Thread by @thehumanfly_

Did a deep dive on the guy below, R*ry Felt*n, the co-founder of Hitpiece. I don't think we totally know what we're dealing with here, and I'm actually a little alarmed. A thread. 1/X

First off, this guy is not a rando, he's a legitimate music industry player. Via LinkedIn, he ran The Militia Group, a Sony Music acquisition, for 12 years. He's also a former Billboard 30 Under 30 Exec.

So real quick recap-- his site Hitpiece has apparently replicated Spotify's API to sell thousands of artists' material as NFTs without their consent. This is outright copyright infringement, full stop. This would kill your company in the crib-- right?

So this possible explanation is making the rounds from a guy who's also in the music industry. Frankly, I buy this-- I can't see how a guy who ran a literal Sony Music subsidy for 12 years WOULDN'T anticipate a flood of DMCA notices.

Something I came across that seems to corroborate at least part of this is the fact that they're pretty well-backed is this footage of their beta launch. They booked, uh, Busta Rhymes, Noreaga, and other heavy hitters. They've got money, not cash flow, but money.

So yeah, so far, I'm thinking he's just a shady crypto-bro who says 'metaverse' every 60 seconds. I'm sure a lot of folks who we'll never hear about are the same way. But this guy has ambition, money, and unsurprisingly, a worldview I don't want to risk elevating any further:

This manifesto he published on LinkedIn in 2019 is absolutely terrifying. A lot of it is tech jargon, but there are some pieces that provide some clues to where these folks' heads are at. linkedin.com/pulse/how-win-…

This paragraph is actually really chilling-- in his proposed future of the industry, AI analyzes a song, pre-determines its quality-- not audio quality, literally its performance, like decides how good the song is-- and then streamlines to A&R.

While I don't think he immediately has the wherewithal to do this, it does say a lot about where this music tech bro headspace is at; it's about doing things faster, having more control over listeners' taste, and mistakenly believing that artists want those things.

Here's another excerpt-- a vision in which he would like artists to be primarily broken by and financed by brand partnerships. Imagine having to make artistic choices based on how Red Bull will react

I also think he views Hitpiece as at least partially a grift of artificially inflating his own artists. He separately runs an artist management group called Feltone and Hitpiece has a LOT of "collaborations" with those artists.

I'm pretty confident he's also at least flirting with right-wing politics, mostly due to vax stuff. His Twitter follows include very few (if any) prominent left-wingers, but he follows grifters like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Laura Ingraham, Peter Thiel, Andy Ngo, etc.

Here's a few tweets he liked as well as a shitpost he definitely fell for, which is very funny (the Rogan Youth guy did this as a joke, and it's a good bit).

He's also been really all-in on the anti-vax mandate truckers' convoy in Canada. Here's a few more tweets he liked.

He follows a LOT of artists on Spotify, but one in particular caught my eye-- Loza Alexander, who's known for, uh, this kind of genre, whatever it is

So, what's the big deal here? Here's where I'm at-- this guy has an established career with a cringe-y but effective marketing strategy that will, if unchecked, result in his platform gaining traction.

We know that bigger artists like Kings of Leon and Less Than Jake are getting in on the NFTs, and with this now being the most widely-known NFT music platform thanks to this stunt, he's now first in line to negotiate. This could actually work and he has a pedigree to show for it.

Part of the mystique of the music industry for the many uninitiated is that artists can make the mistake that it should be built on the backs of the artist-aligned; this is not the case. It is an industry, a capitalist venture designed to exploit, not to collaborate.

We have a rare opportunity to be just ahead of the curve enough to see a potential up-and-comer before he can amass any legitimate sway over the music industry. I hope after the DMCA takedown notices and the memes, this platform can be rendered toxic beyond viability

Anything cited above is public information. End of thread for now

***if I ever said subsidy I meant subsidiary, sorry I'm working

Quick add-on: a thing I keep thinking about is how the outrage seems like it's the whole point of this, that mass confusion and ire were pretty much a given to be counted on, and in turn that would lead to mass awareness

UPDATE: Wow, this is blowing up. Some bonus content! A few folks have sent this interview our guy did my way and it's kind of incredible. Highly recommend if you liked that 11-hour Joe Rogan parody that Tim Heidecker did …ess-builders-boise-edition.castos.com/episodes/rory-…