From its origins with the phonograph cylinder invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 until today, the music industry has become synonymous with "constant change". Anyone who has been involved in the music business knows that whatever worked today will probably not work in a year from now.
In this article, I will describe in the shortest way possible 4 different angles in which the blockchain technology might revolutionize the music industry in the coming years
No more PROs (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc).
PROs are the performance organizations who collect publishing royalties (performance royalties) for the public performance of musical works. Every time a song is played publicly, the PROs "write it down", then at the end of a period, each artist receives a check corresponding to the number of times his/her song was played.
There are 2 problems with this system, the first one is that many times PROs make mistakes in the counting, either because two songs have the same names or because of human error, in any case, artist have no other choice but to trust whatever the PROs say. The second problem is that PROs need money to function, so a piece of the cake is lost for the artist.
Blockchain technology will allow a system in which every time a song is played, that information is automatically storaged in the blockchain. Artist will be able to know exactly how many times their song was played. this means more money for the artists, and no need to trust in an organization to collect it and make mistakes.No More Piracy.
Blockchain technology offers a real possibility to once and for all solve the problem of piracy and illegal downloads. Think of a near future in which each music file is delegated with a unique trackable ID and every transaction or "play" gets recorded in the blockchain. This would allow for the correct creator of the file to be paid accordingly, and since the blockchain is recorded in the entire network there would be no way to fake it.
More money to the Artist by cutting the intermediary.
As much as regular consumers love Spotify, Pandora and other platforms that allow them to listen to free music, the sad reality is that artists are being exploited and there is not much they can do about it. If you are a musician and your music is not on these big platforms then no one is able to find you. At the same time, since Spotify knows this, they pay the insanely low sum of $0.006 per play. This will come to an end.
With the implementation of blockchain technology in music files the intermediaries might not be necessary anymore since the artist can be directly compensated per playSteemit Music or it's equivalent.
Think of a platform like Steemit but for musicians. Each artist upload their music to the site which has a music player, kind of like Spotify. But the difference is that each time someone listens to a song, a new "Steemit Music Token" is created and ends up in the artist's wallet. The more popular your music, the more money you earn
These are only 4 of many applications the blockchain technology will have in the Music Industry
Here I leave you some music companies that are already implementing the blockchain technology for you to check them out:
BitTunes.com
PledgeMusic.com
PeerTracks.com
myceliaformusic.org
If you know more about this topic please comment, I am both a musician and a blockchain enthusiastic and would love to hear what you think about it.
Cheers!
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