omgkirby crowdsources a musical act

The Future. Web3 music project omgkirby is proving that music can be made with both AI and thousands of voting members. That communal creativity is what entertainment universes like Runner and The Fringe hope to accomplish in film and TV. While those formats take much longer than music production, omgkirby’s success in pulling off the creation of hit songs may be encouraging to NFT projects looking for an example of a crowdsourced art project that doesn’t devolve into chaos.

DJ AI
omgkirby is remixing how to make music.

• Launched in 2020, omgkirby is a music project run by a DAO with thousands of members who collectively own the master and publishing rights to the songs.
• The DAO’s current catalog is made up of 3,000 lo-fi beats created via AI — generative art that is the audio equivalent of NFT profile picture (PFP) projects like Bored Apes or CryptoPunks.
• omgkirby’s songs have already been streamed millions of times on Spotify, have attracted licensing from big acts like Jaden Smith, and have generated 293 ETH (about $330,000) in secondary sales.
• At NFT.NYC last month, it even held its first concert, with someone donning a Deadmau5-like mask, according to Billboard.

The DAO plans to drop a second collection of 5,500 songs sometime this month.

Vote creativity
omgkirby recently put its voting power to the test with the creation of its May single “don’t let me down.” In what Billboard calls a “music-by committee process,” members sent in sounds and samples to be voted on for use in a communal producing session on Twitch, where feedback was given by the community in real-time. After the beat was put down, the DAO hosted a songwriting contest, which was won by singer-songwriter Sad Alex. The anonymous creator of omgkirby also gave members that participated a tokenized version of the song.

According to the creator of omgkirby, the ultimate goal is to build a “community-driven record label” with a sizeable “artist fund.” Members of the DAO will be able to vote on how funds should be dispersed to musicians within the community and who can use the grants for things like touring or funding music videos.

Sounds like the next evolution of the artist collective.