
Bowie Bonds - tosh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebrity_bond
======
cosmojg
Reusing my old comment, holy crap, David Bowie was incredibly prescient.

> ”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music
> will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it.
> I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m
> fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10
> years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”

> “Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,” he
> added. ”So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because
> none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for
> doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation
> that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it
> doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to
> happen.”

If only we could hurry up and abolish intellectual property so we could get on
with restructuring the economy around the inevitable.

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cosmojg
It's cool to see decentralized financial platforms like Ethereum already
enabling a democratization of the kind of thing Bowie was trying to do with
the Bowie Bond:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/shlomosprung/2020/01/10/spencer...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/shlomosprung/2020/01/10/spencer-
dinwiddie-launching-digital-token-next-week-discusses-nbas-threat-to-
terminate-his-contract/)

[https://bankless.substack.com/p/the-democratization-of-
value](https://bankless.substack.com/p/the-democratization-of-value)

[https://asone.andysimon.co/](https://asone.andysimon.co/)

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tosh
further reading:

[https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...](https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1245&context=chtlj)

[https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/01/11/2149761/a-short-
histo...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/01/11/2149761/a-short-history-of-
the-bowie-bond/)

~~~
cosmojg
If you don't want to create an account for Financial Times:
[https://archive.md/ubmyY](https://archive.md/ubmyY)

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jmpman
I still don’t understand how/why it’s tax free. Who is paying the taxes on the
royalties? Nobody?

~~~
sacred_numbers
I think that the artist would pay taxes on the royalties as they come in, but
would not have to pay taxes on the lump sum when they issue the bond.

