Recently, I’ve spent some time in the Discord for the Tunes Project - a series of 5,000 AI-generated song titles. These titles were then minted (for free) into NFTs (you can see them all here on OpenSea). For example, I own the Tune “Fishing In The Rainbow River”.
Big props to the artist who drew that cool image - oh wait, the art was also AI-generated by one of the Discord members. Like Loot, another NFT project that is just lists of eight randomly generated D&D-style items, The Tunes Project is designed for others to build upon. It reminds me of improvisational comedy - an entire show can evolve from just a one-word suggestion from the audience.
I learned about The Tunes Project because I follow one of its founders, Suhail Doshi, on Twitter. Suhail - a Y Combinator alumnus - has founded two companies: Mixpanel, a product analytics tool, and Mighty, a cloud-based app that streams your browser to make it work much faster. Needless to say, that’s pretty impressive. And perhaps even more importantly, I like Suhail’s Twitter vibe. So when he announced he was working on a music-related NFT, I got interested.
In the Tunes Project Discord - unlike most NFT Discords - one gets the impression that things are actually afoot. The “future of tunes” channel, for instance, is full of ideas. Developers are creating things like the AI art you saw above, and musicians are even making songs based on a Tune:
If you’re into crypto, the song not only is catchy but also has a ton of crypto references in the lyrics. Now, don’t freak out - a computer didn’t write and perform that music - it’s by a musician who was inspired by the title.
As I understand it, the Tunes NFTs can be construed as a way to anchor the content being created around the project. For example, the cover art for Fishing In The Rainbow River is a derivative linked to my original NFT. In the future, the owner of a Tune might see its value increase as more content gets developed. A player could be used to view all the content around a particular Tune: art, videos, music, etc.
If, for instance, enough people like the Penny State of Mind song above, the owner of the original NFT might then be holding something quite valuable. The musician might win fans who can support him directly without the typical music industry middlemen. I, as a Tune owner, am now incentivized to create or have someone else create quality content based on my Tune.
The beauty of all of this is that it’s decentralized. The founders have no control over what people do with their Tunes, so it potentially unleashes the creativity of thousands of people, as Loot has done - check out all the projects currently being developed in the Loot ecosystem. And keep in mind all this development is about a month old. (I should mention that the cheapest of the current Loot bags for sale is priced as I write this at about 7.5 ETH, or around $26,000.)
If one metric to gauge the potential value of an NFT is to look at the projects inspired by it, Loot’s value makes a lot of sense. This is another reason I’m excited about Tunes - even though the project is new, we’ve already seen derivative projects for cover art, beat sequences, and waves, as well as a tunes viewer to experience them all. The floor for Tunes, as I type this, is .03 ETH.
This begs the question: Why are so many people interested in developing things based on brand new NFTs? From the outside, it might just look like nerds creating fantasy worlds together in their spare time. Perhaps it’s also the allure of creating something that is potentially worth a lot of money. But even more, I think it’s the opportunity to build something cool and useful with other smart people, with no bosses and no rules. Like improv, creativity begets more creativity, as others get inspired and build on those initial ideas. That kind of energy is something to keep an eye on.
Fishing In The Rainbow River
Great article with clear and helpful explanations - thanks!