Over the past few weeks, Berlin-based creative collective CO:QUO has been hosting a virtual panel series titled Music Futures & Simulacra, exploring the use of “symbols and signs to imagine new futures for the music industry.”
The first panel, focused on the future of NFTs and crypto for music, took place via Zoom and Facebook Live on June 16, featuring perspectives from artists, researchers, developers and curators. With a healthy dose of skepticism and criticism, the discussion dissected not only how artists can leverage NFTs to gain more ownership over their careers, but also the significant cultural, financial and ethical risks associated with this emerging infrastructure that tend to get overlooked in mainstream music-industry conversations.
The full recording of the panel is available on Facebook, but we also wanted to publish a text recap of the key themes and takeaways here on Mirror. This specific platform also gives us a chance to put the panel speakers’ collective enthusiasm for collaborative crypto economics into practice, in even a small way.