"We Are Hume, We Are Many": The Hume Collective Introduces its First Metastars

02 February 2022 - Press release

 

Hume Collective are a posse of hybrid virtual-physical artists and freedom fighters from the distant (but relatable) future, struggling to keep the metaverse open for self-expression. Joined by collective members from our time, they have spawned a virtual label and entertainment studio to create metastars with a universe of stories behind them. Together, they are building a new model for how music, entertainment, and storytelling can intertwine in web3. 

After several (future) centuries of hints, the collective has just introduced its first artist, Angelbaby, who dropped their first party-ready single "NFT" in November and played their first show at FLUF House at Art Basel Miami. The collective just dropped an Angelbaby-inspired FLUF World scene that sold out in less than 30 seconds. They handed out POAPs (participation tokens) to fans that granted them special access to new backgrounds and avatar swag. And this is barely the beginning.  "It's been a hell of a future," says Angelbaby. "We're not going to hide anymore. We want everyone to know that we are here and we are many." 

The collective chose tech and media strategist David Beiner and executive producer and songwriter Jay Stolar as their representatives in the present, the dawn of the metaverse. Before joining the collective, Beiner and Stolar were fast friends for years, jamming together and developing crazy tracks and quirky stories and characters to go with them. Stolar, though working with or writing for name artists like Aloe Blacc and Selena Gomez, was frustrated with the treatment of producers and songwriters in the industry. As their antics evolved, these two streams converged. They realized they were on the brink of something truly new: a virtual artist (back before it was cool). 

"We had discussions with a major label back in 2019, before anyone else had come out with virtual artists, to sign some of our characters," explains Beiner. "They eventually offered us a deal. It was a bad deal. We turned it down."

Beiner and Stolar kept thinking about virtual artists as more and more experiments emerged, from Lil Miquela to Hatsune Miku. They kept seeing the same worn track through the uncanny valley. None of the artists had real stories, and fans felt it. "As we watched all the virtual artists in the space over the next few years, we found people didn't resonate for one consistent reason. Their backstories were shallow," Stolar recounts. "They'd get fan questions on social media and be playing catch up. It all felt fake. They needed to have the core human elements that we connect to as people."

Then, after a chance run-in at a backwoods rave in the Angeles National Forest, they encountered the virtual/physical hybrid beings (called "portals") of the Hume Collective, an underground arts resistance organization from a thousand years in the future. The collective had landed in our day after being pursued throughout the metaverse for centuries by the Xani Republic, a reactionary, restrictive group of highly militarized virtual beings. They connected, inducting Beiner and Stolar into the collective. 

As Beiner and Stolar explored the Hume Collective and its tales, they knew they had the perfect artists and stories to demonstrate how music culture, NFT communities, and imagined futures could blend into a new generation of metastars. These metastars form the perfect bridge between virtual and IRL music experiences, merging the virtual into the real. "As storytellers, we want to provide a world for fans where they can put themselves into the story, so that the word 'character' never occurs to them. The artists of the Hume Collective aren't 'characters.' They are individuals who fans are really starting to love."

That love has attracted investors from both the crypto/web3 space (gmoney, Delphi Digital) and the music industry, leading to a $2.5 million seed round. It has translated into fan excitement that spans traditional music consumption methods and web3. The Hume Collective artists can take full advantage of the music industry set up for flesh-and-blood performers, while moving seamlessly into the fast-shifting world of web3, with its drops, digital collectibles, PFPs, and exploding creativity. 

"A web3 label breaks down the barriers between entities that you had to work with to be a web2 celebrity," explains Stolar. "A web3 record label with a metastar has everything under one roof. That is something that I've been dreaming about since I was 13, when I realized how many people who were at odds with each other it took to do something in the music business. We can leave that archaic and inefficient system behind now."

Web3 flexibility is easy for artists like Angelbaby, who function equally well on a physical stage and in an environment like Fluf World. "Web3 is moving so quickly that you really need to be ready to shift every single day," says Beiner. "Your story is open, the tech is open, everything is open. You're a member of a wider community and if you stay too rigid about what it should be, everyone will fly by you. It's unfolding at a pace that has ever happened before," It's fast, but nothing a crew of time-hopping future bad asses can't handle.