How Beachcrimes Is Charting A New Path to Pop Stardom
"What if our day-one fans could invest in us and even financially benefit from believing in us? With Web3 tech and Music NFTs, we can do just that," says Beachcrimes.
Web3 needs more pop. More importantly, it needs more pop hits that can break beyond the world of NFT collectibles to forge a viable new path for artists to achieve mainstream success. Enter pop newcomers Beachcrimes. They are the dynamic songwriting team of Tia Tia and Ryan McMahon (formerly part of DJ outfit Captain Cuts). The duo is certainly no stranger to pop aficionados among us; Tia and McMahon have written hits for some of the biggest artists in the world, including Justin Bieber, Ava Max, Carly Rae Jepsen, Monsta X, Keith Urban, Walk The Moon, and the list goes on and on.
Tia and McMahon have joined creative forces to bring their passion for pop and penchant for delivering global hits to the Web3 space. Instead of pitching their songs to others, they have decided to launch their own artist project. The duo has kicked off a Music NFT project with the intent of releasing 24 new songs as digital collectibles in 48 weeks. It’s an unprecedented undertaking in the world of pop that pushes the frontier of music and Web3 in an exciting new direction.
Leave it to the creative minds of Beachcrimes to deliver some of the best pop and hit-worthy material I’ve seen in Web3 so far. It’s exciting. In fact, it’s artists like Beachcrimes who show that with great music, it’s possible to chart an alternative course and build a community of fan-collectors in Web3 that can serve as a launching pad for success in Web2.
It's time to get to know Tia Tia and McMahon and learn what Beachcrimes is all about. Read on and you’ll find that there’s no doubt that the duo is up to the task of shaking up Web3 with their uncanny ability to write infectious pop that has the potential to go far and wide.
Hi Beachcrimes! Tell us more about you. How did you become a duo?
“First of all, we must say this is an incredible honor to be interviewed by the undisputed king of pop, Arjan Writes. Your blog was the only Web2 bookmark necessary to discover new music. And 15 years later, you’re still putting new artists on the map every day - thank you for all that you do!
We are Ryan & Tia Tia aka Beachcrimes. We’re a duo from LA and we spent the last year making songs in hotel rooms around the world. Beachcrimes is the soundtrack to that adventure. Beach for the fun, happy, summer side. Crimes for the dark, 4am, club side.
For the past 8 years, we’ve been full time songwriter-producers for hire. Ryan has written songs for Halsey, The Chainsmokers, Bebe Rexha, and "Shut Up & Dance" for Walk The Moon, while Tia Tia has written songs for Justin Bieber, Ava Max, Anitta, and others. Ryan has also been DJing for 10 years and was signed to Epic Records with his former DJ trio Captain Cuts. Tia Tia drops music of her own and has upped the ante this year by releasing a pop banger every Friday. We both love working with other artists but we always had this itch to make our own music.”
How do you collaborate as a duo? Can you describe your creative process?
“Sometimes it starts from a lyric. Sometimes a melody. But most of the time, we’ll whip up a simple instrumental loop and then start freestyling melodies and lyrics on the mic. In the past, we would then pitch these songs to other DJs like Chainsmokers, Zedd, and Marshmello, but found that they often ended up sitting on a shelf for 12-18 months without any control over their release. Some of our Beachcrimes records faced the same fate before we decided to claim them for ourselves and take control of their narrative. Because for every song on this project, we just felt something in our DNA that these were uniquely ours. And so Beachcrimes was born.”
"Melody (In My Head)" is your latest NFT release. What inspired you to release it as digital collectibles first?
“‘Melody (In My Head)' is our fourth release. Following up 'Let’s Play House,' 'Do It Better', and 'One Step.' One thing that led us to the Music NFT space was seeing these artists release music on their own terms. That’s huge for us.
As professional songwriters, we write hundreds of songs every year for other artists, but only a handful of them ever get picked up and even fewer ever see an actual release. It's a common horror story among songwriters to have a favorite song sit "on hold" with a major artist for months, if not years, and never see the light of day. Even if a song does get released, writers rarely have any say in the campaigns.
We wanted to take control of our music and release it on our own terms. What if we wanted to release 24 songs in a year? What if we wrote a song this week and wanted to share it right away? What if our day-one fans could invest in us and even financially benefit from believing in us? With Web3 tech and Music NFTs, we can do just that.
The Music NFT space eliminates the need for traditional music industry gatekeepers and intermediaries who often stand between artists and their fans. It allows us to go direct-to-consumer in a way that was previously not possible for artists. We see this D2C as Direct To Community, and we're excited to bring this project to life with our fans.”
What has you experience been releasing music as digital collectibles?
“All 4 of our releases are sold out on Sound. The response in the Web3 community has been super positive and we’re so blessed to have so many supporters already. We’ve got a Telegram group with all our holders and we love to check in with them. We give them some exclusive first listens and some mashups and edits that we make - as you now know, Arjan!
While we do consider ourselves Web3 artists, we wouldn't say that we're exclusively Web3. We still value the traditional Web2 platforms as places to build community, but Web3 offers more direct-to-community opportunities. The Web3 audience has also been much more supportive overall, and it already feels like we're family.
We wanted this project to life in Web3 from day one so we put our debut single on-chain. ‘Let’s Play House’ was our genesis track and it hit Sound.xyz before anywhere else. Debuted permanently on the blockchain. But this is just the beginning. We have very big plans for the space.”
You release a new NFT every two weeks. What's the vision behind this frequent release schedule?
“We made a lot of songs, and we can’t wait to share them. All of them. This year we’re releasing 24 songs in 48 weeks. If we’re being real, it’s actually two albums – there’s AM and there’s PM. AM is the lite stuff, PM is the nite stuff. The Radio vs The Club. We loved these 2 verticals of dance music too much to pick one. So we picked both."
We want to build these albums in real time, alternating between AM and PM releases every 2 weeks. Consistency is more important than ever in 2023 and we want our fans and our Web3 community to be able to depend on us. We won’t let them down.”
Who are people in the NFT space that you look up to?
“We dove headfirst into Web3 this year and have been completely overwhelmed by all the amazing artists building in the space. Mixes are our love language so we made a 3 minute minimix of 14 of our favorite artists in Web3.
On the busines and tech side, we absolutely love David and everyone at Sound.xyz. They were extremely supportive from the jump. On the curator side, we are so grateful to our earlier adopters like Coopahtroopa (
), Brokeinvstr, and Neon Gold to name a few. In January, we sent the music to Ben James [Billboard writer and Ziggy Ziggy () founder'] and he loved it so much that he offered to be our Web3 spiritual guru. And to say he has been an invaluable asset to our team would be a serious understatement".”What do you think is the biggest misconception about Music NFTs?
One of the major misconceptions is thinking that Music NFTs are only practical for well-established artists. In fact, the complete opposite is probably more true. Up-and-coming artists can use Web3 and Music NFTs to offer one-of-a-kind experiences, collectibles, royalty streams and more. As a Web3 artist, your fanbase can essentially become the main investor in your business. And while the underlying technology of NFTs is complex, we also need to shatter the misconception that music NFTs are too complicated. So many platforms, like Sound or Royal, make it incredibly easy to buy and sell your music, collectibles, royalties, etc. Let’s get with the times, Grandpa!”
What does the next six months look like for Beachcrimes?
“We’re posting content on all social platforms every single day. That Web2 baloney like Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc. We filmed all of our travels last year so we have tons of footage of us making and singing the songs in all the cities where we made them.
In terms of live shows, we have big plans but we’re more focused on the releases and building our catalog right now. We need at least 5 songs out before we start talking tour dates. But we’re looking forward to joining the Web3 DJ circuit - ETH Denver looked incredibly lit.
The next 6 months will see 12 new songs from Beachcrimes as we are releasing a new song and an NFT every 2 weeks. We only debuted this project 6 weeks ago but we are betting the house on it. We want this to be the biggest DJ project of the year. And because we spent the past 8 years writing and producing global hit records for tons of artists, we know when we have hits. And trust us - all of these songs are hits. You can quote us on that!”
Disclaimer: Arjan collected edition #27 of Beachcrimes “Melody (In My Head).”
