Andrew McCluskey

andrewmccluskey.com · American English

Creator / Contributor at musicto - a global community that connects people across cultures, nations, and generations.

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How musicto Evolved – Part 3 (2025 – )
May 9, 2025 · original
If 2016 to 2019 was a failed attempt at for-profit monetization, and 2020 to 2024 was about building community – now that we’ve transitioned to a non-profit model – how the hell are we going to survive? Purpose As a registered charity, our future depends upon people believing in what we do and giving us their money to support the mission. Thing is, up to this point – we didn’t have a mission. We didn’t have a purpose. For sure we connected people across cultures, nations, and generations ( which is pretty awesome in itself, ) but aside from publishing amazing playlists , we didn’t have a purpose or any kind of organizing belief. It was time to establish what that was going to be. It’s In The Title! It was music that brought us together. It was music that was at the center of the original idea and the reason why people stuck around. But what was it about us – the musicto community – what
How musicto Evolved – Part 2 (2020 – 2024)
May 9, 2025 · original
Out Of The Ashes… While the initial business model failed, it was clear that something had been created. By the end of 2019, musicto.com was pulling in 42,000 visits a year from organic traffic alone. That number grew to 74,000 in 2020, with the site delivering over 300,000 page views. The website worked, and the playlists, even though they couldn’t be monetized, defined what we were about: quirky, human, and created with love. While we didn’t have a business model, we had a brand. Alignment Is Not Community For the 100+ people that joined in the first 3 years, we had over 500 curator applications. We reached out to about 150 candidates and offered them a 30 minute Zoom interview with a member of the core team to check alignment. If the fit was good, they’d create their own 10 track playlist, sign a curator agreement, and we’d give them a paid seat in the slack channel which we referred
How musicto Evolved – Part 1 (2016 – 2019)
May 9, 2025 · original
Let’s start with what we are today – a purpose driven global community that believes music can make the world better. No longer dependent on finding a monetization strategy, we are a program of the musicto Foundation , a registered 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. Although still relatively small, musicto has a global community of around 40 people who actively contribute every month. We use the creation of collaborative playlists to identify culture fit and establish connections between community members, we publish those playlists to attract the attention of artists and listeners alike. Our website at musicto.com receives around 10,000 visitors a month, we publish playlists 2 to 3 times a week, and we receive over 150 new tracks a week submitted to the community by artists looking to get their music on our playlists. While on the face of it – this doesn’t sound terribly different from
Sycophancy in Leadership and Collapse: A Historical and Modern Survey
Mar 6, 2025 · original
Andrew note : I’ve been looking to try out GPT’s Deep Research function - after the last week of the Trump presidency I had an idea. Here is the prompt that I used: “So, I'm watching the Trump presidency and something's really, really nagging me and it's the requirement for sycophancy. It's a requirement for obsequiousness. You know, watching Zelensky in with Trump and everybody, you know, the right wing is saying, well, you've just got to butter him up, you've got to be nice to him, you've got to flatter him. And that's the thing that's doing my head in, because it just feels wrong. It feels absolutely wrong, and I have a gut feel and intuition that if we look at history, that there are times in history when, where sycophancy was required by the prince, by the leader, what happens? My gut feels it has to fail. What I'm looking for is deep research across history, across recorded human h
Getting a Community to Pivot
Feb 16, 2025 · original
In order to course correct our community, the leadership decided on a 2 email strategy. Here are those two emails: Time for Something Bigger – Part 1 For eight years, musicto has been about playlists. For the last five, it's been about collaboration. While our playlists have brought us together, helped us connect, and built relationships that span the globe, they are the glue - not the goal. We are proposing that musicto becomes a purpose-driven community. As a program of the musicto Foundation, we are organizing around one core belief: music can make the world better. This is an invitation to be part of something bigger. If this resonates with you, brilliant - keep an eye out for tomorrow's email. - Andie, Andrew, Jacob, Jane, Jenna, Lindsay, Maria, Matt, Molly, Otis Let's Do This - Part 2 Let’s publish a book of our fears. Let’s publish and distribute what we are afraid of. Let’s see w
What Are We Doing Here? Why musicto Needs a Purpose
Feb 10, 2025 · original
musicto ‘s nearly ten years old. What started out as way to make money, evolved to become a way to make community. The musicto “community” now has 30 to 40 active people every month - this os cool ;-p The musicto Foundation Last year we created the musicto Foundation. We’ve kept it relatively low-key, running small experiments, testing ideas, and seeing what resonates. After a year of refining our vision, we’ve landed on a simple, guiding statement: The musicto Foundation exists to make the world better through music. We do that in two ways: Connecting people through music. This has always been the core of musicto. The collaborative playlist model has brought together people from different cultures, nations, and generations—building relationships and sparking conversations through shared music. With hundreds of playlists already created, this is something that clearly works. Changing the
M&Ms and Store Visits: What Van Halen Can Teach You About Running Retail Stores
Jan 29, 2025 · original
There’s a true story about Van Halen that has become legendary in business circles. In their tour rider—the document that tells the venue what they need for their stage setup and dressing rooms—they famously demanded a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. To outsiders, this looked like classic rockstar excess, but in reality, it was a brilliant safety check. Think about what it takes to set up a live stage show. The weight of the stage, the electrical setup, ticketing, security, food preparation, allergy considerations—hundreds of moving parts need to be aligned to ensure a smooth performance in front of 20,000 fans. Van Halen knew that if they walked into the dressing room and saw brown M&Ms in the bowl, it meant the venue hadn’t read the contract carefully. If they missed something as small as an M&M request, what else had they overlooked? Faulty stage rigging? Inadequate safe
What’s one belief you changed your mind about in the past year? What sparked the change, and how has it influenced your perspective?”
Jan 13, 2025 · original
That obligation is bad. Over time the core team had gotten to a point where they felt guilty if they didn't show up - and they weren't: life got busy - other things took priority - they knew they " should " be moving the community forward but when it came down to it - they chose to do other things. Because they felt so deeply for the community - their lack of attention morphed into guilt. The community they loved, and had worked so hard to create - was now causing them pain and the obvious solution was to disconnect. So we adopted a guiding principal for 2024: " Remove the dread of obligation " Everybody resonated with it. Those within the community "got it" as did those outside - the hypothesis being: if we removed the guilt for not showing up - we would show up more. But we didn't. Last year saw little to no leadership - no direction - no drive. The community continued to grow organica
A Christmas That Never Ends
Nov 22, 2024 · original
The thing about guilt is, it doesn’t get quieter. You’d think it might fade, like the ink on an old case file, but no. It screams. It screams in the sizzle of oil from the wok downstairs, in the chatter of diners who never leave, and in the ghostly glow of the neon sign that flickers through my blinds: Golden Dragon. Open 24 Hours. That’s my life now—Golden Dragon at all hours, the hum of the fryer keeping me company as I drink myself to death in slow motion. It wasn’t always like this. I used to be someone. A detective. A cop. One of the good guys. But the good guys don’t always win. Sometimes they just survive. It’s Christmas Eve. My desk is a mess of half-empty whisky bottles, coffee-stained files, and a single photograph that cuts through the clutter like a knife. Rachel. Her smile’s still alive in the photo, a crooked grin she saved for me when we thought we could beat the odds. Her
On Meme Coins & Community
Oct 22, 2024 · original
Caveat: I know very little about meme coins. This is my perception based on where I’m at in my crypto journey, The Evolution of musicto Community When musicto started, the idea was simple: build playlists under a brand umbrella, attract an audience, and eventually monetize it. The issue? Most people expected to make money around their individual playlist. When that didn’t happen fast enough, they left. We had an 85% attrition rate because the motivation was personal gain first, community development second, if at all. That nearly broke us. In 2019, we pivoted. We focused on supporting artists, building connections, and collaborating. That’s when things changed. We saw fewer people join, but those who did tended to stick around for much longer. Now, our attrition rate is under 50%, and people stay because they love discovering music, connecting across cultures, and being part of something
musicto: A Place for Playlists on Warpcast
Oct 18, 2024 · original
Vision for the Channel The vision for the musicto channel is a curated space where people on Warpcast discover and share music through the context of playlists. Starting with traditional artists, the goal is to move the focus to on-chain artists. Why Playlists? Good for the Listener Music discovery has a cognitive switching cost - even if you’re in discovery mode, there’s a decision to be made as to whether you’re going to spend your time listening to a recommendation. What I prefer about playlist over single track recommendations is that it reduces the risk of striking out when you choose to act. If I’ve switched from seek mode to listen mode, I don’t have to switch back so quickly if the track doesn’t resonate. I can skip to the next track and so on, which saves me time and cognitive spend. Good for the Artist New artists have little reason to be heard. Adding context in the form of a
Creative Collaboration & the musicto Community
Oct 14, 2024 · original
I get asked a lot about why musicto seems to be working, it always comes back to the idea of creative collaboration. I wanted to write something that explains what creative collaboration means in the context of the musicto community. A Group is Not a Community The original idea behind musicto was to build and monetize playlists. Get a large enough audience inside Spotify and you had something of value that artists would pay for. Each playlist was essentially a blog on the musicto.com website - curators submitted a track a week with a dedicated write up, it was published on the website and they then shared the post to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The track was also added to their playlist across the major streaming platforms. It was essentially an SEO play - at one point we were publishing over 40 unique articles a week on the website and traffic was growing. At the time, there was no
How to Connect to People
Oct 8, 2024 · original
Saw a post on Warpcast that was making the case for “Connection” as being enough of a driver for the growth of channels - I couldn’t find theimages so went to Google trends and was playing: It’s pretty apparent - certainly post covid - that people are looking to connect. Organizations that operate in this space are certainly meeting the zeitgeist - has me thinking about the positioning statement for the musicto Foundation.
Thinking White Paper
Oct 7, 2024 · original
I’m grappling with the white paper for the musicto Foundation - I have all these ideas circling around my head - I know that ultimately there is a document (a thing) that pulls these all down and presents them in a coherent and compelling manner - but it seems so big and I don’t know where - or even how - to start. Here’s some considerations: Shifting from zero-sum to positive sum society Inequality is rising - the world feels very distressed - there are great things happening in tech and tech optimists are right to believe that they may solve the problems but there’s a huge part of the planet being left behind. When money’s involved - people get greedy - want more - it becomes a zero sum game with a few winners and lots more losers - this results in a world out of balance with itself - resulting in all the shenanigans we see today. What to do about this - and why should we do anything a
I’m uninformed, not ignorant
Oct 3, 2024 · original
Listening to the second half of the many such cases podcast, episode three, with Ted and Johnny , and I’m so excited to hear them talk about the opportunities here—particularly as Johnny gets into how you take media out to the world. He’s like, “yeah, you have a hyper sub, then you post on Zora, then you do something else, and most people don’t think about this but for us it’s natural…” - or words to that effect ;-p And I can see the idea, I get the concept, but… oh my God, it’s so bloody hard to actually do it. Maybe I am Ignorant ;-p I know they reference this, but let me give you an example from my own experience. I started by setting up a metamask wallet for myself ages ago when I was messing around with DAOs and NFTs. I participated in some of the early Water & Music DAO decisions (Oxford comma FTW!) but never looked at it as a financial application. To that point - trying to get mo
many such cases episode 3:
Oct 2, 2024 · original
So I’ve started the many such cases :) podcast, going back to the first episode in feb 23. As with the Coop records podcast I’m going to blog about what I’m learning and the insights I’m getting - so more stream of consciousness but also the development of a to do ;-p Key takeaways from episode 3: farcaster, curation, creators, and contraction (still have 20 minutes to go) 1. Curation vs. Moderation in the musicto Community vs Farcaster channel The episode highlighted the difference between curation and moderation. While the musicto community is still nascent and hasn't faced any major challenges yet, I recognize that we are a moderated community, focusing on behavioral norms. A musicto channel on Farcaster, for example, would need to be curated, not moderated. Curation is more of a “benevolent dictator” approach, as Ted and Johnny pointed out, compared to moderation, which is more hands
The Creator’s Journey
Oct 1, 2024 · original
This is part 4 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted . The Inevitable Future for Artists I was chatting with a metal musician recently—one of those guys who’s been at it for years, crafting angry, punch-you-in-the-face kind of songs. He was looking at booking shows from the East coast back to LA and was thinking about making an app that would make it easier for both venues and artists. Having worked in music and tech and seen multi-million dollar funded apps come and go, I couldn’t help but be skeptical of the idea. I’m not one for discouraging creators but what I did do was encourage him to maybe re-allocate his resource into learning how to get his music on-chain. I truly believe the world is moving on-chain—it’s happening. Maybe it takes a few years, maybe longer, but it just makes sense. It makes sense for artists, it makes sense
The Economics of On-Chain Music
Oct 1, 2024 · original
This is part 3 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted . If we accept there's value to having music on-chain, we inevitably get to the question: "Well, what's it worth then?" Maybe I'm old and nostalgic, but I like the idea of directly rewarding a musician for a song - giving them some of my money in payment for their time and talent. It feels fair, equitable, and just - right. Can we get back to a world where people have a direct economic relationship with a musician (records, CDs, downloads, mints), or has music jumped the shark and become a commodity accessed through distributors via subscription? If the mint price is 25 or 30 cents (where the artist sees most of that - I don't know how the costs break down in terms of gas and bridge fees), that sounds and feels pretty good to me. If you don't pay for a subscription service and you l
Making Crypto Cool
Oct 1, 2024 · original
This is part 2 of a 4-part series on episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted . Bringing Crypto Into the Real World What do you do if you have a great idea and people dismiss it due to misinformation, even run screaming from it because they believe it’s a scam? tldr : Make it cool Get enough of the cool people doing something and the rest will follow. But how do you get them? tldr : Bribe them for attention If you want people to try something they have negative assumptions about, you’ll have to be compelling and tenacious. Free Only Gets You So Far Los Angeles is the worst for getting people to attend a gig. It’s hard to get someone on the west side to go downtown, and getting surfers to spend a school night in Hollywood is harder. I’ve walked Sunset handing out hundreds of flyers for my band’s gig at the Whisky, and people treat you like an alien ;-p Having
The Value of On-Chain Music
Oct 1, 2024 · original
Just finished episode 11 of the Coop Records Podcast: Midnight Diner Recap with Ted - definitely my favorite one yet! It actually motivated me to go mint it and well, that turned out to be its own little journey. There’s a lot going on in this episode which I wanted to unpack - I’ve broken this up into four separate articles – here’s Part 1: The Value of On-Chain Music: Bi-directional Connection I’m pro “on-chain” everything. Ethically and philosophically, I believe it’s the future. So, know that’s my bias coming into this. The core discussion around on-chain is the “what’s the point? ” question. Does it do things that can’t be done off-chain? Is it worth the cost? I think music is a great place to start making the case for moving on-chain, starting with the idea of control. Bringing music on-chain gives control back to creators. There will be fewer intermediaries, fewer gatekeepers, and

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