The Disruptive Power of Music
How do we broaden Cardano awareness? We reach out to different people — the busy folks out there living their lives- the “I don’t have time for that weird crypto stuff”- people. Easier said than done, right? Those of us in the bubble talk about this sort of thing all the time without making a lot of progress. However, Cardano is a disruptor at its core — built to reconfigure finance and tear down impediments to progress and free trade. The ecosystem itself is fluid- always changing and, through that malleability, always creating new mechanisms for outreach. Music is one of those. Of course, music is as old as time and yet Cardano and music are in the early stages of a dance — still a bit awkward and unsure of how this goes. What is already clear, however, is that music is an entirely new way to reach out to people unfamiliar with the crypto space. It is a way to educate people who don’t read blogs or listen to financial news. I hadn’t thought much about it, honestly, until one day I was scrolling through twitter and came upon a video that Josh made to promote his stake pool: ATM.
Listening to that I realized a couple of things. First, this guy was an innovator and someone I wanted to meet. Secondly it was clear that this kind of presentation could reach an entirely new audience and present crypto concepts in a new way to a large group of people who otherwise would not pursue Cardano on their own. This promotional video is merely a start. Josh intends to create a series of tracks — some original and some parodies- all of which will convey educational content about Cardano, staking wallets and hopefully reach an entirely new audience. Even this initial promo has generated interest as he has already received questions about the video above from people entirely unfamiliar with Cardano. Here is another video he created about Cardano:
In addition to his musical outreach, Josh is a dad, stake pool operator, content creator and just an all around busy guy. He and his wife Sophie operate a small business in the U.K. that specializes in animal education and animal therapy for both schools and nursing homes. Although a lot of hours are required, the flexibility in scheduling is helpful in accommodating his other priorities: his stake pool ATM, creating video content for ADA Pulse and his music.
Josh has a degree in music composition and technology. To date his primary focus has been beats rather than hip hop. He loves the creative process and is very optimistic about the potential of hip hop to reach and educate an entirely new audience about cryptocurrency in general and Cardano in specific. The timing is perfect as the age of smart contracts allows many new avenues of exploration for music on the blockchain. This is the beginning, not the ending so it’s hard to determine what the final version of Cardano music looks like. Perhaps musical NFTs become a way of supporting artists, without a majority of the revenue going to a third party platform. There is potential for an NFT player that works on multiple chains. Maybe there is even a Blockchain radio in the future. His former experience as a stand up comedian taught Josh that you can’t get married to any specific idea; rather keeping an open mind and fearless experimentation are the keys to success. After all, Cardano isn’t even finished yet. What is certain is that Josh will bring his musical and creative talents to innovate, educate and grow his stake pool and Cardano.
Josh was interested in cryptocurrency early — first with Bitcoin in 2015 and then, through a friend who worked at IOHK, Cardano. He wanted to operate a stake pool from the beginning and started learning with Big Pey episode one. Like so many of us, he was amazed by the camaraderie and helpfulness of the community and encountering so many other stake pools who were happy to help others learn and grow. He actually had the pool up and running within hours of the Shelly Launch. Josh offers some unique rewards to delegators, including NFT minting and token creation. He is also a DripDropz operator, which means larger rewards for delegators on that platform.
As if all of the above isn’t enough, Josh also creates video content. He has his own line of educational videos: The Cardano Hereafter Party which includes some great Cardano content and, as of late, he is also creating videos for ADA Pulse which is one of the premiere news outlets for all things Cardano. Although he tends to be an independent sort, Josh was happy to collaborate with ADA Pulse. One of the founders, Jeff with SWAG, had been a great help to him early on in the evolution of his stake pool. It is a good pairing as he is able to provide substantive videos of which he retains complete creative control. Here is an example of an intro he created for ADA Pulse:
How do you sum up Josh? You don’t — perhaps the closest summary is a digital renaissance man — musician, content creator, technician, dad, manager of multiple businesses. Perhaps its best not to define him too much as even he isn’t sure what is next. Regardless, this is a person and a stake pool to keep your eye on. Whatever is next it won’t be boring.