“ghostTrack” _ a Farmable Music Item by matlemad (ethOS/DAOrecords 2021)
Release EPK
Disclaimer: the following article covers an R&D music release that uses a brand new token standard and farming/liquidity contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain. This release is not meant to endorse any investment strategy.
What you’re going to read about is possibly a first dig ever in in the field of Musical NFTs: a song NFT with an ERC20 interface that unlocks a whole new world of interactions between author and owners/fans. This project was possible with the help and support of ethOS and DAOrecords.
WHAT IS A GHOST TRACK?
Ghost Tracks might not be very well-known to Millennials.
Back when music had physical supports, a ghost track would feature in the space left at the very end of the vinyl, cassette or CD, hidden from tracklist on the rear cover. You would just listen the album to the very last song, and right when you were ready to stop and eject, another track would break in unexpected. Creatively speaking, ghost tracks were usually unfinished recordings, raw takes, or simply compositions too cryptic to make it in the official tracklist.
MY ‘ghostTrack’ RELEASE
AUDIO
“ghostTrack” comes from a memo recording I did on my phone, a guitar-drumming riff based on a uneven measures of 4/4 and 5/4 in a progressive order. This 1'50'’ recording was then built-up in my studio in Turin (ITA), where a few session-players would join the process and get paid in ETH. The whole song is a reference to the Delphic maxim “temet nosce” (know thyself) theme, and a personal trip about a decentralized AI ‘educated’ through decentrally-governed oracles. From Wikipedia: ”The Ancient Greek aphorism ‘know thyself’ is one of the Delphic maxims and was the first of three maxims inscribed in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The two maxims that followed ‘know thyself” were ‘nothing to excess’ and ‘surety brings ruin’. In Latin the phrase, ‘know thyself’, is given as nosce te ipsum or temet nosce”.
VISUALS
Visuals feature a front cover .gif animation and a 1'51'’ videoclip I put together by exploiting the looping effect of a burning candle against its own on-screen projection: by moving the focal point (the camera) you can play around with the light’s overdrive (similar to when you overdrive an audio signal by sending it through an analog tape-delay with the feedback knob beyond the fade point). Again, the “know yourself” themes here finds a visually delivered as in “finding the focal point that will unleash the light”. Credits to Anton Tal for showing me that technique.
THE ITEM STANDARD
I have tokenized this bundle of audio-visual content using the ITEM standard by the upcoming ethOS. Here’s a primer:
To me, an ITEM is like a swarm of bees: it behaves as one swarm (NFT interface), or as many bees (ERC20 interface). This atomic nature allows the ITEM to be interoperable between NFT marketplaces and AMMs, splittable (good for royalties/equities) and farmable, amongst other features. Together with Alessandro Mario Lagana Toschi we explored the freedom of movement the NFT’s ERC20 interface allows.
RELEASE PLAN
100 NFT were minted from my ITEM Collection, of which:
- RELEASE DATE — 16th of April 2021
10 NFTs available for pre-sale on DAOrecords’ storefront
1 NFT in pool with ETH on Uniswap - ONE WEEK LATER — 24th of April 2021 (block: 12303210)
44.5 NFTs in the Farming contract, duration 3 months
~ FARMING CONTRACT HERE ~ LOOK! AN NFT ON UNISWAP! ~
THE REST 44.5 NFTs will go to a Fixed Inflation contract, inflating 3.7 NFTs per WEEK.
PAYROLL OF THE FIXED INFLATION CONTRACT
25% to the author (me)
20% to the label (DAOrecords)
50% for the early-bid 10 owners of the DAOrecords presale
5% as Executor Reward for the the Fixed Inflation Contract.
The whole process in a primer:
My previous music releases on Ethereum:
3MILY — Article on Medium
My web2 discography on Spotify:
solo
Baroque
Eskinzo
Laura Guidi
The Alphaville Homestudio Recordings #1
