Liberating the Artist and Freeing the Fans

What’s the Issue?

What is so wrong with us using Spotify, Apple Music, etc that negatively effects our favorite artists? What is so wrong with the status quo that everything needs to be turned on it’s head? Well from a user perspective, not much has to change at all but if you are a true fan, a music connoisseur or especially an artist, you will start to understand how musicians have long been marginalized by an industry of fat cats looking to line their coffers and milking fans by standing in between them and their favorite bands.

The Reality

Current music streaming services are woefully inconsistent on the value an artist earns per stream, depending on the service or if a freemium (ad-based) account, payouts can be up to $0.019 (Napster) and as low as $0.00014123 (Spotify — free account). Their one consistency is abysmally low payouts. This is simply unacceptable and unsustainable for an artist to make a living.

Artists also often use distributors such as reverbnation, CD Baby, RouteNote, distrokid, etc that take a cut for publishing them to these streaming services. Furthermore, streaming payouts are not traditionally or functionally enforceable across a greater network, ie the internet. What is clear is musicians have been marginalized and their own audiences have been used against them to enrich the middle men.

The Path of Least Resistance

Distribution is ripe for disruption and could just as easily be achieved by the human experience being properly aligned with technology through incentives. If innovations such as Napster, Limewire, or The PirateBay have taught us anything it is that we love to share music and doing that digitally is the primary medium. Artists in these scenarios don’t get paid, and not entirely at the fault of the pirate or the artists. Artists get paid too little while consumers pay too much which helps drive this activity.

What if fans could get paid to share their favorite artists and in turn the artist gets paid directly, would they choose to do so? What if when searching for an artists the fan was to see that artist is Verified to be the official artist at the top of search results, amongst opaque unofficial pirated copy cats, which would the fan choose? What if the barrier to publish to a global online music platform was extremely low and a guided process? What if that platform didn’t silo the artist or the consumers data?

These are just some of the issues we are aiming to solve with JAMS but more notably, JAMStand, for the benefit of everyone.

The Remedy

Still in early development, JAMS will be rolled out in stages, first as a desktop Minimum Viable Product (MVP) in the form of a personal music library and player, then later integrated with JAMStand (soon to be in parallel development), allowing for public sharing, Verified Artists, token earning/incentives and much much more. Development and focus on a mobile application will be prioritized upon a successful desktop beta release.

What’s In a Name?

JAMS is a streaming platform that will enable Listeners/Curators, and Verified Artists to earn by digitally distributing music within JAMS and/or Network wide. When JAMS is fully integrated with JAMStand, each play will garner direct payments to the Artist and any Listener referral (Share).

Currently it’s being considered that the use of JAMS would only be free when listening to private (unpublished) content, ie your private music library as well as Unverified Artists. Unverified Artists do not receive streaming payouts. This incentivizes the Unverified Artists to get Verified through JAMStand and receive pay, while users wishing to access Verified Artist’s content will pay a small but yet to be determined monthly subscription that goes DIRECTLY to Verified Artists. This also prevents Unverified Artists from being paid for publishing/pirating another Artist’s work.

Requiring a subscription fee that goes directly to Verified Artists allows Artists to earn a living wage and Fans to contribute (for a lesser monthly subscription cost than competing platforms) directly to their favorite Artist’s success.

The JAMS application will seek to receive Autonomi Royalty Rewards, desirably in a Service Level Agreement (SLA), out of the attributed 15% Network Royalty Pool. It is intended by Maidsafe (developing Autonomi) to create autonomous network payment mechanisms to meet network royalty demands in real time. Receiving Network Royalty Rewards will allow JAMS to provide a premium service without forcing users into an overpriced paid subscription or ad-based model. Also preventing a higher than necessary paid subscription through JAMStand.

Users or ‘clients’ pay a small fraction of Autonomi Tokens for Autonomi storage/resources upon upload and/or mutation to data. Because of the decentralized, private and secure nature of Autonomi’s architecture, JAMS is incredibly scalable at extremely low cost while user data, information, and credentials are highly private, secured, and fully under their control.

Disclaimer

Since Autonomi peers are the stewards of user data which is chunked (into smaller pieces of data), self-encrypted, distributed and under the users control, that means JAMS does not host any data. Some of the benefits of this design are the prevention of data siloing, enabling true data ownership, allowing users to simultaneously share their data with different applications or migrate entirely away from JAMS (or any app on Autonomi) and revoke all permissions if so desired.

A PowerPoint of Components

1. Autonomi’s Royalty Rewards or alternatively, an app specific token will incentivize regular Users, Unverified and Verified Artists on JAMS to compete and curate content by creating popular public Stations and Playlists.
2. JAMStand is a verification and on-boarding service catered to artists that want to earn highly competitive streaming payouts, or to split those profits amongst band members (revenue sharing aka rev share), the production line, etc. JAMStand will help to populate JAMS with authentic and quality content that allows listeners to easily search and directly support an artist. JAMStand will also provide artists with a dedicated suite of features aimed at content management (bio/lyrics/blog sets), listener and earnings metrics, promoting exclusive content, selling merch, socializing and disseminating news/updates/content to their fan base.
3. Integrated Autonomi payment wallet, that allows for subscription and tipping services that are paid directly to Verified Artists.
4. Autonomi allows for data deduplication which means a unique file can only be uploaded once. The ‘Provider’ of that file has their wallet address automatically embedded. Any attempt to upload that file after will result in the network providing the original files data map. If a Verified Artist attempts to upload content that has already been uploaded by an unverified artist, then a hash of the the Verified Artists Key will be added to the file and that file will show up at the top of all pertaining search results within JAMS. Verified artists or labels access to high-quality masters should also circumnavigate any deduplication issues caused by piracy.
5. All data can be stored as RDF/Linked Data using existing musical ontologies and be queryable in a myriad of ways that exceed what is typical on other streaming platforms. Verified Artists will always show up at the top of relevant queries as a means to improve discoverability and align for altruistic user behavior.
6. JAMStand may eventually exist as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) similar to a co-op but on a global scale. Each Verified Artist could own an equal shareholder in JAMStand Network Royalty Rewards and hold equal governance to vote on the direction of the platform. JAMStand should be able to revoke a Verified Artists verification if there are clear violations to another artists IP, or breaches to the terms of service such as hate speech. This process is still yet to be determined but likely a decentralized arbitration desk that is funded through the JAMStand DAO.
7. Music can be shared and rewarded network wide. Regular users publicly curating content in the form of Stations (typically a collection of music related to a particular artists genre/style) or Playlists (often themed collections of music, ie. “90’s Mix”, “Gym Playlist”, “Roadtrip”, etc) can earn rewards after they share through the JAMS embedded player and set rewards related to track duration is reached. At that same moment of consumption the original uploader of the music shared also receives rewards (dependent on if a Verified or Unverified Artist). This concept is called a value-chain.

Value Chains

What this means is you could share a share (and so on) of a piece of content and each participant receives a small reward upon a listen. Think of it as Rewarded Retweets. The utility is in building and continuing viral momentum and allowing anyone to participate. We all remember that band we discovered and supported early on that eventually went big and with this you can potentially be rewarded for sharing with others before or on their big break.

• Value chains may have a max length but as the chain grows longer the rewards lower the further removed from the head of the chain.
• Value chains should only work with a separate imbedded JAMS player app which would use a portion of its Network Royalty Rewards to reward the participants.
• Verified Artists will be paid regardless of where or how content is shared or consumed across the network as JAMStand or Autonomi can imbed a reward token wallet into the artist’s AutonomiID and each piece of published content. A reward is then triggered upon each GET (request of that file).

So does Pre-JAMS-Inception Music lose out early on, due to piracy?

Potentially not! This is entirely conceptual at this stage but it’s feasible that JAMS could request that users voluntarily revoke royalty rights for uploaded content in able to use the platform. JAMS would keep count of streams and pass this data onto the Autonomi Foundation that will be releasing the network royalties. This way funds could be claimable by the original artist by going through a verification process and onboarding to the network. Artists who’s music has been pirated would be earning and just have to join the network to claim them, whilst people still have incentive to share and curate music for others to enjoy, as that feature would be unaffected!

There could be some technical challenges with this including possibly having to check the acoustic fingerprint of each song to ensure the proper artist, song, and number of streams are correct in the event uploads are intentionally mislabeled. Though such content would be unlikely to generate many streams. Many challenges are unforeseen so if you think you see a loop hole or surface for unbridled malicious activity, please comment below!

Ideas, constructive criticism, and encouragement all welcome.

FAQ

Why in the hell would I need a music player or platform to be decentralized?

The answer is a little complicated and multifaceted but to attempt to shorten it, if your music is stored in single place by a company that controls the data you assume is yours, then it is vulnerable to deletion, loss of access, pay walls/subscription fees, etc.

I’ll give you two anecdotal experiences.

1. Some original music I had made with a dear friend of mine who passed was nearly lost after a paid cloud music service by a prominent company had an update, the company starts with a large “A”. If it wasn’t for a backup of my entire library then those captured moments would have been lost forever.
2. 2. As if that wasn’t enough, years later after paying for “A”’s newest music subscription service for several months and building multiple extensive playlists, taking deep care to curate my favorite music across many genres, I chose to lapse the monthly payment during a very busy period. After several months and rejoining using the same account, all preferences, playlists, followed artists, were entirely gone. I was effectively a new customer.

Not only should we not lose any data or control, we don’t even have the option to migrate our data to somewhere else. We are continually being baited into siloed ecosystems that further entrench our loyalty and dependency on these companies.

Well that hasn’t happened to me so why would I want a decentralized music platform?

• JAMS is free to listen to Unverified Artists
• Unlimited access to all Unverified Artist content
• Unlimited skips
• Potential to earn by curating or sharing your favorite music
• Your music always available and in your control

JAMS is free? What’s the catch?

The catch is, JAMS is being built on a secure and scalable decentralized network Autonomi that has a built in token economy that allocates 15% of the total supply to Creators, publishers, and curators of data that is made publicly and freely available for the common good, and can become eligible for Network Royalties via the Foundation’s Data Commons Program.

So while you own, control, and pay once for your own data, we provide a window through which you can see and manipulate private and public data.

I pay for my data?

Yes. When you store or mutate data you make a one time payment with Autonomi Token for extremely competitive cost of permanent storage, to the Autonomi network. No intermediaries. Just you and a decentralized network that balances storage supply, demand, and incentive to offer you the cheapest price.

The end result is the data is truly yours. You control and manage what applications can or cannot have access to your data with the ability to revoke at any time. You are the steward of your own digital sovereignty.

If we all want to do right by artists, and I believe we do, then let us all rally behind this great effort. Interested in helping? Reach out in the comments or at nkoteskey@jams.community

Join the conversation! Join the Autonomi Forum! Donate to development below!

Bitcoin Address:

bc1q4ju4eau9772p8eu2v8mcl0su90kaqwwatlg6m4