AVENGED SEVENFOLD's M. SHADOWS On Changes In Music Industry: 'Everything Has Been Blown To Bits'

During a recent appearance on the "Artist Friendly With Joel Madden" podcast, hosted by GOOD CHARLOTTE's Joel Madden, AVENGED SEVENFOLD frontman M. Shadows discussed his band's 2023 decision to venture into the blockchain world, using Berify's authentication technology and Bitflips' expertise as well as a collaboration with Ticketmaster. He and the rest of AVENGED SEVENFOLD had hoped at that time to become trailblazers at the intersection of music, blockchain and fan engagement.

M. Shadows said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "For me, when I see the hornet's nest of the music industry trying to figure out what's going on and what the next steps are, I am super grateful that I live in a time where there is no pure-cut path to success. There was a time when AVENGED SEVENFOLD, we had our left foot in one way and the right foot in the other. And what I mean by that is we came up in 1999, you could still sell CDs, you could still buy space on the endcap, you could still get at least enough radio play to see if it researched well. You could go into [Los Angeles radio station] KROQ and maybe get [then-KROQ DJ Ted] Stryker to play it. You guys [in GOOD CHARLOTTE] were on 'TRL'. You brought us on. You still had the ability to do things with half-a-million-dollar music video budget. But at this time, what was happening was the whole industry was changing, not from the music perspective, but from a technology perspective. And technology, at the end of the day, is how we listen, how we we adapt to what we're doing, how we view this stuff. So you have YouTube coming online. You have the Internet being invented. You have Limewire and Napster. You have all these things happening, and the music industry did nothing. It sat there. And now we have a situation where everything has been blown to bits. And so you have to look back and go, 'Okay, well, how can these people serve me as an artist?' 'Cause an artist should be working on the songs. But once you have the songs done, how can this person serve me in terms of a record label or management or agents, whatever it is? And what do they deserve for what they can [do for you]?"

The 45-year-old M. Shadows, whose real name is Matt Sanders, continued: "So our band, because of a major label and because of being on record labels, and we give them credit where it's due, in that time, it got us to a point to where now we can kind of take all the safety nets and the parachute off and go, 'Okay, well, what is in front of us now? If I'm gonna make a step from day one, how do I make that first step?' And to me, it's looking at all the new technologies. Blockchain really stood out to me as something — because when I looked at the music industry, I said, there's a merch company that doesn't give us who's buying our merch. There's a record label who's not telling us who our fan is. There's Facebook, Instagram, they're not telling us who our fans are. In fact, they'll change the rules on us and charge us. That's how they make the money. I am the product at that point. They are taking all the money. Then I'm looking at ticketing. Ticketmaster wouldn't tell us who is buying all of our tickets. That's their customer, not ours. And then I'm looking at streaming. Well, who's listening? Well, that's Spotify's customer, and that's Tidal's customer. That's not your customer. Well, actually, if you look at it, all those companies are standing on the shoulders of artists. And so when I saw blockchain, I didn't think of NFT price go up. I didn't think of Bitcoin. Obviously, those are different conversations, and I wasn't thinking of all these things. I was thinking, 'These are pieces of data, the fan, and how do you make the fan's experience better while collecting that data and being able to reach out to them?' … So my idea with BitFlips was to make an completely comprehensive flow of everything a fan would do with an artist — listening, purchasing, going to events, all of it — and putting it on some sort of reward card. This is your user profile. You get rewarded, and then you'd go, 'Well, Matt, how do you make their experience better?' Well, it's easy. You give them your time. You give them access to the front of the line, which most of them want. You give them access to early tickets, and you give them ownership of all these things. Now you prove that you're a fan, and you have ownership of whether you wanna use it, sell it or give it to somebody. And the blockchain is the only thing I've seen that allows you to do that. People can come at you all day and go, 'Make your own database.' Oh, yeah? Well, how am I gonna get the information from all these companies that are taking it from us? How am I gonna have that user database and be able to give somebody something that's not like a user code and tell them that they can sell that? The person will steal it from you or take it from you. So there's all these things that blockchain..."

M. Shadows added: "All I've seen in the press for the last 10 years that I've been involved in crypto is how bad it is and how much it's a scam. Today I'm starting to see all the, 'We were too late to the puzzle. Now you can move money around the world, and that's how it works.' And all of a sudden, it's a, 'Oh, my God. What were we doing? We weren't paying attention.' And so I don't want the music industry to be again behind the times, and then all these new artists are gonna come up, and they're locked into shitty deals, giving 75% of their earnings away, when the label really doesn't have the tools at that point to do what they can do themselves and give the fan a better experience."

In December 2021, AVENGED SEVENFOLD launched its own NFT collection called Deathbats Club, designed to function as the connective tissue for the band's on-chain blueprint. In March 2023, the band partnered with Ticketmaster to provide token-gated priority access to tickets for the Deathbats Club. A few weeks later, AVENGED SEVENFOLD launched TicketPass, the band's own verification-based rewards system created with Bitflips. It's a free loyalty program for fans, and they can earn points by streaming music, buying merchandise and attending shows to claim perks. Fans can use their Dapp wallet or e-mail account to authenticate their access and submit a request for tickets, and they will receive confirmation from Ticketmaster if tickets have been secured.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD recently announced that it is now "a fully independent band" after completing its deal with Warner with the arrival of the "Life Is But A Dream…" album, which came out in June 2023.

Warner sued AVENGED SEVENFOLD in late 2015 after the band left the label by citing the California Labor Code's "seven-year rule." The rule allows for parties to exit contracts after seven years if certain unfavorable conditions exist. The band then moved on to Capitol, which issued AVENGED SEVENFOLD's "The Stage" album as a surprise release in October 2016, promoted with a concert on top of the Capitol building. AVENGED SEVENFOLD then returned to Warner for the aforementioned "Life Is But A Dream…" album.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD has sold millions of albums worldwide, earned two consecutive No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 chart (2010's "Nightmare" and 2013's "Hail To The King"),has over a billion-plus video views and Spotify streams, as well as multiple No. 1 singles on rock radio. The band — comprising of M. Shadows, Synyster Gates, Zacky Vengeance, Johnny Christ and Brooks Wackerman — is equally known for its spectacular live shows, selling out arenas and headlining the world's most prestigious festivals as well as always being at the forefront of rapidly changing technology, cultural mile markers and new ways for communities to engage.