How Will Blockchain Alter The Future Of The Music Industry?

Blockchain

28
Jul 2020

1892 Views 5 Minute Read

how will blockchain alter the future of the music industry

The Blockchain technology has been progressively flourishing and has changed the lives of many across the globe. While it is thought to rule only financial sectors, it has potential much farther than that. Today, most tech-savvy people know blockchain and just co-relate it with Bitcoin or another such cryptocurrency. But when you make any conclusions, do your findings, and you will know that apart from crypto, blockchain tech has been used in various other sectors as well.

Blockchain technology offers a distributed record system apart from Bitcoin. This system has a solid use case in the domain of currency and resources. Hence, money can now be transferred digitally without the need for an intermediary or risk of duplication since the ownership is unchangeable and provable. Similar applications can get converted into numerous other sectors past finance.

In this example, the music sector has time after time been controlled by gatekeepers. However, this has altered to some extent due to the advent of internet streaming channels --- Soundcloud, Napster, and Spotify. When it comes to returning the powers to the creators and the audience, blockchain seems to be the upcoming innovation.

Blockchain Tech Eliminates Middlemen & Enables Royalties

How is block tech altering the music world?

One of the most visible effects is its ability to eliminate intermediary from music sales and streaming processes. The streaming channels have transformed the way music is absorbed, thus making it more accessible to the audience, and creating an entire new level of medium between musicians and the fans.

The music streaming business has undoubtedly come as a noticeable improvement, rendering a cost-cutting and user-friendly option to piracy, enabling musicians to get royalties for their work. But with this shift, the indisputable variance in the context of the dissemination of royalties has been known. Like various other things, the circulation of royalties to musicians looks like a Pareto chart. A small number of musicians represent most of the music streams and, thus royalty revenues.

The payment variance is because of many reasons, including an artist’s music category and origin country. Whereas restrictive services like China’s AliMusic can help battle these problems on a geographical level. There is a high possibility that the distribution of royalties will always remain unfair, with a bunch of hyper-productive musicians controlling most of the market.

Empowering Musicians

It might be challenging to address the unfair distribution; however, improving the situation for upcoming musicians can make an enormous difference and result in a more diverse economy. The dominance of third-party intermediaries can also be shifted with platforms and labels that have vast control over what kind of music will be heard by the audience.

Blockchain-enabled music streaming channels are trying to handle this issue. For instance, Opus utilizes two different peer-to-peer systems to totally eliminate the intermediary and offer a completely decentralized streaming channel. Opus uses IPFS - InterPlanetary File System, a P2P network for folder sharing and recording where clients of the system also act as servers. Through this, all hosting fees connected with streaming get virtually eliminated.

Additionally, Opus also utilizes the Ethereum system as a payment layer. Using the smart agreements enables musicians to be paid directly upon the buy or stream of a music, which implies that the content and royalties get autonomously dispersed. This framework permits the musicians to hold almost all the payments made by premium clients or promotion income produced by freemium clients. As indicated by Opus, most of the profits flow from - as huge as 90%.

Streamlining the Music Sector

Other channels like Mediachain, Musiclife, eMusic, and more focus on the similar royalties problem and use the same tech to offer autonomous musicians with a bigger slice of cake they are effectively making. Still, blockchain tech is also becoming a smooth and simple way for self-sufficient musicians to handle other aspects of the industry that can frequently be challenging for emerging artists.

A New-York based firm, Ujo, renders a decentralized record of music ownership where musicians can upload their music and get 100% of their sales and tips without any fees, also allowing them to split payments with affiliations of every project. The Open Music Initiative, the next U.S. project, leverages blockchain tech to recognize music right holders & has drawn any semblance of Soundcloud, Spotify, Netflix, and Sony as members, displaying precisely how impactful the innovation can be.

In a 2017 study for the Harvard Business Review, Imogen Heap - an English artist-lyricist, record maker, and sound engineer- reviews an episode where a visual musician had all his recordings taken down from Vimeo for utilizing a 30-sec clip of one of Imogen Heap’s music. As per her, blockchain tech can help and is currently helping to handle these problems.

New Revenue streams for Musicians

Blockchain tech is already progressing the way musicians, particularly self-employed ones, are paid and expanding the sum they get to keep while also smoothing the process of copyrighting and conveying the work, which doesn’t simply finish. Blockchain tech is already enabling the artists to leverage another critical category for free music earning: exceptionally engaged communities.

Self-sufficient and emerging musicians are frequency on the receiving side of a strong sense of community, which converts into a consistent stream of financial help from fans. As per Opus, it’s a kind of help local musicians mentality that may clarify why 32% of the market share in earnings for physical and digital music sales is taken over by independent labels. Shows and products are also known to address a considerable portion of income, but blockchain tech now offers new avenues to explore further.

The Future of Blockchain in Music Industry

It seems like an advancement has been made, and there is plenty of room for growth, as musicians are attracted to relatively higher revenues. Likewise, the audience can now dance themselves to beat because of these decentralized channels.

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