In June, I grabbed coffee with Jamie Reddington – aka the artist Sound of Fractures – at Lodestar, a minimalist cafe in Hackney.

We settled into the back corner, where he shared his idea for Network Archives, a curated collection of projects from the brief and turbulent history of on-chain music. It would stand as an ode to this moment in time, he envisioned, and as a wellspring to the builders that come next.

“​​This is more than a collection of creative work,” he wrote in the foreword of Network Archives 001: A Directory of Inspiration (newly released on Metalabel), “it's a record of a moment in time when creators are connecting through shared experiences, experimentation and a desire to push boundaries in search of answers, even when the questions themselves remain unknown.”

A bevy of familiar faces populate the collection: Black Dave, Xcelencia, VÉRITÉ, Latashá, Supersigil, FOLK, Maarten Walraven, Songcamp – all folks who have been featured in this publication; alongside other innovators and curios across the space, addressing a range of topics from patronage to copyright to worldbuilding.

I was privy to a behind-the-scenes peek as the project came together. About quarterly, Reddington and I schlep to Lodestar – which sits squarely between our respective homes – to commiserate and dream of web3, music, culture, electric sheep… 

One throughline in our conversations is the lack of one in on-chain music. What unites this diverse group – musically and otherwise – that’s been drawn into community? Traditional categorizations like genre don't apply. Because what is web3? A technology? A format? An ecosystem? A counterculture? An ideology of collectivism?  

The elusive answers lie not just in the Archives’ pages, but in the process of its coming together. When Reddington set out to corral on-chain music’s artists and builders, he reached them amidst their own pursuits of individual manifestation, neck deep in paint and scores and code, building worlds.

Whatever web3 is, worldbuilding is certainly one of its features. But are we building the same world for the same reasons? And why, with an entire directory of inspiration at our disposal, do we still struggle to embrace the collective?

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Born in London to parents deeply embedded in the music industry – his father was a radio plugger and his mother the former Head of International at Island Records – Jamie Reddington has worked nearly every corner of the business: producer, songwriter, artist manager and teacher. 

About seven years ago, after burning out from the traditional music grind ("You write 300 songs a year,” he told me once, “maybe a couple of them come out and that's 'successful,' right? It's very draining"), he reinvented himself as Sound of Fractures. 

Since then, he's focused increasingly on alternative models for music distribution and community-building. That includes co-founding Wild Awake, a "digital home for people who share a love of alternative electronic music.”

Projects like Wild Awake are a deep-seated rejection of centralized platforms that dictate rules of engagement and curtail experimentation to the confines of their products – and to the benefit of their bottom lines. Success metrics are nearly always volume-based, so algorithms prioritize content – and interactive mechanisms – that appeal broadly and have potential to scale. 

“The algorithm is designed to keep people on the platform, therefore it pushes you to make content that keeps people on the platform,” Reddington told me in an interview earlier this year. “It doesn’t push you to make connections with people who will go and tell someone else to buy your thing, or be a part of your community, or bring you into that world.” 

When we met in June, he was in the midst of unveiling SCENES, a connective visual companion to his album of the same name. Throughout the rollout, Reddington invited listeners to contribute personal memories – as photographs – evoked by his music. It could have been a marketing campaign on Instagram, sure, but Reddington – like other web3 builders – was tired of abbreviating his vision to fit it neatly on “the platform.” 

So he brought the idea to prominent web3 organizations that regularly preach artist autonomy and worldbuilding, hoping to find a partner that would see mutual benefit in supporting the project. Unfortunately, he got more of the same.

“Everyone loves the concept, but was like, ‘yeah, that doesn't hit what our metric is, which is mints or traffic or exposure,’” he said. “Their metric for success is volume. Their metric for success is driving their model. And that actually isn't new, right? That's just recreating an old thing on the blockchain.”

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There are parallels in the story of Network Archives. Like Wild Awake and SCENES, it was born from a spirit of experimentation and connection, to honor and gather the folks who sought to remake the world – or at least imagine a new one, unfettered by “rules of engagement.” 

Couched in the project is a curiosity about why that type of experimentation is especially uncommon in music. "I started reading a lot about design studios and art collectives,” Reddington told me. “And it was interesting how [the collective] framework in those mediums is much more common.

“They would share profits from sales at shows and things, but they're all just individual artists – completely different styles,” he continued. “I think with music, there's always the risk of taking something away from yourself in these frameworks of ‘collective-making.’ And in my mind, that must be related to labels, right?” 

Traditionally, labels sign individual acts who represent their ideals, often seeding them with capital in hopes of generating returns. To produce those returns, the signed act’s fanbase has to consume their music. But a paltry per-stream rate of $0.004 on average requires a massive following or ancillary sales – such as merch or touring – to create meaningful revenue. That means most musicians must play zero-sum games on those metrics-driven platforms. Success is contingent upon distinguishing yourself.

“People have battled against many things to carve out their own lane – including race and gender and the tyranny of the music industry,” Reddington explained.

Metalabel, where Network Archives was released, was born to reckon with that kind of tyranny – and the atomized system it’s engendered. In their alternative, the “metalabel” – a group of creators, united by a style, locale or perspective – would act as their own label. 

“The last era of the Internet was about everybody trying to be the star,” Metalabel co-founder Yancey Strickler told me. “The next era is about being part of a constellation and supporting each other in what we do. The Network Archive project is exciting, forward-looking and a sign of things to come.”

The limited edition release – designed by Ana Carolina – is prefaced by the tagline: “Creativity thrives when shared.” It invokes a motto that Metalabel itself has used: “As individuals our powers are limited. In groups we become stronger.” But as was the case with SCENES, a vocal endorsement of a simple fact doesn’t necessarily mean investment.

People loved the concept, but participation wavered. Folks committed, disappeared, returned, engaged less than expected, or not at all, Reddington said. 

“It's been so hard to not fit in a box that people are reticent to give any of that energy out," he explained, theorizing why it’s been so tough to gather people. "But it's a lot of work for the one or two people that have to drive it forward.” (Jade Garcia has been supporting the project as a Producer.) “Everyone always shares Brockhampton and Odd Future as how it should be done, but no one wants to do that.”

Brockhampton and Odd Future are those rare collectives of the music world. Both are multidisciplinary, including singers, rappers, producers, graphic designers, skateboarders and filmmakers. The former met via a Kanye West fansite – the latter through a local skate scene in LA. 

And by virtually every metric of success – volume-based and otherwise – they were both immensely successful: various Billboard 200 appearances, TV deals, sold out world tours, massive record deals. And via collective success, they launched the careers of some of rap’s most celebrated individuals, like Tyler, the Creator, Kevin Abstract and Earl Sweatshirt.

So, if they were willing and able to flip the script, why isn’t that our blueprint for success? Were they simply early ‘signs of things to come?’ And if so, why does it remain so difficult – even in web3, an ostensibly collaborative space united by ideals of decentralization – to embrace a collective-first mindset? 

Maybe these are those questions that “remain unknown.” And the lack of common answers – or agreement on how or whether this moment should be documented – might suggest that the boundaries being pushed span myriad worlds. 

“The contributors to this collection may not even agree that there is a connection between their work,” Reddington wrote in an essay that followed the release. “History has shown that the threads between us are often only visible when we look back.”

Thus far, the only connective thread between contributors is – as Reddington put it – "using technologies in creative ways." Network Archives does not embody the entire on-chain music world's understanding of itself. It would be crazy if it did. 

Because web3 isn't a local crew building a subculture. It's a group of map-makers trying to reshape the Internet itself – to form a “next era” of fewer platforms and infinitely more worlds, where we meet one another halfway.

Recently, Reddington and I met again at Lodestar, making the trek from our respective homes. We grabbed coffees and sat in the back, catching up over the course of 90 minutes – web3, culture, music, the holidays, love, fledgling ideas. He bemoaned the lack of time to make music, thwarted by life’s many rigors. And I bemoaned the lack of time to do a great many things. 

But still we made time to meet, because it’s the spaces between worlds where the novae and nebulae lie; the gaseous eruptions of colors and chaos, the elemental material of us – and of the constellations we’ll see when we look back.