Fresh episodes right off the griddle each and every week — get your web3 edge here »
Listen Now

Top Podcasts

OneOf With Lin Dai, Joshua James, And Adam Fell On Creating A Green NFT Music Community Platform, Plus: Big Boy NFT, NFT Market Surge, And More...

OneOf With Lin Dai, Joshua James, And Adam Fell On Creating A Green NFT Music Community Platform, Plus: Big Boy NFT, NFT Market Surge, And More...

NFT 39 | OneOf

There is only one way to go about in this world, and that is forward-thinking. The music industry is no exception. The time for incorporating NFT into music is here. In this episode, Eathan Janney, Jeff Kelley, and Josh Kriger sit down with Lin Dai, Joshua James, and Adam Fell—co-founders of OneOf, which is an NFT platform built specifically for the music community to create an environmentally sustainable and artist and fan-friendly experience. Together, they let us in on the amazing things they are doing as a green NFT platform and how their music NFT startup got the support of Quincy Jones. They further discuss community-building and breaking down economic and technical barriers in the crypto and music industry, exploring possibilities to tokenize assets for the users. What is more, Lin, Joshua, and Adam share stories about heavy-hitting music industry greats—from Quincy to Pearl Jam to Doja Cat. Join in on this great conversation and discover how an NFT platform is helping the music community move forward and connect artists with fans and collectors alike.

—

Listen to the podcast here

‍

OneOf With Lin Dai, Joshua James, And Adam Fell On Creating A Green NFT Music Community Platform, Plus: Big Boy NFT, NFT Market Surge, And More…

This is Joshua James, Adam Fell, and Lin Dai from OneOf.com, the hottest new green NFT platform built specifically for the music community.

We love hanging with the Edge of NFT crew just like you.

Yes, you’re in the right place because Edge of is the 1 of 1 podcast you got to stay with.

Enjoy yet another awesome show.

—

NFT curioso, get ready for another fun episode of Edge of NFT.

This episode of Edge of NFT features a Quincy Jones-backed music NFT startup with huge momentum.

There’s importance in fun facts and stories about Quincy, Pearl Jam and Doja Cat from these heavy-hitting music industry guests.

Find out when OneOf will launch and how you can get involved ahead of anyone else. All this and more on this episode. Keep reading, enjoy, and follow up for more great info at EdgeOfNFT.com.

—

This episode features Lin Dai, Joshua James and Adam Fell, Cofounders of OneOf, an NFT platform built specifically for the music community to create an environmentally sustainable, artist and fan-friendly experience. Lin Dai is the CEO of OneOf. He is an entrepreneur and digital executive with decades of experience. Lin previously cofounded TAP Network, a blockchain technology company powering white-labeled rewards for major enterprise clients such as Warner Music Group, Uber and Brave.

Lin founded his first company, a social network for teens, out of his dorm room in 1999 and later took it public. He spent over ten years leading digital initiatives at major media companies such as Alloy, which is Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, Emmis Communications, Hot 97 and Power 106. Lin is a General Partner at ChainLink Crypto Fund, a fund of funds in the digital currency and blockchain industry.

A bit about Joshua James. He’s a Cofounder and COO of OneOf. Prior to OneOf, Joshua was the Cofounder and CEO of ZIG Media, acquired in 2019 by Media Rights Capital. Joshua founded his first company, RiseTech, in college. After selling RiseTech to Equity Office Property, now Blackstone, Joshua launched the pioneering live digital music firm, Basecamp Productions, which partner with Pearl Jam to launch the groundbreaking Pearl Jam bootleg series. Basecamp was later acquired by Warner Music Group. Joshua’s clients included Pearl Jam, Kendrick Lamar, Linkin Park and Mumford & Sons.

Finally, a bit about Adam Fell. He’s the Cofounder and Board Member of OneOf and the President of Quincy Jones Productions. Adam oversees various branches of QJP such as artists management, licensing and endorsements, live, film, and television production, international joint ventures and investments. Fell has led early investments for the company in Spotify, Clubhouse, Community, Uber, Wayfair, Snowflake, and many others. Fell is also an Executive Producer of the Netflix original release, Quincy, which won a Grammy Award in the category of Best Music Film amongst others. It was worth reading all that. I don’t know if we all are aware of this but I studied jazz piano. Quincy Jones is a huge hero of mine. I appreciate having you guys all here and have a great conversation.

I assume, Adam, you also probably started a company when you’re in college like these other guys and that just wasn’t in your bio. That’s my assumption. What an amazing group of executives leading the charge at OneOf.

Thanks, Josh.

It’s amazing to talk to you, guys. Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s dive right in. Lin, what is OneOf and how did it come to be?

OneOf is the NFT platform built for the music protocol. I started talking about blockchain, in general, how it applies to the music industry with Bill Tai, who is one of the earliest VCs in the space. Fast forward to a few years ago, Bill came to me and was like, “You have to take a look at these blockchain cats.” It was CryptoKitties and we’re interested in the ability to not only primarily sell but a secondary resell opportunity on using blockchain. We’re like, “That’s a game-changer for how musicians commoditize.”

We started experimenting on different blockchains and came to the conclusion that we need to move to a proof of stake network. Through another introduction from Bill Tai, we ended up meeting the cofounders of the Tezos blockchain and decided that there are a lot of technical reasons to build our project on top of Tezos. I called up Josh. Josh, you can take it from that point of the story.

He called me up and told me all about this NFT project he wanted to work on. I said, “What are NFTs?” That was the response of quite a few people until about February or March of 2021 when it entered the natural world of consciousness. I dove into it and did a bunch of research. I got excited about the potential of bringing non-crypto heads into the crypto community. The idea that music was something fun, easy and everybody could relate to, and the potential of setting up a platform that embraced that community in a way that was not crypto facing. It was more fan-facing. That’s what we ended up doing in the long run. I needed to call my friend, Adam Fell, and get him involved. I made a call to Adam Fell about a week later and he can tell you that his response was fairly similar to mine.

It’s the exact same thing that Josh said. I said, “What is an NFT?” Since that point, it has been me learning as much as I can largely from Lin who was ahead of the game on this. The more I’ve learned, the more excited I have gotten over how this can change the game for artists. I can go into that in hours of detail but the frank reality is every other technological innovation that has come into the music industry that I’ve seen in my many years with Quincy collateralize as an existing revenue stream for artists. This is a brand new revenue stream and it’s very exciting.

Minting an NFT on OneOf takes less energy than tweeting a tweet. Click To Tweet

Let’s piggyback off of the Quincy Jones involvement as well because I felt like that was such an amplifying opportunity for him to be involved and to be an advocate for OneOf. How did that come to be? You had that tight relationship, Adam, but what were his initial thoughts? How did he get excited about this project?

There’s a simple answer to that question. Quincy has been ahead of the game on technology for his entire career. Most people don’t know that Quincy was one of the first investors in Spotify. That was because, despite his age, he has always been welcoming to technology, especially technology that can benefit artists. The conversation with him was fairly simple. This is a technology that doesn’t collateralize an existing revenue stream for artists and can make them significant money through a secure and exciting new technology. He was like, “I’m all in.” Since that point, he’s opened doors and our company has reached out to all of our contacts. People have responded well to this because of the fact that we address most of the main concerns that artists have.

Let’s dive a little bit deeper there, Adam. One of the major concerns in the music industry is the environment, global warming and climate change. What does it mean for OneOf to have a green platform? How have artists responded to that?

I’ll backtrack even further. Many of the artists that we’re now working with, if you go back in time, you’ll see press announcements about them releasing NFTs with our competitors. All of those artists that I’m specifically talking about ended up canceling those drops because of the backlash they received from their fans. That backlash was over three main things. Number one, energy consumption and therefore environmental damage. Number two, the perception of making a cash grab. This is not being about your fans but instead being about crypto-savvy whales. Third, the complication. This was something that was simply too complicated for the average music fan, so you specifically ask about eco-friendliness.

Minting an NFT on most of our competitors takes about the amount of electricity or energy that is used to power the average US household over a period of five days. This is an easily googleable fact. We are proud to say that we have a consumption rate of over two million times less than most of our competitors. Because of that, we like to joke that minting an NFT on our platform takes less energy than tweeting a tweet. Therefore, people aren’t allowed to complain about us on Twitter.

We have friends in the music industry. I’ve seen firsthand exactly what you’re talking about wanting to dive into NFTs and getting that backlash. I appreciate you elucidating, even beyond the green questions, some of the other things that are going on as far as objections. I appreciate you addressing them so we can get artists in the game and benefit from what’s going on. That having been said, people want to get in the game. We want to see the progress of things. We want to know when is the launch officially. Things move fast here. What’s your roadmap for launch?

We have quite a lot of fun stuff ahead, but the two immediate ones that we’re prepared to talk about now, which is exciting, is we have a partnership with iHeart Radio for the iHeart Music Festival in Las Vegas that we’re going to be launching on the 31st of August, 2021. We’re going to be giving away a million free NFTs to iHeart fans and music fans all around the world. One of the advantages of using Tezos is that we can mint actual, real Mainnet NFTs for an extremely low price and it allows us to give away a million, so we’re excited about that.

We hear about these 1 of 1s, 1 of 100s, 1 of 10,000s. This is the first million drop I’ve heard of. What exactly is that NFT that people are going to be able to get? That sounds amazing.

It’s a collection of a million tokens. They’re divided into sixteen different unique designs and you can collect a set of fours. If you can imagine, the detail is the iHeart Radio Music Festival is an iconic festival that went on for dozens of years and there is the logo because it’s usually held in Vegas. It’s just a poker chip. We took that concept and gamified it. There are four different suits of the poker chip. There’s the heart, diamond, clubs and spades, and then there are all these iconic artists performing, everybody from Coldplay to Billy Eilish.

We took the lineup, combined that with the four suits, and came up with sixteen different designs. Every day, you can come to OneOf.com and claim a free random one. You don’t know which one you’re getting. The collection of design is in such a manner that there’s a platinum edition piece that is only minted 1,000 copies. There is 1 out of 1,000. There are some designs that are minted 1 out of 100,000. Total combined, there’s a wide range and there are a million pieces.

If you collect a specific set of four, those could be four of the same suit or four of the same stage, you unlock additional experiences. You get a guaranteed free NFT from the second drop, plus if you collect any of the first drop tokens, you get to enter into a drawing to win a flyaway all-expense paid VIP trip to Las Vegas to attend 2021’s concert. We envision NFT not only as a digital world asset but also can connect to the physical world in real-life experiences. That’s where it makes it exciting about NFT for music. I always say it’s different than NFT for art or basketball trading cards. We make it fun.

We’re uniquely one of the only platforms that can have the ability to mint such low minting cost that allows us to give away free NFTs. One of the three pillars of our ethos is artists first, and for every fan and environmentally friendly. This is how we want to educate the non-crypto native fans out there that blockchain is not scary and NFT is not just for crypto whales. This could be something fun for everyone.

It sounds like a thoughtful way to come out of the gate racing. Folks need to have their Tezos wallet in order to claim the NFT. Is that the gist?

The other thing we want to do and the part of the idea for every fan is not only do we want to break down the economic barrier, but we want to break down the technical barrier also. Creating a wallet and onboarding process on most other platforms is too hard for the average fan.

Especially my mother.

Your mother probably would love to collect that NFT from her favorite artist.

NFT 39 | OneOf

OneOf: Quincy was one of the first investors in Spotify. That was because, despite the fact that he’s old, he has always been welcoming to technology, especially technology that can benefit artists.

It’s hard for her to download our show, so we got to make this easier.

We build a platform that is reminiscent of a music platform or basic eCommerce platform and less of a crypto platform. We want users to be able to sign up in under three minutes and be able to claim a free one or pay for the first NFT without even having to open a crypto wallet. Credit card and debit card onboarding is a primary onboarding method for most users. Certainly, over time, users are going to learn about how great involving the blockchain and crypto ecosystem is going to be and what amazing thing Tezos are doing or other blockchain projects are doing. This is the introduction, easy and friendly gateway to blockchain in general.

We had this idea from the beginning, we wanted a sixteen-year-old to be able to sign up and purchase with a credit card in three minutes or less. We did that from the beginning. In this particular first use case. It’s even less than that because there’s no actual purchase. There’s just signing up and claiming. We’re trying to onboard as many people as possible quickly.

In that same vein, being able to control vertically all of the different elements of a project that can be helpful for any project, have you guys considered launching your own token at any point?

We’re focused on just the platform experience for the user right now. There is a lot of possibility on how blockchain and different ways to tokenize assets can benefit our users. Certainly, this is something we will continue to think about. Right now, we’re excited to get the platform launch and introduce the next 100 million users to this fun new world that previously only belong to the super nerds and crypto enthusiasts.

Let’s transition to my next question for Adam. We talked about building awareness and you have this great launch project with iHeart Radio, but taking a step back, I feel like the music industry has pioneered community building. What are your thoughts on where you go next with building a strong community here? Are we talking metaverse concerts or more partnerships with other traditional performance venues? What’s on your mind?

There’s a lot on our minds as you can imagine. Artists that have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. The first artist that we’re launching with is Doja Cat. She broke the barrier of 60 million monthly listeners. This is a massive amount of fans cat that we get to try to appeal to. How you use NFTs and how you create engagement has to do with how creative you get with the gamification, how involved the artist is. We say in all of our artist’s pitches, we want our artists to be on the ground with us figuring out how to gamify this and how to create the creative assets.

The reason for that is we know that the artists won’t promote the drops unless they’re involved and passionate about it. If they are passionate about it and they do push it, their fan bases will be interested because digital art, NFTs and minting of different digital assets is a new thing, but these artists themselves need to get involved. When they realize how every other big deal that they do with large corporations collateralize as one of their revenue streams and this is a brand new stream, at least when I’ve explained that to most of the artists we’re working with, they’ve gotten excited.

It’s worth mentioning that social media gets a lot of bad looks and bad news these days but for artists, it’s a godsend. You have this massive community that you can reach out to quickly in a way that never existed before. In the old days, you had to rely on your record label, PR or marketing to get at them. Now you know exactly, to some degree, who likes you and who’s following you. Building a community around an NFT drop, if the artist is excited, it’s as simple as them going on social media and saying that they’re excited about this, joining in what we’re doing. In all of our artist’s drops, part of our marketing plan is embracing the artist’s community through their social media accounts where the community lives already.

It’s interesting to watch how technology has integrated with the arts as a broader category. As I listen to this conversation, I almost see NFTs almost like a new art form. I think of broad art forms like music, dance, visual arts, and things like that. We’ve had hybrids like music videos with MTV and things like this. It’s interesting how much NFT gives you the liberty to create something entirely new.

I was listening to Lin explain the benefits that you guys are planning and why these are creative fun ideas. Jeff, Josh and I were thinking about creative fun ideas for our own NFTs. It’s a new place to have creativity. We’re interested in how things evolve. Definitely, fans and community are a huge part of this if it is a new art form. I’m curious what your plans are to connect fans with their favorite artists and to build that community.

You touched on a great point. What NFT can do is not only 2D or 3D art or audio-visual art, but also over time. There is an element of 4D. Some of the best NFT projects had this permanence or perpetuity connection built in. What we are always thinking is not how do we drop an image or a piece of music for artists, but how do we drop something that allows the artists and their fans to build a stronger connection over time. This is about your biggest fans that are going to go out of their way to pay extra for that connection with you.

It doesn’t have to be a one-time, one-media file. Currently, you can only upload one file associated with an NFT. We’re thinking much deeper than that. Our first artist drop with Doja Cat that Adam mentioned a little tease here is it is entirely your token that you collect. A very limited token that get you open the door to a specifically exclusive community of other Doja Cat token holders. The first 1 of 1 on the entire platform of OneOf will be dropping the Doja Cat collection. That 1 of 1 will have a permanent utility that will get you to access every future collection.

Let’s do it.

**This is going to be deep. **

A little capitalist. I like it.

That’s a great business.

I’m a lemonade stand guy myself, so right on.

Joshua, how about you?

NFT 39 | OneOf

It’s an NFT right there.

Verified transaction. That’s right.

It’s an awesome answer.

A necessity. Josh, how about you?

How about you, Lin?

It makes all the difference in the world.

Where in Brooklyn do you live in?

I was in Clinton.

Lin, how about you?

Adam, how about you?

**It makes sense. Joshua, how about you? **

Adam, how about you, sir?

We envision NFT not only as a digital world asset but it can also connect to the physical world in real-life experiences. Click To Tweet

It’s everywhere we look. Lin, how about you?

Maybe his wife wouldn’t let him.

He’s probably got a kid.

Lin, how about you?

Lin, how about you?

Joshua, what were you up to?

Did you have to bring that to yourself, Joshua?

They could be but not yet.

**Are we neighbors, Josh? I’m in Venice. **

I’m in Manhattan Beach. We’re neighborly.

**Two Guns coffee over there. Amazing. **

I’ve gone there a couple of times.

It’s necessary.

Finally, Lin, what are you doing next?

NFT 39 | OneOf

It’s a Big Boy. That’s the mascot.

Josh is right.

**Quincy Jones. **

You made it too easy, Adam.

It took a second, though.

**You changed my mind. **

It’s a hot market.

iTunes**, rate us and say something cool, then go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. **

Thanks.