"Just enough to make it to the next show"

When I was 12, I asked my favorite band how much money they made. I was certain the answer would be millions.

I went with a few friends. It was a Christian music festival, and most of the stages belonged to the big contemporary acts (TobyMac, Family Force 5, that whole world). But tucked off to the side was a building about the size of a football field, and inside it was nothing but metalcore. That building was the entire reason I came. I was a metalcore kid through and through, and honestly I still am, even though I’ve grown to love every genre since.

That night one of our favorite bands took the stage. I remember the floor shaking. I remember the bass kick drum booming through my whole body. I remember being packed in shoulder to shoulder with strangers who somehow already felt like family. If someone went down in the pit, getting them back on their feet was the NUMBER ONE priority, every time, no exceptions. When the last breakdown hit, the whole room moved as one body. It was the best.

Afterward the bands set up their merch tables along the back wall, 4 or 5 of them running at once, and we made a beeline for ours. They were standing right there. The actual guys. And they were the coolest people you could imagine, talking to a few sweaty kids like we actually mattered.

Then out of pure naivety I asked the only question a 12 year old could think to ask. “How much money do you guys make?”

In my head the number was astronomical. Everyone I knew listened to them. Even in our tiny town people knew their name. Online they always had the views and people sharing them on their profiles. These were rock stars.

One of them gave a small laugh, the kind you give when the truth is heavier than the question. He looked at me and said, “man, just make enough to make it to the next show.”

I don’t remember a single word that came after. Just the disbelief. I felt betrayed, not by him, not by anyone, but by the quiet realization that this is simply how the system works.

It took me years to really understand why.

A band that big in the CD days would have gone gold. Half a million copies, fifteen or eighteen bucks each, split between a few guys. That’s a house. That’s a life. In 1999 the whole industry pulled in around $14.6 billion, almost all of it people physically buying music they could hold in their hands. Then Napster showed up and the floor gave out. By 2014 it was down to about $7 billion, and if you adjust that ‘99 number for inflation it was really worth north of $24 billion. An entire industry lost most of itself in about a decade.

And what replaced it is brutal for the people actually making the stuff. It takes roughly 250 to 300 Spotify streams to earn one dollar. A million streams, the number that feels like you’ve finally made it, pays maybe three to five grand, and that’s before the label and distributor take their cut. You need tens of millions of plays just to pull a normal salary.

And it isn’t just music. It’s anything you can turn into a file. The second something can be seen or heard, one person with a download button can copy it forever. The internet made art infinite and quietly made paying for it optional.

I sat with that for a long time. Then I fell down the blockchain rabbit hole, got obsessed with its applications and game theory, and ran into one idea I could never shake: the dominant assurance contract.

Stick with me, it’s simpler than it sounds. A regular assurance contract is basically Kickstarter. You pledge money, enough people pledge to hit the goal, the thing gets made. The “dominant” version adds one move that flips your whole incentive: if the goal does NOT get hit, you don’t just get your money back, you get a bonus on top, purely for backing it. This incentivizes backers. If it funds, the work gets made. If it flops, you still get your money back plus a bonus for showing up. (Credit where it’s due, the idea comes from an economist named Alex Tabarrok.)

That’s what we’re building at Pieces. A creator locks something up and sets a goal and a deadline, the price they honestly think the work is worth. It can’t leak and it can’t be copied, because it doesn’t exist out in the open until it unlocks. Backers pool money to hit that goal before the clock runs out. If they fall short, everyone gets refunded plus a premium, just for showing up.

The new wrinkle is who pays that premium. We call them bonders. A bonder puts their own money on the line to stand behind a Piece they believe in, reading the creator and the goal. If it funds, they earn a kickback the creator sets from the start. If it doesn’t, their bond goes straight to the backers as that bonus.

So the creator finally gets paid what the work is worth. The backer is refunded plus a bonus if it falls short. And the people who stood behind the creator get paid for being right.

That kid at the merch table deserved a better answer than the one he got. We really believe this is the future, and we’re building it.