Why Music *NEEDS* Blockchain – Asher Fishman
In music, subscription-based platforms of music streaming companies run off with the potential gains of artists by taking an unfair share of streaming revenues. For example, Spotify controls 51.51 percent of the U.S. music market and is valued as a $19B company. Despite a user average of 1,300 song streams per month, which at a $10 price tag comes out to $0.00769 per stream, Spotify only pays $0.00397 to its artists — in other words, taking 48 percent for themselves on each stream based on the average user streams.
But from the artist’s side, the average artist makes roughly 70 percent of a cent (.70%) on leading streaming apps such as Spotify and Apple Music. To put it in a bigger perspective,Taylor Swift earned between $280k and $390k for her song “Shake It Off,” which got 46.3 million streams. But that’s for one of the world’s biggest pop stars. Most musicians won’t generate that many streams in their lifetime. Calculations shows that a million plays on Spotify translates to around $7k.
The fact of the matter is, these days, the only way artists can really have a say is if they build a big fan base before they come to the negotiation table, so they have some sort of leverage.
But whether that’s the case or not, the risk that the record label takes on an artist is still immense. But imagine if the artists were to be backed by a decentralized fund. With blockchain, there could be more than one stakeholder and funder. This would allow the risk to be much more spread out to the fan base and less on one person — aka, the record label.
By an artist using blockchain, he/she would have complete control over their content and sell directly to fans by using smart contracts. These high-level computer programs are stored on the blockchain and can carry value, and can conditionally transfer that value according to complex business conditions based on the latest state of the distributed ledger. By using these smart contracts, the transaction and the transfer of content directly to each listener and fan opens up a whole new world for every artist everywhere.
But there’s more.
With the ability to connect directly to fans, there’s not only no need for someone else to stand in the way of getting the full profits of the song, there is also no longer someone besides the artist deciding what content is or isn’t released based on what is or isn’t “hot right now,” giving artists true full power over their content.
By freeing the creator from the chains/leash of record companies, we will hear less stories of artists “selling out” to a record label’s demands. The artist will now release what he or she considers “good work,” hence decentralizing a centralized market.
As noted before, blockchain technology can store a copy of the data on each node, and each node must form a consensus on the information, transaction, or change that is going through the ledger in order for anything to happen. This also helps with honest transactions, and unfortunately, in the music industry, there is the occasional dirty business going on. If the record labels used the decentralized network, every cent of every dollar that came through the record label would be transparent, and there would be no room for dishonesty.
But transparency goes further than that. Royalties are some of the biggest money-suckers in the business. If you look at some songs today, the list of people and companies attached to it is often longer than the average family of five’s grocery list for the week. Each one of those names on that list is most likely getting a cut of the royalties.
In addition, it’s hard to believe that every person that has somehow contributed to the come up of the artist has gotten their piece. Many times, not everyone is given the credit they deserve or any credit at all when a song is released. It’s not too uncommon to hear stories of how songwriters or producers have never gotten the royalties they deserved on a song for the work they have done with an artist at the beginning of their career, and then somewhere along the line as the artist gets big, they are completely forgotten and cut out of the picture.
This is also where the transparency comes in. Being able to track ownership, digital rights, documents, digital assets, and more, would mean no one ever not “eating.”
If an artist would tokenize each project, each person would get their share, fans would be able to help fund the artist directly, the artist would get their true share of their money, and the days of someone getting left behind would be…. behind us.
Music doesn’t just match well with blockchain. It NEEDS it.
Published at Sat, 17 Aug 2019 10:46:41 +0000
Bitcoin Pic Of The Moment
Bitcoin at Web Wednesday HK – 19th March 2014
83rd social mixer event – networking for the Hong Kong’s internet entrepreneurs and digital media executives.
An interview with two crypto-currency entrepreneurs:
Dave Shin, Founder of Cryptomex, an ambitious alternative for raising company funds via IPOs (initial public offerings) traded in Bitcoin (BTC)s.
Ken Lo, CEO of Anxbtc Bitcoin (BTC) Exchange, a new marketplace for trading Bitcoin (BTC)s, recently launched in Hong Kong.
More on our blog: bit.ly/wwbv83blog
Photos by bronney.com/
By YB Hong Kong on 2014-03-19 20:42:42
