MUSIC
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PLAYLIST BEGINNINGS SOUNDS In the theme of this week’s article, our team has selected songs that remind us of new year’s resolutions.
(JUST LIKE) STARTING OVER John Lennon Flora Dyson
FOUR SEASONS IN ONE DAY Crowded House Flynn Hallman
PEOPLE GET UP AND DRIVE YOUR FUNKY SOUL James Brown Flynn Hallman
In Conversation with Manmzèl performed under the name EM|ME, Emily felt the need for change. She picked a new name, Jimmy Brewer discusses the drawing on her Dominican heritage. In Domilatest release of Oxford-based nica (not the Dominican Republic, Emily was musician Manmzèl. quick to clarify), they speak Patois, a French dialect, which, when she was growing up, she aintaining a non-academic had heard her grandad speak on the phone. hobby alongside an Oxford “One particular night I couldn’t sleep, so degree is a challenge. Pressures I sat on my phone and saw whether I could from tutors, friends and oneself find anything.” Emily, with the aid of a Patois conspire to clog up time that could be used online dictionary, settled on Manmzèl as her to this end. But at the end of Michaelmas, I new alias. It means ‘young woman’ in Patois, had the opportunity to speak to a woman who coming from the French mademoiselle. manages it. Emily Meekel, aka Manmzèl, is a I was keen to ask Emily about how she interchemistry DPhil and musician, whose debut weaves the academic and musical strands of album is set to release spring 2022. her life. ‘It needs to stay fun,’ she stated. “My It was a bitterly cold day – the first of the year PhD is my priority, but I’m also very aware of to have that discernable winter sting that forces the fact that I can’t let it consume my life… I your hands into pockets or gloves. I arrived at our arranged meeting place – Café Nero on the could dedicate my life to it, and like, it would High Street – and ordered the ever-so-sensible be amazing, but for me it’s quite important mug of tea and granola flapjack combination. to have a balance.” She noted also that, like Over the café’s speakers was playing a twee, for most of us, the return to normality means instrumental version of ‘Michelle’ by The a far busier schedule: “in lockdown, it Beatles – one can only guess at the was quite good – obviously it was atmosphere that musical choice horrible – but there was so much aimed to evoke. more time. I noticed this term, Emily came in wearing a because everything’s back “During her days Balliol College puffer – a to normal, I just can’t coat that she usually breathe!” But the music and weeks in isolaavoided wearing, but and the work do compthat day was necessitalement each other well. tion, ‘it just came ted by the excessively “Making music, relaxing, low temperatures. She expressing myself in naturally. It didn’t was amiable, clearly that way… and the PhD at ease in conversation – I can’t focus on that one feel forced, it just felt with someone she had not hundred percent.” met before. We sat down to Before coronavirus noimore mature.’” chat, and I began by asking sily arrived, Emily had been Emily about her musical career. questioning herself. “I was going After beginning her DPhil at Oxthrough this thing asking ‘why am I ford, Emily “didn’t make music that actively”, making music?’ If no one was listening to it, being so busy with the demands of a new city I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore, it kind and a scientifically rigorous research degree. of felt like a failure. Growing up you always “Then lockdown happened,” she said. “I went have this dream, that you’ll become this home for a bit, but I had to come back for labs, popstar, or whatever.” It was lockdown that and no one was here. Which was lonely in a was the great remedy. During her days and sense, but I also had so much time to make weeks in isolation “it just came naturally. It music again, and it felt very fresh.” She got to didn’t feel forced, it just felt more mature.” writing and reflecting. “It was nice to write “I’d like to think of myself as a female my stories again and notice to myself how Anderson .Paak,” Emily said. “I feel like I’ve developed from what I was like from my music is trying to be more energetic, the last couple of years.” Having previously sometimes more witty, or fast paced, and I
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NFTS & the music industry: Paradigm shift or pyramid scheme? Zachary Sutcliffe discusses the effect of NFTs on the music industry.
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t the start of this year, Eminem changed his Twitter profile picture to an ugly drawing of an ape. The picture was worth £350,000. It was a non-fungible token, or NFT, from the billiondollar “Bored Ape Yacht Club” collection. This was not Eminem’s first foray into the growing market – he previously released his own, each with a unique instrumental beat – but it was a clear endorsement. With a total market cap of almost £20 billion, NFTs seem all but guaranteed to make further headway into the music world. But what will their growth mean for the industry? To begin with, what is an NFT? In short, it’s a certificate of ownership using the blockchain, a decentralised ledger system which is also the basis of cryptocurrency. With an NFT, the blockchain stores a URL to the item, whether it’s an image or a piece of music, and the owner of said NFT, on a notionally unhackable network. It never stores the media itself, and if someone else gets hold of that
media they can copy it as they would any other file; but according to the receipt, it is still your file. If you’re an aspiring musician, you may now be wondering: how does this help me? To which the answer is: it doesn’t. Not meaningfully so. If you ask an NFT or blockchain fan, they can give you a million answers. You can sell music! Earn royalties! Bypass the giant record labels! Something something Metaverse! All very fanciful stuff, with very little substance to back it up. At best, it allows you to do what normal intellectual property rights are designed to let you do anyway, probably with hazier legal backing. Mostly, though, these thrilling potential applications are hot air. NFT evangelists have to constantly invent new and exciting uses for their product, because at its core it has none. When you mint and sell a music NFT, you are not actually selling music. You are selling a financial instrument, with your sound bolted onto the front to legitimise it.
Just as with visual art, the primary motivation behind NFTs entering the music industry is to introduce artificial scarcity and ownership into a medium to which it is alien. A digital artwork, just like a digital copy of music, isn’t really something you can paywall effectively. Photography meant that exclusivity was no longer in seeing artwork but owning it; digital art can be flawlessly replicated forever, so NFTs try and create a scarce “master copy” to sell. Streaming has done the same to music; thus, the same opportunity presents itself. Someone who buys an NFT of your musical masterpiece is not buying it to listen to. At best, they are buying it because they think it gives them status. More likely, they are buying it because they think someone else will buy it for more. They’re after the exclusivity of ownership, and the potential to sell that exclusivity to someone else further down the line. Ah, but what if no other copy of the sound exists, as with our initial Eminem NFT? Well, that wouldn’t pose many benefits to the artist either. Again, this was already possible – take the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, sold in 2015 to Martin Shkreli for a vast sum. Only one copy was ever made; it thus has the same uniqueness as an NFT, with greater security since you own the physical album – after all, remember that the NFT is only a link, and the music itself gets stored on
see that in Anderson .Paak.” Listening to ‘Like a Woman,’ the first single from Manmzèl’s new album, the similarity is clear: the drum grooves are tight and a tongue-in-cheek vocal snippet kicks the song off. “I’d like to kiss ya but I just washed my hair,” says a sampled voice, before the track leaps into life with a catchy synth lead and supple bassline. I was intrigued by the title of her single, ‘Like a Woman.’ The phrase is heavy with connotation, not least musically. There are apparent similarities to songs like Carole King’s ‘You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman’ or Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ – but in these songs it is the validation of a lover that makes the person feel “like a natural woman”, or “like a virgin”. In ‘Like a Woman,’ things are framed differently. “Cuz now I know it’s not me but you that I despise,” Manmzèl sings. Emily is looking to make a more cohesive product in her new mini-album. “Now I’m trying to get a record out that has the same overall sound,” she said. And from what I can tell, she’s going about it the right way. Her single, ‘Like a Woman’, is infectious, smooth, and impeccably crafted. Keep an eye out in spring 2022 for what will no doubt be a release full of swagger, soul and sincerity. Read the full interview at cherwell.org. Image Credit: Andrea Berlese.
a regular server. If that server gets hacked, anyone can take your music for themselves. The only real advantage an NFT offers is that it changes hands much faster. What matters, then? Not the music itself, but the ability to declare ownership of that music, and critically, to sell it off as soon as you find a buyer. So, what changes can we expect as NFTs enter the music world? Probably not many. For all the pretensions of being more egalitarian than the industry as a whole, NFT markets are a very unequal landscape; about 80% of all tokens are owned by only 10% of traders. Sure, you don’t have to go through any corporate intermediaries to publish – but you don’t have to for SoundCloud, either, and that site also doesn’t charge you to upload, whereas NFTs cost money (and a colossal amount of power, giving them a huge carbon footprint) to mint. Ultimately, NFTs represent a new means of declaring ownership, and one that isn’t really more favourable to the artist than established systems. In the long run, it is likely that their social and cultural impact will be negligible. For all the hype, only a few will really be enriched by this new market, while desperate musicians and overconfident would-be Wolves of Wall Street – not to mention the climate – pay the price. Read the full article at cherwell.org.
