TEJI TUESDAYS 
Issue #017 · 20th Feb, 2024

Hi All!

Here is your weekly dose of TEJI, a weekly round up of what I’m pondering and exploring. Feel free to forward along to a friend if you think they might enjoy.

Music NFTs

Have you ever listened to an artist and thought to yourself this guy is going to be huge and then a few years down the line everyone’s listening to them? There’s no way to prove you were there first and even if you were it doesn’t help you out much.

Now what if I told you there was a way to directly support artists you like and also be rewarded in the upside if their career were to take off. This is were digital music collectables come in — sites like sound.xyz and audius.co allow artists to upload their songs as digital collectables and sell them to their supporters.

It’s kind of like iTunes back in the day but you actually own your music forever this time. Once you buy a song it’s yours for life. Apple can’t turn around and say “hey we’re switching over to streaming now so you need to pay us $14 a month if you want to keep listening to your music lol”.

Not to mention there’s only a limited number of songs that so many people can own as supply is often capped on each song. For example imagine if Drake released 100 copies of his first song on something like sound.xyz and people held on to them up until now — There would definitely be a demand that would cause the prices to go up and you got to keep a little pieces of history if you decided not to sell.

But it isn’t just about making money from investing in artists — music NFTs support artists significantly more then platforms like Spotify and Apple Music who typically pay out $0.003-$0.005 on average per stream. Whereas if an indie artist were to get 100 mints/collectors on a song they could make at least $100-200 and this is for an indie artist with a small following.

These numbers only go up when artists are bigger and can set their prices at a premium. An artist like Snoop Dogg often sets his prices per edition/mint/collectable at $100-200 and then times that by a few thousand and you do the math.

If you’re into music I’d really suggest looking into the world of music NFTs. If you need any help getting setup don’t be afraid to reach out.

My First Song

Keeping on the subject of music I’d like to announce that my first song will be releasing today. There will be a digital collectable available here if you’re interested in collecting my first song. It will only be available for 7 days so try to get one while you can.

Alternatively if you don’t give a shit about NFTs and digital collectables you can just listen on my Soundcloud here.

I will also be releasing an animated music video for the song tomorrow so keep you eyes peeled for that.

Psychiatrists advice to creators

Last week I stumbled upon this video I really enjoyed and thought I’d share it with everyone here. The video goes into detail about managing your mental health as a creator by explaining strategies on how creators can manage burn and figure out the best way to sustain their creativity over the long run.

If you’re at all interested in creating stuff I’d really recommend watching the hour long interview.

Graffiti Documentaries

On a more exciting note I also stumbled upon a YouTube channel called populist this week and thought they had some cool content. The video I found them through was a mini documentary on the artist sluto who installs illegal mosaic murals around the city. Graffiti had a huge impact on me growing up and on the art I enjoy creating and consuming and I always enjoy watching a little 5 minute mini doc on obscure graffiti artists around the world.

Mambo

If you’re Australian you probably remember the brand Mambo. It was in Kmart and I thought it sucked. In my head it was this cheapo brand when in reality this was just a period in their history were they stopped producing cool shit and sold out to big retailers like Kmart.

The reason why I’m bringing the brand up is because last week I walked into a random shop along King St in Newtown and discovered an entire archive of old Mambo clothing, sculptures and other cool paraphernalia. The owner of the store even showed me an old book that had every single design ever created by the team. I tried taking photos of the designs so I could rip them for my own stuff but the owner wouldn’t let me.

Nonetheless I instantly fell in love with the old art style and direction of the brand. One of the main artists behind the brand in the early days was Reg Mombassa another super talented artist from Auckland, New Zealand.

Below you can see one of the sculptures I really liked. I could definitely see myself emulating this style with some of my own work.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into the brand I did find this brief video which does explain a little bit more about the brand if you’re interested.

Feel free to give me feedback on Twitter. What did you like? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @TEJITOPIA and put #TEJITUESDAYS at the end so I can find it.
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Hope everyone enjoys their week!
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Love
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TEJI (@tejitopia)

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