Making More Out Of Music With Blockchain

The music industry, over the years, has been plagued with lack of transparency, piracy problems and feuds over the fair distribution of dividends.

However, the blockchain has drawn the attention of investors and professionals in different industries, and is now showing promising signs to change the music industry in ways that might fulfill the needs of everyone.

A few weeks ago we introduced you to musical blockchain world of Mycelia. Founded by the award winning singer, Imogen Heap, Mycelia is a new music ecosystem based on blockchain technology. The platform enables direct payments for artists and give them more control over how their songs and associated data circulate among fans and other musicians. She describes the effort as “trying to take away the power from top down and give power, or at least a steering, to the artist to help shape their own future.”

Today I would like us to dive a little deeper into the somewhat hidden world of music underneath blockchain technology.

An online music platform, PledgeMusic, has published a comprehensive blueprint for the Fair Trade Music Database, a globally decentralized blockchain-based ledger that can solve the problems of ownership, payments and transparency.
Creators can upload their music and the associated metadata on the ledger. Companies and consumers can search and play the music of their choice off the ledger, and smart contracts will ensure that the owner(s) of the content will be paid automatically for its usage. The platform is owned by Benji Rodgers, a London based musician.

Next we have PeerTracks. PeerTracks runs as an equity trading system that makes it easier to manage royalties and revenue. The system leverages the MUSE blockchain, a ledger engineered for the music industry. PeerTracks enables artists to instantly claim 90 percent of their sales income, rather than the approximate 15 percent they currently get.
PeerTracks also introduces the concept of “artist tokens,” (I believe we already understand how tokens work, the article can be found in our blog) that artists hand out to their fans and which finds its value from the popularity of its creator. Higher demands for coins created by a specific artist will increase its worth.

BitTunes, however, wishes to deal with another problem, digital music piracy. The company offers a bitcoin-based peer-to-peer file-sharing platform that enables ordinary people to become a distribution channel for their own digital music and earn money while doing it. The platform uses bitcoin as its primary currency, and both artists and music buyers earn bitcoin automatically as part of the platform’s buying/distribution process.

Blockchain, like any other solution, will not be a perfect answer to all the problems that the music industry is facing. But it will level the playing field to some extent, finally making artists, songwriters, performers and musicians the main benefactors.

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