’s like one of the funniest things, I think, about my… My career has been so weird. And I think that is one of the best things about it is that, like, known enough to get invited to do these absolutely insane things, not known enough for, like, I have a team of people that cares that’s just like, “You are absolutely not going up a chairlift with no safety bar, with power outages, driving through…” We drove through the protests and things that were… And it was kind of amazing because it was a few fans who invited me to do this tour that they organized in India. And there were reporters for NPR. And when it came time to go to Kashmir, a lot of my Indian friends were kind of like, “It’s not safe. Don’t go.” And my hosts were like, “It’s perfectly safe.” And it turns out they had been like war correspondents.
So, I mean, we were safe. It was like the most hospitable… Everybody was so kind and so generous and so warm. I had the best time in Kashmir. But we also had armed guards with us. So I’m sort of like, “Your definition of perfectly safe and my definition of perfectly safe are very different.” But I didn’t know that going in. And it’s one of those things that I’m so glad I didn’t know because I probably wouldn’t have gone. If they had told me, “When we got off the plane, there’s going to be some pretty intense protests. We’re going to have armed cars. We’re going to have a car in front and a car behind with guys with machine guns sitting out the back and the sides. But you’re going to be fine,” I probably would have been like, “I think I’m going to pass on that one.” But I’m so glad I didn’t know, and I’m so glad I didn’t have some…I’m glad I had already left the label. I didn’t have anyone who really cared about me. I didn’t have a team around me. But that was like the positive side of not having the success that I thought I was going to have in that moment of time. That moment in time, I thought, “Oh, this is it. Everything is just going to be to the top from here on out.” But it wasn’t. My career has been more like this. And so, having those times like this where it was just like “Do what you want.” I went off and did some amazingly exciting and really unusual things, and that was one of them.
AMA: That’s amazing. That’s such a great story. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah.
[01:07:27] The people who were inspired by “Say It’s Possible”
TN: One of the things that I love the most about the story of “Say It’s Possible” are the people that it inspired. And when I see people like… I have a whole playlist I’ve been putting together in preparation, because I’m going to be just releasing content about “Say It’s Possible” leading up to the Async job. And I have a playlist of, like, 300 different versions of “Say It’s Possible” that I found that I really like. And one of them is Molly Tuttle, who is an artist, who is wonderful, and she has a big career now. There’s artists on there that have gone on, that that was like one of the first songs they played, one of the first songs they learned how to play, and one of the first songs that they posted on YouTube, and they’ve gone on to have great careers. And that’s like really, really awesome, and it makes me feel really good.
AMA: Nice. Wow. So, talking about all this and working with Async, it makes me wonder about like how you connected with them. You didn’t talk about how you were into blockchain.
[01:08:26] How Terra got into the blockchain space
AMA: Actually, everybody has a story about how they got into blockchain. Can you talk more about that?
TN: Yeah. Well, I think… So, my brother is an investor in the blockchain space, so early on, he started telling me about stuff. And of course, I’m like, “Dammit. Why couldn’t you have bought me some Bitcoin or something? Come on, man.” But he didn’t. But we were working together on some other stuff because he used to be a film producer, and I was working with him on some stuff when he was producing films. And then he started getting into investing. And so, I was sort of like always on the periphery. I would pay attention to what he was doing, but I didn’t have any money to invest in it for myself. But I would watch what he was doing and just be like, “Whoa. That’s cool.” And so I would start to go to parties with him, and that was where I met a lot of the people that were sort of early blockchain innovators. I was just tagging along with my brother, and going to his parties, and meeting people, and kind of hearing about it, and still being like, “Well, this isn’t something that I…I don’t have money that I can…I can’t afford to lose even $100, so I’m not going to mess with this.” Kicking myself now.
AMA: Aren’t we all?
TN: Oh, my god. So, over the years, I kind of kept paying attention. And then, in 2016, I think, I was like… Oh, well, I’ll tell you what happened. My husband and I got married in 2017, and we got a few thousand dollars, and I was like, “Honey, do you think I could invest in…Do you think I could put this in crypto?” and he was just like, “Come on. I don’t know.” And I said, “Well, let’s just try. I’ll only take a little piece of it, and I’ll only invest what we… Obviously, we can’t really afford to lose anything. We’re both artists. But let me just try. I really believe in this. I’ve been studying it for a couple of years. I’m following along with everything. I really think this is the future, you know?”
And so I started with…I bought little pieces of a Bitcoin, and I bought a few ETH at the time, which were like really relatively inexpensive. And then I learned about EOS, and that really interested me because it was like, “Oh, you have to get a VPN. There’s all this stuff you have to do.” And so I got in on the initial sale of the initial EOS thing. And that was like a big moment for me because I had to figure out how to do all this stuff and register and get my key and get my MetaMask and make sure I didn’t lose out when it converted into tokens. And it was all just like very confusing, and that really appealed to the part of my brain that wants to solve complicated problems and, like, little puzzles.
So, I was really into that, and I actually wrote this guide, and I’m like, “How to buy EOS.” I don’t know. I like explaining things that are complicated, and so I wrote this little guide on how to buy EOS in 2017, whenever that ICO was happening. And then 2018 came, and I watched all of our money go away. I was like, “Oh, my god. It’s growing. It’s going to be amazing. It’s happening.” And then, like a few months later, I just watched it all just be like flatlining, and I was like, “Oh, sorry, honey. I lost all our money.” And then I just kind of sat on it. I was like, “Well, I’m not selling because that would just be stupid at this point.”
[01:12:18] Terra’s strategy with crypto
TN: I do believe in this long term, so let me just sit on it and see what happens. And then now it’s coming back. I kind of got comfortable with the volatility of it, and just was like…I’m a long-term believer in this. I only buy currencies around projects that I believe in, that I think have a future, where there’s interesting development happening and innovation happening on the chain. And so, I was careful with what I invested in. And that’s kind of my thing. I just have put little. I never had enough money to really come in and end up with enough to, like, buy a house or something, but I’ve got this little bit of currency that goes up and down, and I have a good feeling for the future. I believe in the long-term potential and the future of blockchain technology, so I just hold it.
AMA: HODL.
TN: I HODL.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Yeah, I HODL. HODL hard. And the great thing is, also, when you do make money, it’s like you’re not dealing with short-term capital gains.
[01:13:35] Terra talks about finance from her perspective as a woman and as a career artist
TN: It really forced me to understand… That was a thing I loved also because, as a woman, I find, at least in my family, I was not taught about finance. I was not taught about money. I was not taught about investing. It was sort of like guys in my family somehow were taught about this, and I learned how to balance a checkbook in home economics or something. And that was pretty much it. That was the extent of my financial literacy. And a lot of the problems that I got into, as I started having a career and signing deals and working with business managers and having really bad experiences, like I had a business manager who misappropriated all my money. Suddenly it was gone, and he hadn’t paid my taxes in three years. And it’s my responsibility because I didn’t understand finance, and I didn’t want to deal with it.
And I think as artists, and especially as artists and as women, it’s like this intersection of groups that aren’t necessarily encouraged to understand financial literacy. And so, crypto has really helped me understand, or at least begin to want to educate myself about finance. And it’s great. It’s exciting. I’m like fully self-taught as far as that’s concerned. And I just try to learn a little more. And I love the intersection of art and finance that is present in this NFT world. It’s really exciting to me, you know? Because I think also, as artists, we’re sort of discouraged from caring about finance, which is how so many of us get into problems, and how so many of us end up with, like, business managers that rip us off, and how so many of us get into bad deals and don’t know how to advocate for ourselves, because it’s sort of like “Oh, if you’re an artist, you shouldn’t care about money.” And that’s actually not true at all.
AMA: Right.
TN: Because it’s not only money. It’s about taking ownership and taking responsibility for my own future, and not just being sort of “Oh, I’m an artist. I’ll have good days. I’ll have bad days.” It’s like, “No. I want to build something solid so that I can pursue my art.” So it’s been just amazing. It’s been an incredible entry into caring about finance.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: And it’s accessible to me also, and I love that, because you can buy into Bitcoin with $10. You don’t have to have a million dollars to start collecting and investing in and trading in. It’s like it’s just so much more accessible than any other kinds of financial exploration ever were.
AMA: Yeah, very empowering.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: It’s fun. It’s just a fun space really.
TN: Totally.
AMA: So much new stuff happening.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: So much creating, innovating. Really exciting.
TN: The interactive potentials just blow my mind.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: And I love it. I love it.
AMA: Yes. Yeah.
TN: The way it can connect people in such an incredible way through the interactivity of art.
AMA: Yeah. And you definitely see that with programmable music. So, how did you actually get connected with Async? How did that happen?
TN: Yeah. Through mutual friends.
AMA: Ah. Okay.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: Okay.
TN: Yeah. I didn’t just reach out blind. I mean, I’ve done that a lot. I’ve had to do that a lot. But in this particular instance, it was an introduction. And then I was like, “This is what I do,” and they were kind of like, “Okay, show us what you do.” And then I pitched them this idea that I had for this project around “Say It’s Possible.” And I think they were kind of excited about that because the song had history. The song had its own life. And they said that they had never…they hadn’t yet had a song that kind of had its own life before.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: And so, it’s interesting to see how that happens, and if that can help bridge the gap. Because that’s another thing that I’m really interested in is bringing people, bringing my existing audience. And I know all artists are interested in bringing their existing audience into blockchain, into crypto, into NFTs and whatnot. But I think the project was appealing in the sense that the song already had an audience and already had its own sort of story. So, this is like the evolution of a story that’s already begun.
AMA: Wow. Yeah. That’s awesome.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: It’s kind of like a bridge, you know?
TN: Yeah.
AMA: Which we need more of. We need more accessible bridges.
TN: Yeah. And I ran into this with YouTube. And then I did some of the first crowdfunding campaigns. I’ve always kind of done things either first or very early, and I’ve had to sort of bring people into those things and find a way to bridge. I think I have been a bridge to a lot of different technologies and innovations around art and music. And so, it’s always challenging. It’s like a lot of times, the people who do it really early maybe don’t see as big of an adoption of it as, like, the next generation. That was certainly the case with YouTube. With YouTube, when I started doing music on YouTube, there was no YouTube Music. There was no monetization. But the next generation kind of benefited from all of that ground that had been laid. And so, with this, I’m kind of like, “How do we educate people and be that bridge and also make it really successful for these early artists doing this?” And I think that’s all about education and all about, obviously, creating really cool projects that make people want to get involved with them, to interact with them. But that’s definitely something that I want. I want to experience the success of it in this generation of creators.
AMA: Yeah. And as far as the educational part, you’re definitely a natural. It was cool to see you explain it to your fans with your YouTube video.
TN: Thanks.
[01:20:12] What Terra’s advice would be to musicians and artists coming into the space
AMA: So, having gone through the experience of creating programmable music and being in the NFT space, both as a musician and an artist, what would your advice be to musicians and artists coming into this space?
TN: That’s a really good question. I think it’s easy to get really distracted because there’s so many different projects happening all the time, and so many people doing different things. And I think it’s easy to kind of get distracted and lose focus. And I guess the way I feel about it is this is just another extension of what you’re already doing as an artist. This is another avenue. This is another platform, another way to reach people. It’s not going to replace whatever you’re already doing. I mean, for some people, it might. But as far as music goes, it’s like this isn’t going to replace dreaming. This isn’t going to replace labels. There’s always going to be a place for major labels, just the same way there’s always been a place for independent artists who aren’t on labels. This is like another option. And it’s a way to reach a different audience, a new audience maybe, people who’ve never heard of you. It’s all this just new and additional. It’s additive, you know? It’s not like in place of.
And so, I feel like all the same rules kind of apply. Like you still have to make sure that your music and your art is awesome. You still have to keep working on that. Don’t get so caught up in the technology that you kind of forget about the core of any of this, the biggest piece of any of this, is really mastering your craft and making things that are uniquely you and express what you want to express. But then, at the same time, I would say, don’t be afraid to experiment, because I feel like so many of us get stuck in this sort of perfection loop where it’s like “This is all new. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not going to do anything.” I know a lot of artists who are like, “I haven’t minted anything yet.” And I’m like, “I minted some stuff that I’m just like, ‘Damn, I kind of wish I burned that. I should burn that.’” Because early on, I was just like, “Oh, I could do this. I could do this.” And I get excited and I play, and maybe to my detriment sometimes. I just want to try stuff. I just want to see what happens. But I think that’s kind of the fun of it.
And don’t get too caught up in waiting for something to be perfect. Nobody really knows what we’re doing at this point. It’s such early days. And it’s funny because people are like, “Oh, man, I missed it.” It’s like, “Are you kidding?” Obviously, people have been making art on the blockchain for a few years at this point, but for like most of the world, like 99.9% of the world, we are still really early days in all of this. And so, I just feel like get in… And also, I feel like people are like, “Oh, I didn’t buy Bitcoin when it was at $1000.” And when we were buying it at $1000, it was like, “Oh, man, we didn’t buy it at $100.” It’s like right now, just get…if you feel compared to pursue this, or you’re curious, or you want to try, just do it now. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t get in early. And it’s that way with the art, too. It’s just like, just start learning. Don’t worry if there’s people who have already done stuff. It’s like there’s so much room. There’s limitless room for creativity in the world. And so, that I think is something that a lot of artists get caught up on, too, is just like, “Well, where would I fit in? Somebody is already doing this.” It’s like those are all kind of…
I remember when I first signed my deal with Island and Universal, and my team at the time was just like “There’s room for one woman that makes music like you. There’s room for one…” And that’s like such…that’s toxic. That is toxic. And that’s why we’ve seen such an environment of competition instead of a collaborative, creative environment, which most artists, I believe, are collaborative by nature, but a lot of us have been sort of programmed with this toxic belief that there’s like only so much room. And it’s not true. Create what you feel compelled and called and moved and inspired to create. And then don’t get too precious with it. Put it out there. See what happens. I don’t know. I mean, that’s what I say.
And just play. Because also, we have to balance. Sometimes people say, “Do you want to be…” What is that phrase? Like “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” And I feel like with art, it’s kind of like, “Do you want to be perfect and never make a mistake, or do you want to actually remember what it’s like to feel that joy of creating?” And I think that’s sort of a tradeoff when art becomes a career. For me, it was. I’ve had to work really hard to find the joy in creating music again because it became this grind, and it became a career and something that I could mess up and that I could do wrong. And I did. I made missteps, and I had big failures. But I don’t know. I just think when we remove the joy and the sort of wonder and the play from art, I don’t know, it just becomes something that’s not fun. In which case, we might as well go work at a bank or something, you know?
AMA: Please, no.
TN: No. Especially not now. I don’t think any of us will be doing that. And no one in this community is going to be like, “I think I’m going to go work for a bank.”
AMA: No, no.
TN: But you know what I mean.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: Like some job that we just hate doing. And I think it’s easy to kind of tip over into that space when we’re mixing art and livelihood. It’s easy to sort of forget just the pure joy of creating. And I think that’s what I love about the blockchain space right now is that we have that room to just be trying all these new things.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: So, just try. Get out there and try it.
[01:26:56] Terra makes a strong statement about the supportive nature of the NFT community and how she’s helping her audience
TN: There are people…because it’s easy for me to say, “Oh, get out there and try it” because I have ETH. I have Tez. I have crypto. I’m familiar with the world. I understand it. But even if you don’t know anything about it, there are people who will help you, and there are people who will help you with gas fees. There are people who will help onboard you to this world. So, if you’re an artist, and your art is something that people want to see, there are folks out there that will help you figure it out even if you’re like, “But I don’t have money to mint this. I don’t have a wallet.” There’s ways around that if you really feel compelled to explore this. That’s what I’m trying to say.
AMA: Yes. Yeah. I’ll help. I’m here. I’m here to help.
TN: There you go. And I’ll help, too. I’m actually making a video series. It’s like way more in depth. I have to edit it all down. But it’s kind of like my Async series.
AMA: Nice.
TN: My Async video. But it’s more…it’s like meant to sort of explain what all of this is for my audience, 99.9% of whom don’t know anything about any of this. So I wanted to do something that would be helpful to my people, but also could be used by any artist who’s trying to explain it to their audience as well.
AMA: Wonderful.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: Is there anything else you want to talk about just in general, a conversation you want to have, a message to the audience, your fans, your collectors? Anything else? Take your time. Take your time.
TN: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know. Is there anything else that you’re curious about?
[01:28:34] How the recent world happenings effected Terra creatively, socially and mentally
AMA: I mean, you’ve been through these times of… We all have.
TN: Yeah.
AMA: These times of like “Oh, my gosh. What’s going to happen to the world politically and ecologically and pandemically?” But how has that affected you, especially with the pandemic? I don’t know. From just like a personal perspective or in a creative perspective. Has it changed you in any way? How have you come out of that?
TN: Yeah. That’s a big question. I mean, I think, well, so, this last year, and as an artist, it feels…it’s tricky because, in many ways, I’ve had a…it’s hard to be like, “Oh, creatively, it’s been amazing” while people are dying and losing their jobs. And it’s been…I think as somebody who deals with mental health issues, as far as depression and anxiety and issues like that, in a way, I felt more understood than I have in the past because I feel like everybody was going through it in some way. And so, not that it was… It was really hard to explain that to people. It wasn’t like, “Oh, good. Now you understand what it…” But in a way, I was like, “Oh, I feel like people understand. It was humbling for a lot of people who didn’t have to worry about a lot of things before. And I felt less alone in the uncertainty and the fear and the anxiety and the depression that I deal with normally. It was like, “Oh, everybody’s kind of going through this now.” And I felt less alone. And I talk to a lot of other people about mental health, and other folks express the same thing, that it was like, “Oh, yeah.” I didn’t feel like I was so…I just felt more understood because everybody suddenly was having to grapple with these issues.
And it’s hard because, like I mentioned before, this past year really reignited my creativity on so many levels. I couldn’t just go out and keep touring. I couldn’t distract myself with seeing… I don’t know. To be honest, I wasn’t that social anyway. I’m very introverted. And so it was sort of like, “Okay, I just get to be in my house.” And for me, it wasn’t such a huge deal. It was upsetting not to be able to see my family. I just saw my family last week for the first time since November 2019.
AMA: Wow.
TN: And so, that was big, not being able to see my parents and my brothers and my nephews and my aunts and my uncles. Not being able to see my extended family and just even my parents, it was really hard. But the staying home thing was actually really comfortable for me. And I felt like I kind of had permission to just be introverted and do my art and be alone, instead of feeling like, “Oh, I should be out doing this. I should be out doing this. I should be meeting this person. I should be talking to this person.” I felt like I was spinning my wheels a lot before, and this last year really just made me focus and think about what I wanted, and give myself permission to rest and to kind of go inward even more without feeling bad about going inward.
AMA: Yeah.
TN: So, yeah, I think creatively, it’s hard to reconcile those two things, though. It’s hard to reconcile what it was for most people, the worst year of their lives. Not for most, but what was for many people: people who dealt with death, who dealt with losing their jobs, losing homes, horrific things that came as a result of the pandemic. It’s hard to reconcile that reality and then being like, “But creatively, it was great.” But I know for, like, a lot of artists, it was actually really creatively great while being difficult in other ways, you know?
AMA: Yeah.
TN: It’s hard to talk about those things. But I think that’s honestly like one of our problems in our society is that people…it’s like we have a really hard time holding multiple opposing truths or multiple opposing ideas, holding them at the same time together. And I think that’s part of what’s happening in our country, too, why we’re just so divided. We have to get to a place where we can hold multiple truths that are opposing, and deal with it, and be okay with like “It’s not all of this, and it’s not all of that.” But it’s really hard to have those conversations.
AMA: I agree. Wow. Okay. So, I guess now that things are starting to open up and there seems to be more activity, I actually also am enjoying being inside, like you. So I’m kind of like, “Why does it have to open up?”
TN: I want to stay home.
AMA: I know.
TN: I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to go to parties. I don’t want to go out. I just want to stay in here.
AMA: Yeah. But now that the cocoon is kind of cracking open, things are maybe even blossoming, your projects are starting to…you’re starting to, I guess, get out there, and things are starting to grow…
[01:34:27] Terra’s current and upcoming projects with some of her favorite artists and photographer in the space, and re-recording her songs to have the masters owned collectively in a way that it doesn’t run into securities problem and more!
AMA: What are these projects that you’re working on now, and upcoming projects that you want to share with your fans, your audience, maybe your potential collectors?
TN: Yeah. I mean, well, the Async project is sort of the biggest thing right now. But then I also have a number of collaborations with some of my favorite artists in this space: guys like Sabet and then one of my favorite photographers. We’re going to be doing… And I’ve been a fan of her work for years, and then we only met through NFTs, and it was so cool.
AMA: Oh, wow.
TN: Yeah. There’s actually two photographers. I’m collaborating with one. And hopefully, I’ll collaborate with the other as well. But we’re all talking now. It’s like we’re friends now through this NFT world. And I’ve known about both of their work for years.
AMA: You want to shout out who these photographers are?
TN: Yeah. Well, there’s an artist named Karen Jerzyk that I love, and we’re going to work on something. We’re figuring it out. I think we’re kind of closing in on an idea. And then Lindsey Byrnes is another wonderful photographer that I’ve been a fan of. And at some point, I don’t know… I don’t know if we’ll collab or not. We’re kind of like we want to, but it’s just kind of talking about things with these artists who I really admire, and that was exciting to me. There’s a couple other artists. There’s a woman named Farrah who lives in Toronto. We’re collabing. And a woman named Parin who lives actually between Iran and Amsterdam. And I don’t know. I think she’s in Iran right now. But anyway, we’re making something. And now I’m forgetting because I’m on the spot. But there’s several… Oh, and my friend Shiela, who’s like a new friend who lives in Venice. We’re making something together.
AMA: Wow.
TN: Yeah. And I’m also on the board of the Stratosphere Art Show that Sabet is putting together, and it’s going to be the largest NFT showcase in the world. It’s in Beijing. It’s going to be in August. Actually, I think end of July and beginning of August. But we’re right now taking submissions. So, I think depending on when this video comes out, the submissions may not be close. But I think that submissions have been extended to July 2nd. So, there’s going to be 500 screens, and every artist can submit up to five pieces. And so, everyone is going to have a dedicated screen. And it’s like the biggest NFT showcase in the world. So, it’s been really exciting to help put that together.
What else am I doing? I’m going to be re-recording all…well, not all, but the songs that I really like from my Island Records album, now that I’ve got those rights back. And really what my goal with all of this is the collaborative nature of it. The Async project is the first piece. But what I really want to do is re-record these songs and then have the masters owned collectively. Yeah, because I feel like this sort of promise of crowdfunding. And we’re seeing this happen now. People are working on these projects. Several other artists I know, several other musicians I know, are working on similar concepts around communal ownership of the master recording, which is like when you have a song, you’ve got the publishing, which is like the underlying IP, and then you have the master, which is the song as we know it, the recording of the song.
So, several people, several really smart people, are working on ways to collectively own a song. Because we’ve been running into this issue of security. If you fractionalize and then have multiple people owning pieces of it, then it becomes a security and we don’t want that. So, there’s one company that I saw, one group that’s like making it into a Dow and having the song as a Dow. There’s another person in the space working on a platform for collective ownership. And that’s something that really interests me that I’m looking into ways to do as well, so that I can take my songs and offer them up to be owned collectively.
Because when I first started crowdfunding, and even like, take Patreon, for example. I love Patreon in theory, and I’m on Patreon, but there was always this kind of…I feel like it’s the best thing we had because it’s still sort of a one-sided thing where it’s like me as an artist, I’m like, “Will you support me?” It’s this whole crowdfunding dynamic where it’s like “Please support me so I can make my art.” But really what’s in it for you? I mean, yes, you get to support an artist you love. Yes, you get to hear the music. That’s great. If I didn’t have Patreon and crowdfunding, I wouldn’t have been able to make my music for the last 10 years since I left my label. However, the idea of it, that folks who back us and collect our music and support us can also benefit as we grow, that is exciting to me, of a much more mutually beneficial relationship. That’s what excites me. So, I’m working on ways to do that. I’m also working on a project. Well, I don’t want to say too much about that one yet because it’s sort of secret. But it’s a bigger project than just my music.
[01:39:56] Terra talks about how in the NFT space, the conversation has shifted in favor of paying for artists’ works
TN: But it kind of incorporates the value of recorded music. And it’s meant to, like, draw attention to the value of art and artists, because that’s actually the thing that excites me the most about the NFT space is that the conversation has shifted, and suddenly everybody is talking about wanting to pay money to artists. Because we’ve really been trained, as I think I’ve mentioned. I don’t know. I’ve said this multiple times because it was a thing that really struck me from the beginning is the way that culturally, around the world, we’ve been trained over the last 10 years, with the rise of streaming, that we can consume as much as we want for free. We just get to have all that music. We get to have all that art on Instagram. We can listen to a song. We can download it and listen to it as many times as we want for free, if we’re willing to listen to ads or have companies collect and sell our data. So, it’s like the value of recorded music has just been like… In the public perception, it’s still like “It should be free.” And actually, no, it shouldn’t be free, you know? I don’t know. Some people feel that it should. There are artists that are like, “Yes, it should. And I use that to sell concert tickets and sell T-shirts.” But I actually really feel that the value, everything that’s gone into this piece of music that you hear, it’s worth more than $0.004 every time someone listens to it.
I have a friend who’s going to be working on this secret project with me, and he has a company called Roomtone. His name is Wayne Price. And he says…I love it. He puts these really wonderful concerts together, and music experiences. And I heard him say one night in one of the Roomtone events on Clubhouse, actually. He was like, “If you would like to buy this artist a cup of coffee, tip them $4, $5. You’re basically buying them a cup of coffee, and that’s like the equivalent of a thousand streams of their music.”
AMA: Wow.
TN: When you think about it like that, it’s like, “Oh, my god.” You could stream this artist’s song a thousand times for the same price as just giving them $4 or $5 for a cup of coffee. And I just love that the conversation…people are becoming aware again of the value of music. And I like that shift. I like the shift of people being like, “Artists deserve to be paid. We want to pay artists.” And seeing artists making money, it’s just like, “Yes!” Because somewhere along the line, this whole narrative of the starving artist, it just became the sort of predominant narrative. And that really, I think, was really damaging for a whole generation of artists, like myself, who were just like, “Well, I can be an artist or I can make money. I can be an artist and struggle, but that’s just what artists do. We struggle. I’m never going to own a home.” And now I’m kind of like, “Oh, I see a different narrative emerging where artists can be financially savvy and where artists can be valued in a way that they…we’re valued before we die.” You know? Like our work isn’t just valuable in hindsight.
AMA: Right.
TN: And also, with blockchain, it’s like as that happens, the next generations of an artist’s family can actually see financial…they can actually continue to grow generational wealth through blockchain because of secondary market sales and being able to have a fair percentage of ongoing earnings. It’s just an exciting time to be an artist, you know?
AMA: Yes.
TN: And to me, it all starts with a conversation. It all starts with the education. And that’s what’s most interesting to me about all this, and what I get so super nerdy excited about. This opens up just the conversation, just people talking, just people sitting around being like, “I’m going to pay money to collect this person’s art.” It’s like, “It’s about time.”
AMA: Yeah. It’s kind of like we’re going back to, I guess, the days of the renaissance where you’re patrons of the artist, you know?
TN: Yeah. But you also benefit. That’s what’s cool, too, is like it’s not just like crowdfunding, which I don’t know if you’ve ever done it, but pretty much all the artists I’ve ever talked to who’ve crowdfunded are just like, “Oh, God.” Because you’re just reaching out to everybody you know and all these people you don’t know, and just being like, “Hi. Can you…” My shirt is stuck on my chair. I’m trying to hold my hand out to make my point. “Hi. Give me money.” And it just feels horrible. It feels like busking. And to me, busking feels bad, too. I don’t want to sit there with my case out, being like, “Could you throw me a dollar?” No.
I love that this is shifting, and I love that people are excited to collect art and think… Obviously, a lot of this stuff that they collect, you can’t go into it thinking it’s going to appreciate. But there’s a good chance that it will. There’s a good chance that if you see something you like, it might grow in value, and it might become something valuable in your portfolio. Or it might not. Like I don’t ever buy art thinking… Collectibles are one thing. When I buy collectibles, I’m kind of like hoping that it’s going to be the next crypto bonds or whatever. But like when I buy art, it’s a different thing. It’s like “I love this. I want to have this.” I don’t know if it’ll ever be worth more. It might be worth less than what I paid for it at some point, but I don’t really care. And that’s kind of my criteria as well. I like to buy stuff where I’m like, “This really brings me joy to look at it. And if it never appreciates… I’m not buying it to flip it.” But obviously, people have different ways of looking at it. But when people ask me about it, I’m always like, “First of all, don’t ever spend anything you can’t afford to lose. Second of all, when you’re buying art, don’t count on appreciating.” If you’re buying a collectible, that’s another story, but you know. I don’t know. It’s just exciting to have these conversations. It’s fun.
AMA: It is. It’s a lot of fun. This makes it so much fun.
[01:46:24] Where can you find Terra’s work?
AMA: So, where can people find you? You do so many things. So where can they find your different things that you do?
TN: Okay, so, there’s all the social medias, and I think I’ve linked most of my stuff in my Twitter and Instagram bio. I have one of those ffm Linktree things.
AMA: Okay.
TN: Yeah, because I’m on YouTube and Twitch and Instagram and Twitter and Foundation and OpenSea and Async soon and Patreon. I’m on all the things.
AMA: You’re everywhere.
TN: Yeah. I’m in a lot of places. So, yeah, my little Linktree and my Twitter bio or my Instagram bio will provide all those answers. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Deezer.
AMA: Yeah. Wonderful.
TN: Amazon.
AMA: And the Async Music version of “Say It’s Possible” will be on Async.art, right?
TN: Yeah.
AMA: And there will be the stems as well as the masters everyone can bid on. And people will be able to also purchase limited edition blanks…
TN: Yes.
AMA: …to record whatever combination is available or active at the time. So, yeah, can’t wait for that to happen.
TN: Me too.
AMA: And yeah, I think that’s it.
TN: Thank you so much for having this conversation…
AMA: Yeah.
TN: …and talking to me about all this stuff, and giving me space to talk about it. And yeah, I’m really excited.
AMA: I appreciate it.
TN: Yeah. Thank you. This has been great. I appreciate your time.
AMA: If you haven’t already, please help support this channel by subscribing, clicking on the notification bell, and smashing that Like button. Thank you, my Rare Digital Birds. Until next time. Fly high.
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