OBI Season 1: January Guests & Mint Details
Mint Goes Live at 4pm PST / 7pm EST
The One Big Idea Podcast is back!
Season 1 Episode 1 will be live-streamed this Thursday at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST from my Twitter account (@austin_hurwitz). I’ll be joined by shipping extraordinaire David Greenstein, Co-Founder of Sound.xyz.
Season 1 Music NFT Mint Details
To commemorate the launch, we will release this season’s theme song as a music NFT powered by Sound Protocol! Remember those free Season 0 digital collectibles we released last month? Those serve as your allowlist spots for the mint, which is happening today at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST. Any leftovers will go live on public sale 24 hours later. Former guest and Web3 music trailblazer Reo Cragun reimagined the song from the ground up, and I couldn’t be more excited with how it turned out.
To mint, head to this link at 4 pm PST today!
Season 1: Web3 Music’s Breakout Moment
Season 0 could be described as my wandering period. Over twelve episodes, I followed my curiosity, interviewing individuals from across Web3. Last season was eclectic by design, from influencers turned performance artists, to former NBA journalists, to fine artists whose works go for hundreds of thousands at Sotheby’s. I wanted to see what spoke to me and what would stick with you, the audience. 55,000+ views later, I’ve come to a few conclusions that helped shape this upcoming season.
Music is universal - My best-performing episodes of the season were all music focused. Guests like Sidney Swift, Troy Carter, Daniel Allan, and Reo Cragun. Their stories are easily digestible and provide a behind-the-scenes look at an industry we all come into contact with daily. While crypto is a part of their journeys, its resonance paled in comparison to the personal anecdotes that were shared. Whether it was Sidney shooting his shot with Jason Derulo or Troy getting a record deal with Will Smith, these personal moments highlighted a different side to these larger-than-life personalities.
It’s also what I know best - I’ve spent eight years in entertainment. Driving licensing efforts at Amazon Music, serving as an artist manager, and leading Web3 strategy at Venice Music. Since leaving my full-time role in August, I’ve increasingly spent my free time going deeper and deeper into music. From climbing up the Sound.xyz collector charts to jumping in collector chats with some of my favorite artists, music continues to be where I can provide perspective and access to this community.
Making it easier to enjoy - I had an epiphany that seemed all too obvious in hindsight as we closed the season. The OBI community primarily lives on Twitter. It stands to reason that content should be released and live natively on Twitter as much as possible. To test this hypothesis, I hosted Daniel Allan and Reo Cragun for the season finale last year on a live-stream multicast (across Twitter and YouTube). The results? The first-day performance of the episode was the best of the season by an 8x multiple. So Twitter it is…
With these learnings in mind, Season 1 of The One Big Idea Podcast will narrow its focus to one topic. Enabling Web3 music’s breakout moment. Each week I’ll bring on the artists, platforms, collectors, and thought leaders at the bleeding edge of music. We will hear their stories, unpack their learnings, and get their takes on how we get to widespread Web3 music adoption. By the time the season wraps later this year, you’ll have volumes of perspectives across the industry on how we get there.
Episodes will air live on Twitter and YouTube. Thursdays at 4 pm PST / 7 pm EST. They will be released to streaming services the following week.
I’ll announce the season's guests at the top of each month. For January, I am pleased to welcome David Greenstein, LNRZ, and Music Ben.
David Greenstein is the co-founder of Sound.xyz, a suite of web3-native music and economic tools powering the next generation of artists and their communities. Sound Artists can publish songs, sell NFTs, use splits, and participate in governance within a tightly integrated suite of tools.
LNRZ (pronounced loners) is a creative incubator and producer of groundbreaking music and visual NFTs. Founded by Reo Cragun and Jeremy Lewis, the collective now counts dozens among their roster of collaborators. LNRZ is community-owned, with a portion of each NFT sale going into the LNRZ treasury for use to be determined by its members. I’ll be joined by a host of the LNRZ “freshman” who recently joined the collective.
Music Ben is the Co-founder of Ziggy Ziggy Music, a platform for Web3 music discovery, posting daily videos of music NFTs. Ben is also a contributor for Billboard, where he covers the Web3 landscape.
Thank you all for the incredible amount of support. I can not wait to take all I’ve learned from Season 0 to make this the best season yet!