Luke: [00:00:00] From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist Podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Moltz, VP of business operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting brave browser and search engine.

Now powering AI with the Brave search. API. You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Jonathan Mann, who is a songwriter, performer, and internet icon, best known for writing and sharing an original song every single day for the last 17 years, A streak that has earned in millions of views and a devoted following.

As the conference troubadour, he creates custom songs live at events for companies like Apple, TEDMED and Novartis. His work sets at the intersection of creativity, technology, and culture, and he’s now exploring how crypto and AI are reshaping the future of artistic expression. In this episode, we discussed his [00:01:00] transition from an unemployed, aspiring artist to a full-time musician.

Thanks to leveraging Web3. The freedom and empowerment feels from being able to mint a song a day to his community through NFTs without being restricted to any other party, his experience suing the SEC and what he was fighting for. And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

Jonathan, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How you doing today?

Jonathan: I am doing all right. I just moved my entire studio from downstairs to upstairs and like just barely got it plugged in and time to do this. So I’m, I’m like slightly exhausted from carrying my big heavy desk up the stairs, but otherwise I’m good.

Yeah.

Luke: Well, I appreciate your sacrifice in uh, you know, a quick, quick spin up after the move, but No, exactly. This is exciting. I mean, we, you’re the first musician we’ve had on, we have a lot of creators that we outreach with, but you’ve done a lot of really interesting stuff. You’ve written a song every day since 2009, is that right?[00:02:00]

Yeah. What kind of sparked that and what’s kind of kept you going for that long? That’s a lot of songs. Yeah,

Jonathan: it’s a long time. Sang day began on January 1st, 2009. I was 26. I was living in Berkeley. I was unemployed. I was sort of looking for a new thing to throw myself into. I was sort of coming off of a good four or five years of.

Making a lot of songs and videos. We didn’t call it content back then. I hate the word content. One would nowadays call it content. I still don’t want to call it content. I had like a show called Game Jew. Well, first I wrote a, I made a rock opera based on the Super Mario Brothers. I did that around Los Angeles for a while, and then that sort of morphed into once YouTube came out in about 2005 or oh six.

I made a show on YouTube called [00:03:00] Game Jew, where I was like writing songs and interviewing people about video games, and I made like 40 songs about the Wii before it was released. I was actually the first person on the west coast to get a Wii. I like waited in line for 36 hours and like entertained the crowd singing like songs about the Wii and stuff or whatever.

And then the other thing I did in that era was like I sang the Miyamoto, if you know like Shara Miyamoto of. Of Mario and Zelda and Donkey Kong fame. But I like wrote him this song and I like tracked him down and like sang it to him. So like, come 2009, I’m sort of at the tail end of this journey. This kind of nostalgic video game journey that I was on.

And the honest truth is like my friend gave me a flyer for a thing called Fun a Day, which is like, it still exists. It’s an invitation to make one piece of art every day in the month of January. And so she gives me this flyer and I’m like, okay, cool. I’ll make a song a day of in January of [00:04:00] 2009. And that first.

Month. It was supposed to just be a month. A couple songs went viral. It was still like the early internet when there was, it was kind of just wide, wide open and nobody knew what was going on. Way more, more so I’d say, than today when everything’s so like commodified and easy or easier. And I was just having a blast and I still didn’t have a job and so I was just like, okay, I’m gonna go for a year.

And so all of 2009 I did it. And then at the end of that year, I got to the end and then it’s like on the 1st of January, 2010, I just like wrote another song. And so from there it just kind of became, or it’s become more or less my life’s work. It’s just gonna keep, keep going until I die. Is the plan anyway or, am.

Incapacitated in some way.

Luke: That’s wild. I mean, I kind of found you through the, you know, the crypto community, crypto Twitter space. You seem pretty early to the [00:05:00] crypto side of things too, as far as musicians go. Right. How did you find crypto and or did crypto find you or, I’m super curious.

Jonathan: Yeah, so crypto is sort of.

You know, similarly accidental to like everything else. It’s like Game Jew that was kind of accidental or just like, oh, people are making shows on YouTube. Like, I could do that. And then it’s like my friend hands me this flyer for song day is like, oh, okay. That sounds like a cool thing to do. Crypto for me began in 2017.

I knew about it beforehand in 2009 when I was starting Songa Day. I started January 1st and like the first Bitcoin was mined on January 3rd. So it’s like. It’s right around the same moment. And I remember I like vividly remember reading about Bitcoin like back then, and I didn’t obviously grok the implications or anything about it.

It seemed like an interesting thing. I was very like reading the news and like obsessed with like the financial crash and like [00:06:00] all the, all the stuff around that. And so Bitcoin fit into that milieu of like how crazy things. Were, and then I didn’t think about it again. And I have a very vivid memory of like my friend, another YouTuber actually like sitting with him at lunch and him being like, dude, did you, you know, this is like 2013.

He’s like. Bitcoin’s over a thousand. I’m like, oh, cool. Like I didn’t really know what that meant. It’s like, oh, neat. I’m happy for you, or like, whatever, you know? And then I was at this conference where I met Ethan Buckman, who is one of the founders of Cosmos Chain, and just a really passionate guy. And I saw him give a talk, and I think it was a pretty like high level beginner talk.

On blockchain specifically, you know, like here’s how blockchains work. Like here’s what it is. And I remember, you know, very specifically, like I was at this conference to do songs. He asked me if he could borrow my ukulele, my like tulle, [00:07:00] like my half guitar ukulele thing. And he like got up there and he like sang a song about, it was called Scam Train ‘cause it was about the ICO days.

And so he was like up there singing about scam train. And, you know, so right away I was like, oh, this guy’s cool. Like I, I’m really, I’m really having a good time here. And so I listened really for the first time, having someone explain in a very high level, layman way, here’s what a blockchain is, here’s what it does.

He didn’t say anything about, or he might’ve, I don’t remember. He might’ve said something about like, oh, and there’s like a nascent thing of people using the blockchain for art. Maybe he said something like that, I don’t even know. Mm-hmm. But something in his talk. Mm-hmm. Sparked that in me. I remember thinking specifically, the thought I had when I was sitting there was like, oh, I get it.

Like proof of work. I understand like, like song a day is proof of work. I have this whole Back catalog of songs that you know, it’s a blockchain and they all connect to each other and they feed on each other and [00:08:00] it’s a proof of work thing. And I’m, I, so I talked to him about that afterwards and he was very encouraging.

He was like, oh yeah, there’s all kinds of cool stuff happening. And I got home and I tweeted about it, like a, a random tweet about the fact that I was interested in, in blockchain as it may relate to music or art. And my friend who I, there’s another friend that I had met at this conference set me up on meta mask.

Gave me 0.12, eth, you know, which is like 40 bucks at the time or something, or whatever it was. Mm-hmm. And started showing me like, here’s a Twitter clone called Leroy, where like every tweet you do, you have to pay gas or whatever. And I’m like, gas? What’s that? And like, you know, and I’m learning. But he also showed me, one of the, probably five things he showed me was crypto punks.

Which at that time it just like basically just launched. It would’ve just come out. Yeah. That was like the moment I immediately was like, I love that coming from my video game background and then remembering collecting things as a kid, it like immediately I. Sparked in me [00:09:00] a super excitement about, and so from that moment I fell into the nascent NFT.

That word didn’t exist. It was pre crypto kitties. Like crypto kitties were just about to happen. I hate leaving the house. Like I I, I’ll never go anywhere. But I started going to meetups. I started going to like actual crypto art meetups in New York where I met all the people who are now, who are now like NFT people.

But at the time, if crypto was a subculture, we were like several subcultures below. We were like a subculture of a subculture of a subculture. And it was that way for years. You know, years and years and years and years, 2018, and Prague at devcon, like nobody cared about NFTs. I tokenized the first song ever on Ethereum there and like, you know, somebody bought it and it was like they bought it for 2.5 eth, which was like 500 bucks, and it was like.

That was cool. That was where my passion for [00:10:00] this whole crazy, wild industry began. Yeah,

Luke: that’s awesome. Bring the meetups back. I think I missed the meetups.

Jonathan: Oh, me too. Yeah, exactly. It’s like things are so small and we, you know, nobody knows what’s going on or nobody has any, it’s easy to be nostalgic for that, for sure.

Luke: For sure, for sure. So you minted the first song on Ethereum. How does that go from there to where you’re minting every song?

Jonathan: Yeah. The goal, immediately, once I saw Crypto Punks, the goal, it’s funny ‘cause I have the documents from those days, my dreaming and like, and writing up like, okay, what, what am I imagining?

But it was essentially like as soon as I saw Crypto Punks, I started imagining. Mapping crypto punks onto DA Song Day, it makes total sense to me to turn each song a day into its own unique digital object. It just makes such sense. It’s obvious. And so from that moment forward, essentially I was trying to do that to [00:11:00] tokenize every song, the idea of like how to do it and what the parameters would be.

Has changed and continues to change. One of the first things I did after I saw Crypto Punks was I wrote a song about crypto punks. So like the next week I wrote this song about Crypto Punks, which is in the song a Day Pantheon, and I sent it to Larva Labs. The guys who made Crypto punks, they were in Brooklyn and I was in Jersey City and I was like, Hey, I sent it to them.

I was like, Hey guys, can we get lunch? You know? And so we became friends and they were part of that NFT scene. And at the lunch I like asked them, I was like, would you have the bandwidth to like help me make my song a day NFT project? And of course they were like, no. Like they were very encouraging and everyone around was super encouraging.

And I tried everything. Like I didn’t have funds to pay a developer after Prague. Like one of the things I did is I created something called. [00:12:00] The initial song offering, and so like a play on the ICO thing. And so the idea is that I was like, I was gonna pre the way that people were pre-styling their token before the product existed.

I was like, oh, let me pre-sell my NFTs before their tokenized, before the platform is built, one person bought one who ended up founding a. Now defunct fractionalization platform. I think it was called NIF Deck or something like that. So that didn’t work. And then like I met some other guys who were like, gonna maybe do it for free.

But, you know, free devs are like never as good as paid devs. Like you can’t really lean on them to do it. And so for years it just sort of like didn’t happen. Didn’t happen. And then once 2021 happened, when the world started caring about NFTs. I launched a different NFT project that helped me fund the creation of this one.

And so then on January [00:13:00] 1st, 2022, three years ago now, I did the thing, I sold, you know, my entire back catalog of songs, and I started then minting a song every single day. And I’ve been minting a song every day since.

Luke: It’s awesome. Were you able to make a living off of that at that point, or was a part-time thing?

I mean, I imagine it’s a lot of time you spend on this, right? Like if you’re doing it every day and and putting it out there.

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. It’s been essentially my full-time job from the beginning. I was unemployed at the beginning, in the beginning, you know, in 2009, 2010, 2011. The primary way that I made a living was through.

Video contests I would like. Mm-hmm. Enter online video contests as part of song a day. Like, so if you look through those early songa days, especially the first two years, there’s months where like every other song is a video contest for like soft drinks and like just whatever. And then I would win some of them [00:14:00] that could sustain me.

It was just like, throw as many things out there as possible. Then I’ll win a couple of them. And then that sort of turned into, through a very long and complicated set of, of circumstances turned into like this thing that I did that your producer was talking about called The Conference Troubadour, which was like, if you’ve ever seen like sketch notes at a conference where someone would like sketch what the person is saying in real time, it’s like that, but with a song.

So I like watch all the, all the talks and then I would get up at the end and sing a song that would like recap all the talks. And get everybody like singing along or whatever from like around 2011, 2012, all the way through the pandemic. That was like my main living. When I saw NFTs, when I saw digital collectibles, I really thought and still hope and think that it, that that is a good model as something that is [00:15:00] not gonna ever replace.

All the other things that we have. To me, it’s always made sense as like another thing that an artist could do. Mm-hmm. To make a living from their stuff. For the hardcore fans, for the collectors, for people who wanna like, who like collecting things. And we, it’s not a solved problem. And so to answer your question, like no, I don’t really make a living any now.

And we can get into like what happened with the sale. Which is a whole debacle. Suffice to say like nowadays, NFTs are once again like a subculture of a subculture of a subculture and music NFTs on Ethereum are like maybe the bottom of the barrel in terms of what collectors are collecting. If there’s like a hundred people collecting NFTs, there’s maybe like three collecting music NFTs, and they all collect by songs, which I’m very appreciative of, but it’s not like a huge enough.

Base certainly to like sustain everybody [00:16:00] and there’s a lot of reasons for that. But you know, it’s, it’s kind of a shame I still really believe in it. I still think that there’s something mm-hmm. Really valuable in the idea of digital collectibles. Yeah.

Luke: And it’s interesting too because you’ve been doing this from pre crypto to like crypto too.

Like what are the, some of the challenges that you’ve run? I mean, it sounds like obviously like in the beginning they were probably mostly technical ‘cause nobody just getting the songs out there was, was minted was hard. But like as this is developed, think about it from like open sea onward, right? Where like anybody could kind of go and start to minty.

what are some of the challenges outside of that that you, you’ve had to deal with? Just having crypto as a part of it.

Jonathan: Yeah. One of the biggest challenges is crypto itself. The culture of crypto and its place in the wider culture as this kind of, just like everything in our culture, this polarized thing where if you’re in crypto, it says something about you says something about your identity, like [00:17:00] as a person or whatever, irrespective of the technology or its usefulness or whatever.

And so I would say that like certainly one of the most challenging things has been, you know, I’ve lost fans over it. People have stopped wanting to associate with me over crypto and just as is happening with AI now too. It’s like there’s a knee-jerk reaction that is unfortunate and. I think more a symptom of like our times than anything specific to do with crypto or even the people who have big feelings about crypto.

I think it’s more, it’s more has way more to do with like the wire culture we live in. But I will say too then on, by the same token, pun intended, I guess crypto itself, its culture is, is so toxic and so exhausting and not welcoming. To Normies, as it were. And I love some of it, you know, certainly [00:18:00] there’s like parts of it that I, that I just adore, but man, it has a reputation for a reason and I wish there were a way to better navigate that for everybody.

But it’s been a challenge.

Luke: I can imagine it’s tough. We deal with this, we’re building products, right? It’s not the same as as creating music, but it is, there’s something where at its core, it’s kind of a technology, right? But also the culture. So hype cycle, like you wanna build something quality and have that commitment to doing it every day, but at the same time.

If the medium is kind of hot or cold, you’re got all these other forces that are totally unrelated to you making a song every day. Right? Or, or, or building a good, and sometimes those things are even work against you, you know, like, it seems like a, a tough nut to crack as far as

Jonathan: that goes. My hope always was that NFTs would not just be collected by crypto people, obviously.

I think generally crypto people have always wanted some kind of mainstream adoption, [00:19:00] and yet the speculative aspect of it and everything, which has good reason for existing, it’s certainly understandable, I would say like where the speculative part of crypto comes from, what vacuum that fills in our culture.

But for someone who just wants to sell their songs. To people, it puts up a barrier for sure. Mm-hmm. And I can imagine the same thing for you guys. The kind of slow, deliberate building is not rewarded in the crypto space, let’s say necessarily.

Luke: It gets to be interesting, especially over time where you’re like, well, gosh, had I listened to whatever this temporary genius thought, I would’ve fizzled out anyway.

You know, I’m just glad we’re kind of sticking to what we’re doing. But the win here isn’t quite there yet with a product that just uses the crypto stuff and doesn’t make it all about the NFT, it makes it about just getting a song or something, and hopefully we get there. What do you think the next couple years on the crypto side would be like for creators or artists?

Jonathan: It’s so hard to say. I’m on [00:20:00] record in like 2022 saying that I thought that like bored apes and that and all that kind of stuff was gonna completely go away, which hasn’t happened, you know, for better or worse. I’ve always thought, and I still think this, that like basically the thing that NFTs lack the most is context.

Context for them to exist in. The kind of thing that I’ll always say is like MySpace. Would’ve been the perfect NFT social media platform because MySpace gave people all of these different ways to signal their identity and create context around the things that they enjoyed in a way that no social media does now.

And so if something like that were to ever exist, I think NFTs would be and there’s people who’ve worked on it and who are working on it, who are trying. I think that would be a place that NFTs could find a different kind of fit in our culture than they have where you can, in a real [00:21:00] way, you know, signal your appreciation for an artist that has meaning.

The whole reason PFPs have to date been sort of the most successful type of NFT. Is because they have context. They have a perfect place, just the default place on our social media to live, to signal something about identity, about who we are, about, you know, all that kind of stuff. But music or art or video or performance or any of these other things, they don’t have a place to live in the same way that profile picture does until that part is solved and who knows?

I don’t really think that NFTs outside of maybe having another speculative bubble happen, I don’t see them necessarily catching on in the way that I always have hoped. But I’m, I’m ever the optimist, you know, I’ll just, I’ll keep doing this regardless. I, I think that for me, the idea that I can [00:22:00] mint my song every day and sell it directly with no intermediary, it’s the most sort of pure form of fan.

Artist C Connection where I’m not mediated by YouTube, this like Solis Corporation. I’m not mediated by Bandcamp, which is now owned by a Solis corporation. I’m not mediated by Spotify. All these places that people interact with my music is between us and this like giant Soli in many cases, outright evil corporation and.

With NFTs, it is literally just, it’s like selling merch at a table. It’s like me and them, there’s no other party involved, and I still think that that’s powerful enough to like at some point become something much more accepted. I have to believe that. Yeah.

Luke: The cultural part is definitely a thing too, but I think what folks might not be as familiar with either is you had to deal with some [00:23:00] interesting difficulties too from the regulatory side of things.

Do you mind sharing a little bit about what happened with the SEC and that whole situation?

Jonathan: Yeah, for sure. So, you know, of course this was much more relevant under the last regime. Now the regime has been dismantled and crime is legal. Everything is different. But if you can cast your mind back to, I think it was 2022, that the first thing happened, which was this NFT project that I was kind of a fan of.

Stoner cats got an SEC enforcement action against them where they had to A, pay the government like $1.4 million or something. B, any NFTs that they had. Of their stoner cat collection. ‘cause they had some that they had kept over that they were doing for contests and stuff. They had to destroy. The government [00:24:00] literally made these artists destroy some of their work, which I think is like, it’s wild.

And it’s funny because it’s completely different now, but I wrote a song after that happened called This song is a Security. And out of that song came the idea to go on the offensive actually, and take the fight to the SEC rather than let them bring enforcement actions against the players that they wanted to.

You know, you can argue about, like, I think Stoner cats was ridiculous because Stoner cats was. They were an honest team. There was no scamming, there was no anything. They were just accused of selling unregistered securities. It was just like so fucking stupid, but mm-hmm. Me and another artist called Brian Frys, an artist slash lawyer, sort of got some funding together [00:25:00] and got a lawyer together and decided to sue the the SEC.

And so we brought this lawsuit essentially saying. You know, listen, we have these projects that we would like to release, but we can’t because we’ve looked at the enforcement actions that the SEC has brought and are scared that if we release our projects, they’re so similar to these other projects.

And that’s true because the thing that they accused stoner cats of was every single NFT project, they were saying essentially was an unregistered security. Like there was no nuance. It was, these are all unregistered security. So we said, we have these projects. They’re locked and loaded. They’re ready to go.

We can’t release them because for fear of enforcement. And so we brought it before a judge, and we asked the judge to make what’s called a summary judgment. One way or the other saying, yes, your things are securities, or, [00:26:00] no, these things are not securities. So before, essentially before that question could fully be answered by the court, Trump won, the Gary Gensler regime was dismantled, and now our court case is sort of in a legal limbo where it’s not been dismissed yet, which is very interesting.

But the first thing that the government did predictably, we knew that they would do this, was they moved to dismiss. They, they made a motion to say, this is frivolous. There’s no reason for this. There’s another argument that they have called sovereign immunity, which essentially I think means like the bar has to be really high for any person to sue the executive branch.

We’re immune from this kind of like frivolous bullshit, like don’t even bring this. Like that’s sort of their argument. So that is sort of where it stands. Our lawyer actually like went and argued why the case should not be dismissed, and they argued why the case should be dismissed. From his standpoint, he was like, I, it didn’t [00:27:00] seem like the SEC’s heart was in it, which you can’t blame them.

Like the people that are now having to enforce this is like their time has completely ended. But we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. I, I do have a project locked and loaded, ready to go. I made like a crazy, infinite remix machine of the song. This song is a security along with like an infinite remix of the SEC logo for the visual.

And so that project is as soon as the case is either dismissed or whatever happens with it. That’s when the project can be released. Um, now it’s a little anachronistic. It’s a little like the power of the project or the power of the lawsuit obviously is diminished. But it’s a fun anecdote to tell, you know, like, oh, the time I sued the SEC.

Luke: It is fascinating, especially at the time because it wasn’t just NFTs either. We never dealt with any enforcement actions directly at Brave, but [00:28:00] having a token, we were, lawyers are the best benefactors in the crypto space, like hands down, right? Like I think there’s been more to, to fund a legal careers in this space than anybody else.

But at the same time, I mean, it was just like you didn’t know where, where stuff was gonna land. ‘cause. They were kind of using this like, antiquated law from what, like a hundred years ago or something to enforce and, and, and things were coming out for all over the place. Like, oh exchange doing fees on top of something is somehow verboten and then you’ve got like NFTs.

And so seeing you guys do that was awesome because somebody had to take ’em on. So, I mean, like, there was always like something where it was like. Just like, yeah. Pumping a fist over it. Right. Because it was super cool and, and it seemed like you guys had a ton of support too, from the community around that when it happened.

We did.

Jonathan: We did. And you know, it was a lot of fun and it was, for me, a lot of what I do is just about like trying to have these interesting experiences and I felt so passionate about how just [00:29:00] stupid they were being that it was very fun to be able to like. To put together this whole thing and try, you know, to stick it to the man or whatever.

I feel like we haven’t heard from Gary in a long time. I’m sure he’s got like a cushy MIT job now or something.

Luke: Something, something. Yeah. I don’t miss it very much. You know, maybe there’ll be a book someday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d have to ask you about this because we’re seeing kind of what’s happening with ai, some of these video tools and, and even, even audio narration and stuff like that.

As somebody who creates music. Every day. How much do you think about that? Are you concerned about this for people creating art

Jonathan: and music? I’m overall extremely excited about ai. I, and I always have been. I, I basically have been experimenting with the AI tools, both from music creation and video creation.

I would say probably since like 2019, some of my early ex song of day experiments, like you can find [00:30:00] where like I would. Take a voice clone model. Back then that was like not made for singing and I used it to like sing one of my songs or whatever, or use the face filters of TikTok where you could like map someone else’s face onto your face, which is like a really early use of this kind of stuff.

So I’ve always been really. Excited about it. I had been working with various AI researchers on like creating some kind of like song a day bot that could like make songs in my style or whatever. Since back then, none of it particularly successful. But again, in Sade you can go back and like hear like little experiments that had happened over time and then Suno came out and like Suno was.

Sort of exactly what I had always imagined. And, you know, I’ll take [00:31:00] Suno as an example ‘cause I think it’s a, it’s a good example and it’s one that obviously hits close to home for me. ‘cause it’s, it’s that once to me, like one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen or played with or heard, where the outputs that you get from Suno, I don’t know how they do it.

It’s, it’s heads and shoulders above any other. Model that I’ve tried. So good. Just mm-hmm. Incredible technical achievement and like artistic achievement. I think it’s amazing. On the other hand, they trained that model according to my friends friends of mine, someone like Data bots. CJ from Data Bots, who’s a very pretty well-known AI music guy, has been doing it since like 2015, since way back in the day.

You know, he was like, they looked into it. It’s like in order to train their model, like they basically had to have every song in existence. They had to [00:32:00] basically have scraped like every single song on Spotify that exists to train this model. So my feeling is that like, that’s not great on the face of it, to use people’s music to make this thing.

Without their permission. And to illustrate that, I always like, I think of this thought experiment, which is like, let’s say I’m like a really intrepid hacker and I social engineer my way into Suno servers and I’m able to grab. The weights and all the things that I’m need, I need to open source their model, you know, against their will.

Right?

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: What would the difference be between someone doing that, just clearly illegal and, and what they did? What is the difference? Mm-hmm. What’s the difference between me taking their model without asking and them taking our music, without asking then, then asking us to pay to use their service.

It would be one [00:33:00] thing. I think if they open source their model and they said, Hey, we made this amazing thing. Yes, we trained it on your stuff, but here it is for free for everyone to play with. That would, I think, be one thing. I think it’s a little, it’s a little shitty to then turn around and that goes for mid journey.

That goes for all of them, right? You know, all these platforms I think are incredible and I love them and I use them all the time, and I think they’re just really cool. I think the way that they did it and the fact that they’re now turning around and charging us for what they would not be okay with us stealing their stuff.

Yeah, but it was okay for them to steal our stuff. I just think is a little like there’s some hypocrisy there and I understand the economics of it. I understand all of that. I still think it’s like not great. So I’m as excited as ever. I’ve built in some incredible things and made really cool art with it.

I just wish it was more open and a little bit more honest about the trade-offs.

Luke: Really [00:34:00] interesting. This might be on my own bias, like, but I feel like most of the time when people are talking about these types of things, it is people that are usually trying to sell IP protection service for creators or some platform or something.

Oh, sure. But hearing, you know, the, the reciprocity, you know? Okay, cool. Like just open source it, if you’re gonna do that and, and make it, make it even like, it’s a really interesting take.

Jonathan: I’ve always been a creative commons licenser. I wholeheartedly believe in. Copy left. I mean, I, I, I don’t, I think copyright in and of itself is probably not something that I ascribe to.

I don’t think it’s the best way to do things in the same way that I’m against landlords, I’m against copyright. So, yeah, I mean, all I want is for, you know, share a, like if you’re gonna use remix my stuff, use it. Then don’t take your creation and say, ah, can’t use it, just.

Luke: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan: Pass it on, you know, like that’s what culture is.

Yeah. And that’s what it, that’s what it should be.

Luke: That’s awesome. You’ve been super gracious with your time, Jonathan. I [00:35:00] really appreciate it, man. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you, you want to get the word out about? Or, or where can people find your work and, and if they want to start getting a song today, like where do they go?

Jonathan: Yeah. The best place to see the song every day is either on my YouTube, which is just under my name, Jonathan Mann. You can find, or, you know, if you wanna like, see the NFT every day, like where it happens. That’s on Songa Day World. Mm. And I would say like a good place to start now if you’re interested is I just had my 6000th song just happened about a month ago.

And so if you go to Six Thousands Day World, you can see that song and that it tells the horror story of my crypto tax nightmare that happened when I, when I sold all of my, all of my NFTs. And that’ll give you a good sense of like where I’m coming from as an artist.

Luke: Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Really quick too, before we sign up, sure.

A lot of people might be artists in trying to kind of figure out how to make a living from that, get somebody who’s figured [00:36:00] out a way to do that on your own path. What word of advice would you share with, with somebody that’s new to trying to make a, a living out of their work, whether that’s music or art or anything like that?

Jonathan: I would say the thing that I’ve learned is. That I have a saying, which is like, my schemes always fail and like my whims are the things that go really far. So just have a lot of whims, like do a lot of things on a whim. Don’t think about it too much. Every single thing that you put out in the world. Is a lottery ticket and the more things you put out in the world, the more lottery tickets you’re buying.

Just make a lot of things on a whim. I can’t really think of a time when, like the thing that I schemed on for months is like the thing that you know, really hits. It’s always, always just something that I dash off in a moment. That’s the thing that leads to something else, which leads to something else, which leads to something else.

That would always be my [00:37:00] advice.

Luke: That’s awesome, man. Really appreciate it and thanks Jonathan. You know, we’ll be sure to include those links too, like in the show notes for folks. Love to have you back sometime too, to check back in on, or anytime you, you’re looking to get the word out about anything, always love to have you back on, so appreciate it, man.

Hell yeah. Thank you so much. All right, thanks man. Thanks for listening to the Brave Technologist Podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave Browser, you can download it for free today@brave.com and start using Brave Search, which enables you to search the web privately.

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