Podcast notes – Rise of Virtual Influencers – David and Jay from Hume (Zima Red podcast)

Guests: David and Jay
Host: Andrew from Sfermion
Hume = Metastar entertainment studio

David background:
Studied economics in college
Vaudeville Ventures – media + tech, product strategy
2014 discovered Bitcoin
2017 discovered Ethereum (dapps + open Internet + no gatekeepers)
Started Abacus blog to educate and share

Jay background:
Singer / actor
Tisch school of arts
worked w/ top brands and artists – League of Legends, Selena Gomez
saw problems w/ artist mistreatment, lack of revenue share

The two met on NYU class trip to China

Created 2 virtual artists for fun / as a sorta joke (Ivan and Peter), talking in German accents, playing around – grew them into virtual characters

Now it’s $0.0035 revenues per stream, split between many parties
70%+ taken by labels, and upfront payments to artists (eg, like $100K) must be later re-paid from revenues
Can lock you up for 5-7 albums, but labels can drop you anytime
Top artists and managers make money, but vast majority of artists don’t, and the support characters don’t (like songwriters)

Rise of micro communities – make $100K from NFTs / relationships with smaller audience, retain music ownership, more leverage in record deals

Hume Collective = Metastar entertainment studio
Metastar = music driven virtual artists
artists: Ivan and Peter, AngelBaby

AngelBaby is a “fully evolved virtual being” (launched Oct 2021)
she’s a Fluf, came from Fluf World – all open IP
she has lived 1K years already, rich history
“she eats a lot…parties…she’s pretty wild”
there’s an evil entity from her original world / era, they’re fighting each other
the lore will emerge in songs, video, NFT media

NFT PFP projects (profile picture collections) are different countries, trading volumes are GDP

untapped power of open IP / open creative assets – more collaboration and partnerships than ever before – power of trustless systems
saw it in DeFi, now seeing it in creative / art

imagine if Disney’s Aladdin were fractionalized, allow collabs w/ Marvel stars like Iron Man, power of community ownership of character

virtual artists can collaborate with many more people – best vocalists, best instruments, best songwriters – more creative contributors

ASM – Altered State Machine – NFT brain with AI that can plug into digital avatar, learn environment + game rules + develop personality

Host – Watson AI released on Twitter became racist in 10 minutes
we’ll interact with memes and anons and not know they’re AI

Lessons as founders
-must have conviction to stay with it for years before seeing success
-importance of communicating well with cofounder
-approach your day like it’s day one

Revenue sources
-each Metastar will have NFT drops
-brand sponsorships (metaverse + physical fashion)
-live performance and music (imagine traveling virtual concerts)

people will become virtual influencers – motion capture suits, pseudonymous personalities, create your own rigs

will be hybrid world of influencers – 1) pure virtual; 2) human + virtual identity; 3) normal human

in future, we’ll see a lot more NFT interactivity – different projects, metaverses, items, characters that can inter-op and play with each other