So I'm in the shower and I start thinking and my train of thought eventually, for whatever reason, comes to my wife's music, she's a singer/songwriter, and her making money off her songs through various avenues she does. The issue with me that I worry about constantly, though it does seem to bother her, is when she is creating with other people. She is always the one that is doing the part where you try to get the song to make some money for you, which means when she does get some money coming in, she is the one that has to get the other people involved their share. Its not like she's getting paid lots of money all the time, so its usually not an issue, which is why she is fine with doing things herself, but I see how it could quickly become a nightmare. You get to see the worst from people when your between them and what they believe is their money. No also I have a real problem with legal stuff. Contracts, laws, copyright, and so on. I hate anything that has to do with dealing with the state. I feel its unnecessary and a nightmare. And I know contracts exist outside of the state, but contracts equal courts equal state as things work. So this is the idea I came up with.
I was thinking the splitting of profits is a really simple thing. Two dollars come in. Party A gets 50%, a dollar, and Party B gets 50%, the other dollar. I know I sound stupid but I would love for this service to be out there. So my thought was like a paypal type service where you would sign up and could make and receive payments. So Party A involved with the song and Party B sign up with the service. Then they sign up their song with the service. They set register their accounts with the song and set the payout to 50/50. Then when Party A or Party B do something with the song, get it licensed, put it on itunes, whatever, they have the payments go to the songs account on the service, then they get their cut automatically sent to their accounts. Its seems really simple and if there is something like this out there I would like to know about it. Also is wouldn't just be music stuff, but anything were payouts are made to several parties from a source. It could be used for payouts for a partnership if you were to start a business with some friends but don't plan on making much money so you don't want to bother with attorneys and accounts, just set each partner up with an account, the business with an account and put the profits to the business account and allow the service to manage the payouts. I imagine it could even work with employees, accept for the tax nonsense, though I imagine modules could exist that would deduct taxes from payouts and then transfer the tax amounts into a tax account to hold for paying employee taxes. I think it could to apply to lots of situations were an income needs to be split. You could even use to manage personal finances. Your paycheck goes to the services and it automatically splits to rent, electric bill, savings, insurance, whatever.
As far as business model for this, I thought on pay out from an account to outside the system, there would be a fee of whatever costs vs what market demand would bear. I also thought there could be a profit sharing idea involved where the percentage taken could cover costs of maintenance and running the system, then profits could be shared back to account holders, kinda like account holders are also share holders in the service and the service would pay employees to manage and maintain the system. I also think a system like this could work well within the Steem community economy. I don't think it would work well because of the exchange from dollars to bit coins to steem and then back again process takes time and energy, which equals additional costs, but if some kind of steem market place comes up, if there isn't one already, a system like this could be used to help distribute steem to the parties involved in the creation and trade of goods and services within Steem. I would like to see an open source model where there is no real ownership of the system, but I don't see how this would work without some kind of management and maintenance, as well as periodic audits and things to make sure things are working fairly.
I don't have the technical ability, time or money to develop anything like this, but maybe this idea might inspire someone to create a service I, and I believe a lot of other people who don't have the profit margin to bother with lawyers and accountants, would like to use.
Please feel free to let me know I'm way behind and this service already exists, I would really like to check it out. If this is stupid, feel free to let me know, it also might deter someone from putting effort into this when it may not be a good idea.
Thanks for reading,
Brian