The Pomp Podcast
#419: Justin Blau on Monetizing Creativity in Today’s World
- Justin Blau (3LAU) dropped out of college at 19 to pursue DJing after viral success on social media, treating his music career as a structured business with dedicated teams for management, social strategy, and production.
- He discovered electronic music in Sweden and was mentored by the Winklevoss twins, purchasing Bitcoin in 2014 after learning about its value propositions: banking the unbanked, frictionless value transfer, and removing rent-seeking middlemen.
- COVID-19 halted his touring schedule, prompting a pivot toward NFTs and digital art as a new revenue stream and creative frontier for artists.
- NFT sales of his digital audio-visual pieces sold out in seconds to minutes, creating deep fan relationships and proving demand for exclusive digital ownership of artist-created content.
- His three-part vision for the next decade includes continuing music production, creating immersive digital art experiences via blockchain, and enabling public investment in music to disintermediate the record label industry.
- Digital art has multiple dimensions (sound, motion, interactivity) superior to physical art and can capture moments at live events through QR code scans linked to limited-edition NFTs.