Ep 157: Feelings Check-In with Vérité on the artist's journey, creative entrepreneurship and technology's impact on both

[00:00] The Feelings Check-In is a podcast for people who love to listen to two women overshare about the challenges of building a business, navigating careers in tech, and trying to have a personal life. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. [00:18] The Boys Club podcast? No, no. [00:21] Just boy stuff. [00:22] Hi. How's it going? Good. Beautiful day here in Nashville. We have beautiful day in New York too actually like 75 and sunny. 75 and sunny. Nice and cool. It has been the depths of hell here for the past couple weeks so. Oh really? Oh wait it's 75 and sunny. I'm coming there this week and I was planning for hot hot hot. It's not hot hot hot. It's [00:40] It's perfect. Parfait. [00:41] Okay, cool. That's exciting. Very exciting. Well, what else is exciting is this is the feelings check-in. This is a podcast where Dina and I share about our feelings and bring on people that we respect and know and love to also talk about their feelings. And we have a great episode today with Verite. She's an artist, a musical artist. She's incredibly talented. I listen to her stuff all the time. It's so good. And she was amazing. [01:07] unbelievable at fast live just voice of an angel and also incredibly smart [01:13] Yeah, she's a feeler too. So it's a good match when you get a feeler on the feelings check-in because they're just willing to spill. Yeah, I think in reflection on the conversation that we have with her... [01:26] something that is so striking about her and so unique is that

[01:30] she's a really well-rounded person. She is this incredible artist, but that doesn't mean [01:38] not that artists aren't like highly strategic and intelligent people, but like she's, [01:43] very... [01:44] She's an intellectual, but also has this like commercial mind as well that it's just she's a very talented, wonderful human being. And I really enjoyed the conversation. [01:55] I totally agree. And I hope you guys do too. [01:58] you [02:00] Hey, Natasha. So a question we get asked a lot is, what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor, Kraken. If you're waiting for the right time to get into crypto, Kraken makes it super easy and intuitive to get started. Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. If you're ready to check out [02:29] to kraken.com backslash boys club and see what crypto can be not investment advice crypto trading involves risk of loss and is offered to us customers through payward interactive inc [02:41] On today's Feelings Check-In, we have a very special guest. Verite is with us. Artist, songwriter, producer, and performer. Her independently released work has garnered over 350 million streams. Just wrapped up a tour for her third album, Love You Forever.

[03:01] I am a big fan, genuinely. So very excited to have you on the show. Welcome. [03:06] Thank you so much for having me. I've been a fan and you guys have had so many people that I love and admire on your show. So I'm happy to be in the mix. We're so excited to have you. Okay, so I want to start... [03:18] with you have been a [03:21] practicing artist and musician for 12 plus years. You are an experimenter at heart with a lot of this emerging tech, which we love here at Boys Club. You just came off a European tour. You performed at Fest. You've been busy. You've been doing a lot. And I just want to [03:37] set the stage and just ask, how are you feeling? [03:41] I feel good. I feel like it's interesting always an external perspective on what you're doing and how you're doing. Because in my head this year, I've been on a self-proclaimed sabbatical. I feel like this is the least I've been doing ever in my life and career. And I think it's much needed to take a step back and learn how to rest and recharge for whatever the next step is. [04:11] But I'm glad from the external, it seems like I'm cooking. It seems like you're cooking. Yeah, totally. You just went on tour. It's such an odd thing to say when you just got off tour. Well, tour technically ended in like, [04:25] April. [04:26] April, March. Right? And it's always so great to be on the road. And you're kind of like putting faces to random internet personas or people that you've met. And especially being in Europe, I was opening for an artist LP and being exposed to these like massive different audiences. And LP is...

[04:49] has this massive international audience and so being in poland and playing shows or playing arenas in budapest and you're every day is this new novel experience and so it feels like forever and then you get back home and you're like yo what the am i doing yeah um small world my husband wrote co-wrote a song with lp for their last album and oh really the funny thing about that to your point was that stuff started popping off in like hungry and it would it was getting crazy reach yeah and [05:19] Also, like a perception of what is success, which is something that I spend a lot of time focusing on, you know, for myself, but also kind of planting in the minds of other artists and creators as like they're like they show up in Mexico and they play 25,000 sold out arenas and then their U.S. audiences. [05:41] you know smaller but still super engaged and this idea of this idea of what success is is highly localized sometimes I think the internet sometimes plays tricks on us and tells us that virality or these different things equate to some semblance of success and you start to realize that there are way more metrics involved in creating like a holistic career and life as an artist as a creator as someone who's running a business etc. [06:09] What do you feel like your... [06:11] relationship is to [06:13] your fans or your followers or the people who listen to your music? [06:17] It's really interesting because in some ways it's changed over time and in some ways it's

[06:22] exactly the same. I view being... [06:26] an artist [06:27] and making the decision to not only be an artist, but try to build a [06:33] livelihood from my artistry as a service. And I think it recontextualizes a lot of the value exchange that happens between artists and their audiences. And so for me, it really is a service of providing a place for people to go, whether it's physically when I'm on tour, whether it's mentally and sonically when they enter my world and kind of step into the work I create, the [07:03] And then just as like a human in their lives in a non-hierarchical way, when you can do that, sometimes it's impossible and you need to reestablish, like, I am [07:16] you don't know me, but I spend a lot of time just like interfacing with these people and building [07:23] like a community that I want to be a part of. And that I feel very lucky that people [07:31] resonate with all of those different elements and somehow it's equated to this, you know, decade plus long career. [07:42] doing whatever the fuck I want to do, which is ultimately the goal. [07:47] Yeah. What I love about what you're saying is something we talk a lot about at Boys Club is like that there are givers and there are takers.

[07:53] And... [07:54] that [07:55] It's not always bad if you're a taker and it's not always good if you're a giver. But the way that you have just talked about how you make your work is very much as a giver and saying like this is I'm in service of my fans and followers and audience. And that relationship is nourishing to you as someone who's giving to these people. And I think that's a really beautiful way to approach a creative practice. And yeah, really inspiring to hear how you're thinking about it. [08:21] Okay, I want to talk about crypto. If we must. If we must go there, I will bring down the vibe. Let's bring it all the way down. No, I mean, I really love your approach. I think the way that, at least from an outsider looking in, the way that you've approached a lot of crypto tooling, crypto culture, whatever, however you want to look at it and call it, is very much like, let's try stuff and then be really honest about how it works or how it doesn't. [08:51] so many people are just like pumping their bags and have an inability to just be like transparent about okay these are the things that worked and they didn't and you recently wrote a thread that i kind of want to just read a little bit of and then just have you go off so i'm just going to read some of this you said okay but jokes aside every few months the same recycled conversation about the failed narrative of music nfts it's clickbait promises a financial revolution for

[09:21] Well, the market has proven to not exist outside of a niche circle. Early adopters made a lot of money, me included, in the wave of an explorative hype cycle VC mania. [09:33] secondary players entered the game in hopes of capturing the already oversaturated market now a race to zero so there's more here and we'll link this thread in the show notes but would love for you to just talk about yeah your experience where you're at now and it doesn't have to be up only yeah it's it's not even that i'm trying to bring down the vibe but i'm a pragmatist and i i'm [09:56] kind of like entered this world in 2021. [09:59] at a really interesting time before that really public hype cycle took wind. [10:09] And... [10:10] It was out of a curiosity in an industry that is essentially extremely bad at valuing its greatest asset, the music industry. We've seen a systemic devaluation of music for a lot of factors that are unavoidable. Wholly market oversaturation due to the fact that creating and distributing music is now essentially free. And there was this [10:35] At least what lured me in was this [10:38] curiosity of can we reinvigorate the value of music through the creation of digital scarcity? Can we play around with the value of music by creating new and novel experiences? And

[10:52] my initial kind of dipping my toe in was to really play in that. And, [10:58] I did really, really well because in a lot of ways I was like first to do a lot of things. [11:06] And I think that if I were a different person, that doing so well and really capturing a lot of monetary value back when like, [11:16] you know, $25,000 one of ones were the normal, [11:20] you know, for those glory four months. You know, I would be like, wow, Web3 is amazing. Blockchain is amazing. It's doing all these things. But for me, I kind of saw through the veneer and I was just like, oh, I'm never going to be able to translate this to my existing fan base. And I just saw the timer. [11:39] on the thing and how this was only sustainable because there were 20 people participating. And once more people got involved, it would go less and which [11:49] kind of pushed me into different types of experiments by [11:55] fractionalizing ownership and trying to give master royalty points, which I did like. [12:01] in early 2022 where I sold something to a fan at a million dollar valuation. [12:07] and he paid, you know, he got 2%. [12:10] So in a lot of ways, that was a successful experiment, but again, failed to scale out in any meaningful way. [12:20] And I think as we've watched the race to zero, which I really believe we saw everything from, okay, we're having highly valued one of ones down to we're giving away, you know, 100 addition music NFTs to zero. In a lot of ways, I think we're recreating a system, but worse and have failed to fully distill the actual use cases of blockchain that are unique to blockchain outside of

[12:48] the hope for [12:50] financialization, the hope to kind of pack your bags. And it's a narrative that I think has been sold to artists that is ultimately hindering them from building holistic careers outside. [13:02] of this ecosystem and feeling dependent on these systems, which is people participating who have a vested interest in the technology's proliferation. Mm-hmm. [13:13] So I have a lot of thoughts. [13:15] but that's a few of them. I have so many thoughts based on your thoughts. So much comes to mind. But one of the things that has always been really obvious to me about your work is that, first of all, being driven by this curiosity and experimentation, I think is so beautiful in any shape that it takes. And I think that it has manifested itself in this way over the past couple years for you. But that's a quality that will just continue to bloom for you. And I see [13:45] And so it's just wonderful to [13:47] be witness of. One thing that has always been [13:50] clear is that [13:52] as a creative person [13:54] entrepreneur have understood that you know not to draw lines but like the web 2 is where your reach is and that web 3 the the the [14:03] tools that you were experimenting with are really like the loyalty layer. And so you have like that reach and then it's like down into the funnel where it's loyalty. And that's how we've looked at it at Boys Club as well. And I think that the one post that you did at one point was about how you had done some surveying of your fans. It was revealed in that survey and the survey results that they didn't really care about

[14:24] some of the tooling that you were using really at all. And that wasn't actually what was driving loyalty for them. And so at that point, it's like when you have this tool set that's meant to do one thing, [14:35] But when you kind of peek under the hood, it's not really doing the thing that it's meant to do. [14:40] then it makes a ton of sense to like kind of set it aside and say that was a successful experiment for me, but maybe other artists can't replicate it or whatever it is. So yeah, I guess not a really question that just sort of an acknowledgement that I thought that was a really smart way to approach it. I mean, the fan responses were hysterical and I recommend anyone building anything to go read it. My favorite is like every time you say the word NFT, I want to like. [15:03] fucking [15:04] gouge my eyes out, you know, or something like that. But the actual reactions are really negative, with very few positives. And I think, like, if we're distilling down, [15:15] what are the actual use cases of blockchain in like a creator sense, a commercial sense. It's really like data, transparent data and smart contracts, the ability to like immediately execute certain transactions based on certain conditions. And I think that it's just interesting that [15:36] To watch... [15:38] people who seem afraid, I'm going to make a bold statement, who seem afraid to take their ideas, idealism and creations out of the ecosystem in which it was incubated and put it into another ecosystem.

[15:55] Because... [15:57] In my experience, they fail. [15:59] when planted in new soil, in a different habitat, in a different market, with different consumers. But I think that that pain point is essential to actually building things [16:12] that have value, that are usable [16:16] and have the potential for more mass adoption. One of the things that I think when I hear you talk about this and... [16:24] when I look at specifically a musical artist is that there's this [16:29] balance that you're, I feel like, constantly having to navigate between being... [16:34] a creator being a world builder [16:37] being an artist with being an entrepreneur and being someone who has to think about the business of music making and how that. [16:46] if you want to have this as [16:48] the source of your livelihood, which I think most artists do. Like, how do you balance those two things? And I think looking at Web 2 scale and Web 3 loyalty and all of these different ways in which those tools have tried to play into that balance. And I'm curious, like, how do you approach that? Like, are you thinking about the... [17:09] Because I see you and I'm like, this is someone who's truly an artist, but also you're incredibly savvy and entrepreneurially minded. And so I'm curious how you approach that. And then when in that sort of matrix of decision making are you thinking about where is there new and novel opportunities that...

[17:26] tech and tooling can provide, whether it's blockchain or I'm curious what you think about AI as well. But yeah, I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that. [17:34] I mean, from my perspective... [17:36] I view everything in like a constellation. And I think that as artists, a lot of times we're conditioned to view things in a very like singular stardom trajectory. Right. One singular star, one singular goal. And to me, that's like the ultimate luxury of like that's like winning the lottery of I get to. [17:56] do one thing that is the optimal thing and I am able to sustain off of that. But I think having built an independent project, viewing everything as a constellation, a constellation of revenue streams, a constellation of creative pursuits that all feed back into the center has been really vital to building something that is like, A, keeps me... [18:18] creatively fulfilled, intellectually fulfilled, and keeps kind of pushing the boundaries because what I want to do when I'm 50 is probably different from what I wanted to do when I was 25. And so we want to keep things moving and keep things interesting and dynamic. [18:34] And I think for me, kind of pushing the boundaries of like experiences and how to present artistry is just interesting to me. And like I've done it from the beginning of my career back when, you know, [18:50] no one was embracing streaming and that's how I started my career was embracing streaming and like Spotify and getting in with the people at Spotify in like 2014 before

[19:02] anyone thought it would pay anything. And even now pivoting to like, I've done a lot of work with IYK. I've been working with Chris and Ryan since like 2021. Love those guys. [19:12] back when the first disc was an NFC chip laminated on a piece of paper being passed out at my shows. And this idea of, oh, well, can we... [19:24] allow can we better understand who's coming to my shows and allow people to leave me a message at my shows like like a comment box. [19:35] But digitally, and it's like these kind of experiences and experiments from like, you know, having a crew neck that is access to the next era of Verite or a tour t-shirt that holds the memories of the tour that you just attended. [20:05] like how can we bring everything back into the relationship between me and [20:11] and the fans, which is ultimately the thing that keeps this wheel [20:15] turning. Yeah. Yeah. [20:16] Thank you. [20:18] It's time for a more open, inclusive, and transparent financial system. A system that serves nearly everyone, everywhere, all the time. That's why we love today's sponsor, Kraken. Kraken is a crypto platform that provides a super simple on-ramp to the world of crypto with a 24-7 support team. Crypto transcends physical and imaginary borders. No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. You can send, receive, and trade crypto anywhere near instantly.

[20:47] You're talking a lot about the one, if not maybe the only use case for blockchain in [21:06] the music industry being around the data, [21:08] Can you say more about that and like what how exactly that manifests or could manifest for an artist? [21:14] What we've seen is the centralization of all of these platforms and there is a middleman [21:21] Spotify is a middleman. Ticketmaster and Live Nation are a middleman. Social media is a middleman. Everything is... [21:28] a disruption and a wall and a blockade from you and the people who have even a lot of times opted into seeing your content through algorithmic gating through holding the data of who attends your shows who listens to your music and then monetizing that data back to you as the person who actually provides value to these platforms and i think [21:50] A lot of the quote unquote Web3 initial promise was we were going to demystify that black box of data and actually allow the users of platforms to be the ones who capture the value of those platforms, like the actual like monetary value. [22:05] And I think that we've seen that initial promise kind of fade into the distance in favor of the traditional structures of how companies are funded with VC kind of jumping in and getting involved. There's different considerations that practically have to be taken. But

[22:24] A lot of that first experiment of the first iteration of like guestbook in the IYK disc was Chris and I walking around the park and me having a tour. [22:34] and it was right after COVID and one of the promoters that I had worked with in DC for years went under in COVID. And with that went [22:44] you know, [22:45] the thousands of email addresses and contacts that we have kind of developed over years, and the data of like who actually attended those shows that the promoters then go back and reach out to those people to retarget. [22:58] So I was starting from zero in this market and I like wasn't selling the same amount of tickets I was because we weren't able to reach these people. So that became an experiment in a solution, like a tangible solution to an actual problem. I don't know who comes to my shows. Is there a way? [23:17] to [23:18] better incentivize people to identify themselves at shows to provide that data so that I get it and then I can directly retarget and then creating a system to understand, well, who came to Chicago and who came to Chicago? [23:33] LA, etc. And so a lot of, again, like I think the most impactful experimentation is in [23:41] trying to solve these individual problems of understanding [23:46] and having access to the data of who your audience is. And I think, again, it's one of the most useful things [23:53] for why blockchain...

[23:54] is necessary, you know, either on the front end or as the guardrails are [24:01] You know what I'm trying to say. It's like railway of the internet or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So where do you think we go from here? [24:08] Cryptoculture is atrocious. And I have seen and heard you say... [24:16] the way to move forward is like control alt delete. [24:19] Let's try again. Let's reset. [24:21] and [24:23] what do you think that looks like in practice, both as someone... [24:29] as a creative in this industry, but also just [24:31] as participants in this industry. What does that look like to sort of have a reset on, I think, some of the cultural [24:39] brainwashing that we all thought was going to happen. And now it's like, okay, that's not what it is. [24:43] But where can we go from here? [24:45] I mean, I really think it needs to be a delete. I mean... [24:48] We can even... [24:50] set aside the [24:52] like truly blatant and vocal misogyny and racism right that is just like an actual like embedded in the fiber of the dialogue and rhetoric that you see on social media in affiliation with the with uh like crypto twitter and crypto culture right we can have a whole separate conversation about that when i look at it for artists i also think that the biggest man i don't want to be like [25:23] But... [25:24] The framing of Web3 as a space, as a community,

[25:29] and framing, it was in the thread, framing a technology as a community [25:36] undermines [25:38] artists and cultural contributions to technology that it needs to actually survive and thrive and gain new users because technology needs new users in order to survive. [25:51] And I think that there isn't that, [25:55] reciprocity and I think that it's also conditioned artists to be like well I deserve this reciprocity because of these initial promises and it's also not realistic. And so I think that it's placed artists in a in a position of financial dependency on these promises and hope of this financial revolution that isn't going to come from this. And I think that that conditioning runs deep and I [26:22] would love to see a reinvigoration of a companies [26:28] Bringing on creatives in an official capacity at early stages to help them grow and build effective product to actually run effective experiments and you know companies that I have worked with in that capacity have real world use cases. Yeah, because they have creatives on the team embedded in the fabric of their teams and then are able to actually [26:52] understand who the end consumer is. Mm-hmm. [26:56] And so for me, it's like, let's extract the community from the technology. Blockchains do not need artists to make a lot of money.

[27:05] and [27:07] I think that, I don't know, just taking a step back and again, distilling what is actually useful here and what are realistic expectations of, you know, the structures that have been built here for artists to rely on and to reject. [27:22] Wow, that [27:25] was such a powerful [27:27] distillation of so many totally disparate feelings that I've been having and not been able to like articulate and yeah wow I I [27:38] I can't wait to listen to that again because that idea of the technology, and I think Borskope has been complicit in this and it's something that we think a lot about our role in moving forward, this idea of, [27:49] technology framed as community and [27:53] extractive that is for the culture creators who are [27:57] pouring their like beautiful world building skills into that and yeah it just so much of that resonates i think that part of why the promise of crypto for artists and i think musicians in particular was so seductive was i think speaking into this idea of there being so many gatekeepers in an industry that feels like where where the value accumulates is disproportionate to where [28:27] like, whoa, maybe this is a solve for something that feels so broken. And I think that for a lot of people, streaming feels really broken and...

[28:35] I know that also the music industry has made a lot of gains over the past 10 years because of streaming and that it was really broken. And now it's a little bit less broken that there's at least some money. So I'm just curious as a futurist type thinker when you're thinking about the industry that you're working in, like, [28:52] where does it go from here? And I guess sort of maybe on a smaller scale, like when you're thinking about your own money situation, like where where are you making bets? [29:02] Yeah, that's really interesting. I think looking at the historical context of emerging technology and who benefited [29:12] and benefits from emerging like [29:15] distribution platforms, social platforms, etc. It's usually always the first movers who capture the biggest market share, who are able to capture attention that then rolls over as more wide adoption comes in. And so for instance, it's like, [29:30] Um [29:31] I embraced streaming really early and I was, you know, [29:34] First on New Music Friday in front of Kendrick Lamar. And I own all my masters. And so I actually captured the value of all of those streams and got to see the real financial impact of what it means to have, you know, hundreds of millions of streams compounding. [30:04] companies and segmented off editorial and algorithmic distribution to those entities. And you see that in social platforms. It's like if you were early on TikTok, you could be Charli D'Amelio level for like doing silly dances. And now you don't.

[30:25] see that like quick meteoric rise of star because it is so oversaturated and it's like the same thing happened in Web 3 and just like, you know, lightning speed, because as technology grows and adapts like the life cycles actually get much shorter. [30:42] so [30:44] as an artist, as somebody who, when I started my career, had a 10-year vision. It's about adapting for what the next 10 years will look like and [30:54] I'll go back to like the constellation. It's really just about numbering the 10 things that I want to do [31:01] Both for like... [31:03] Creative fulfillment? [31:05] but also for financial gains, right? And [31:10] at any given moment being able to adapt to what is a hostile and ever-changing marketplace and having the freedom to adapt and maintaining that freedom maintaining that independence and sometimes that means i'm doing number seven eight nine on my list of priorities because i'm like oh i need revenue [31:31] and like I just need income right now. But for the most part it's doing [31:36] one through five and it's actually doing the things that i love doing and i'm very lucky that i have a segmented brain that [31:44] I love creating art and touring and solving creative problems as much as I love strategically solving, I don't know, valuation problems for how we can create new and novel experiences to better collect data and understand our audiences and reward them, which opens up a whole separate world of consulting and strategy and helping to bring these experiences to life.

[32:13] becoming as well-rounded as you can as like a creator. [32:17] and a thinker, [32:18] and a human and remaining agile and adaptable to [32:23] every industry and every circumstance as it shifts it just [32:28] allows for way more longevity. [32:31] Yeah, I really love that way of thinking about [32:34] Having a set of priorities around your career in life and scaling them up based on what you need or what is required or... [32:44] Yeah. [32:45] Whether that need is a monetary need or a creative need or a creative fulfillment, I think that's a really powerful way to think about. [32:53] our lives across the board, like whether you're an artist or just a human being working it all out. I think that's a really powerful way to think about your time and attention and energy and what you pour yourself into. And Verite, this has been so wonderful [33:06] lovely and like just I really really respect the way that you think about your career and your life and I think it's really refreshing to hear somebody so smart think so critically about the things that I care about and the things that I'm thinking about so thank you so much for being here I just want to close with what are you what are you cooking what's next what are you up to [33:26] I've been cooking, I mean, literally the same meal every day. So, like, if we're talking in a literal sense, I've been making... [33:36] adult chicken nuggets every day. Nice. Hyper fixation on adult chicken nuggets. Hyper fixation, the healthy kind. And so that's the literal. But

[33:46] I think that [33:48] having taken [33:49] these last few months to... [33:51] kind of take a step away and reevaluate like [33:57] what am I doing? Why am I doing what I'm doing? And like, what do I value? And what do I want my life to look like? I was kind of like willing to give up everything. I was like, maybe I'm going to take a full step away from reality and like, [34:10] go live in a cabin in the middle of a field somewhere. But I'm not. I think that it's actually really motivated me. Like I'm starting to like, [34:19] write and create music again. [34:22] with like a new perspective. I'm working on some interesting projects around an anniversary of the project that's coming up and how [34:33] How do I value all of my past work and how do I share all of the pieces of that with the world? [34:41] as we kind of look at music as being more free and interoperable and collaborative. So I'm thinking about a lot of those things for a project. And inevitably, like, I'm making another album. I will go on more tours. I'm not dead yet, so. [35:00] Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. [35:11] Bye.