I really like the idea of a decentralised band but I don't see how Cypherfunks the currency ties into all this. It seems to have no actual connection to the Cyptherfunks music apart from having the same name. The musicians are just basically giving away their creations and everyone has the option of tipping them in Cypherfunks (currrency). Why not just tip them with bitcoin?
This is a problem Devcoin has been looking at figuring out how to solve. They have a 'collective writing project' - devtome.com and the writing counts as mining, a portion of all the coins are sent to the writers. They've been trying to work out how to do the same for music, but then you run into a whole slew of problems such as: There would be vast differences in the quality of the music, how to judge who should get paid how much? There would have to be voting, which is corruptible and requires a certain size listener base etc. Not an easy problem to solve with the current available solutions!
Cypherfunks doesn't seem to attempt to solve this, we just now have another altcoin that can be used to tip musicians, just like bitcoin or any of the other alts. The only difference is there's a centralised website (thecypherfunks.com) where presumably the upload of music and the tipping of musicians in Cypherfunks will occur as well as a 'brand name/band name' - the Cypherfunks.
It sounds like an interesting experiment but as a musician myself (currently chronically ill and unable to produce anything) I would be hesitant to upload my music to Cyperfunks.com (I don't actually see that as an option :s). So what, musicians can release music anywhere under the name Cypherfunks or not, and then what? Get paid in tips just like any alt?
Can you explain how the system works in a bit more detail please, have I' missed something? I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out but just quite skeptical at the moment.
I'm sure Simon would add some more here.
But the way I see it is that the decentralized (and also amorphous) band idea hasn't been done before. The incentive to such a project would have been hard in itself because few people want to attribute their time and energy to something where they won't get any easy gains. When you add a cryptocurrency to this idea, it becames a realization of the idea as a commodity. As stated on the site: "The cryptocurrency also means that if the collective releases great music, we ALL become successful: enabling us to continue churning out great music to share and remix. It is music, decentralized: attempting to be the world's biggest, and most diverse band."
I see it actually as both a band and a record label in that sense. It's super interesting either way! A grand experiment in how we relate value to music and our identities to it as well.
From a personal musical journey, I don't get to produce a lot of music. Maybe one song every three months. My own artist identity is too small. I won't get money out of it and there's no point to build my own personal brand. But I still enjoy sharing my music, so I'll release it as part of The Cypherfunks. I contribute to the project and hopefully the cryptocurrency as well. I don't care if I get famous or anything, I just like sharing my tunes and perhaps with some extra funks in my pocket I can pay that interest forward.