Ujo and Capitol Records Bring Blockchain Innovation to Music
What do The Beatles, Radiohead, and Ethereum have in common?
The music industry is broken, but if you’ve worked within the confines of the creative community even briefly, you’ve probably heard that a hundred times over. While this is primarily true, what is the point of complaining about a problem if you don’t come prepared to discuss solutions? It all starts with the basic understanding and belief, if you subscribe to it, that the creatives should be at the top of the proverbial entertainment totem pole.
Although artists may take the limelight at concerts, award ceremonies, and other public-facing events, beneath the surface dwells something nefarious and far less appropriately structured. On paper, creatives are all but completely at the bottom of the totem pole. The standard holds that their work and identities are completely owned by the wolves and wares they bring into their camp.
We talked with Ujo co-founder Jesse Grushack about how Ujo’s digital rights management platform is enabling fairness and transparency in the process of artistic expression, and how musicians can eventually make the living they deserve from their work.
Earlier this year, Ujo teamed up with Capitol Records to organize their first LA-based, music-focused Capitol360 Hackathon alongside the newly minted Capitol Innovation Center (CIC). The goal is to bring innovation, creativity, autonomy, and fairness back to the creative, solving once and for all the issue of lopsided artist compensation and monetization systems.
Hey Jesse! Can you talk about the ethos of Ujo and what your goals are for the music industry as a whole?
Jesse: We started this project with the goal of getting artists paid more and getting paid fairly. That’s obviously a lofty goal and also slightly undefined. We never defined what fair is. As we continued the journey we realized that it’s not up to us to necessarily define fair but it’s up to us to build a system where artists are no longer at the bottom of the system. It’s their content and creativity, they should have the ultimate say over how it’s exploited. Since Ujo’s inception, our goals have shifted to empower musicians with the tools they need to run their own ecosystem, to create an industry owned by artists.
How are you achieving these goals?
Utilizing Ethereum, we’re able to automate a lot of the business administration out of the industry. Think accounting, contracts, licensing. All of that is automatable or at least more so than what it currently is. That way we can focus more on artists and creating more art than on the mundane tasks that we currently do.
What can the platform do to improve the streaming and royalty issues plaguing current streaming platforms?
Legally speaking, enabling downloads was the easiest path forward. If you look at the industry, Bandcamp is also one of the only profitable music companies. We do plan to make a move into streaming but will not be utilizing the broken models currently employed by most streaming services. Ideally, someone could build a streaming service on top of the Ujo architecture.
“Establishing micro-payments and a global database are a solid first step in expanding the innovative avenues for music monetization.”
What opportunities are uniquely available to dApps on the Ethereum network that other platforms and applications can’t scale or build for?
A lot of people talk about blockchains as if they are magic wands that are going to fix problems without humans, which is the farthest thing from the truth. Blockchains are a tool, a very advanced and innovative tool, but a tool nonetheless. Human problems will still exist but we can do our best to mitigate them and add in checks to the software to make sure that data is as accurate as possible.
Blockchains add in a payment layer to the internet. Currently, we can’t pay $0.002 / stream because the credit card fees alone would be more than 10x that. We can walk by a street musician and throw our loose change into their hat. While that change adds up, it’s not something that has translated to the digital world. Micro-payments are going to be massive for music. Additionally, the concept of a shared database is not something that anyone in the music industry has enabled. We saw an attempt in 2012 with the Global Repertoire Database but we haven’t seen any effort to continue that since it was disbanded. Sharing rights information is critical to getting the proper artists paid, however in the current ecosystem, this could not be farther from the truth. Establishing micro-payments and a global database are a solid first step in expanding the innovative avenues for music monetization.
How can a musician who knows very little about Ethereum and blockchain get involved with Ujo?
At this time it’s still a bit of a challenge for non-technical people to get involved in blockchain. We think our Creators Portal is pretty easy but it can definitely be improved. We’re constantly iterating to make it a more user-friendly experience. The goal is that, in the future, people won’t even know that they’re using blockchains.
How are you educating the music and developer communities about Ujo?
We’ve been hard at work building out the Ujo platform and haven’t engaged with the community as much as we would like. We’re working to fix that but it really starts with letting artists know they have a choice. A choice to go down the traditional route or to explore new roads and innovate in the industry without sacrificing their careers. With developers, we’re working continuously to build out our APIs and partner in hackathons to make sure that the developer community is not ignored.
Ujo co-founded the new Capitol Innovation Center (CIC) at Capitol Records. How did that partnership materialize?
After meeting Ching-Ching at the SXSW Hackathon and working with Travis Laurendine for the past few years, it just seemed like a natural fit. It was exciting for us that Capitol is looking to innovate and we want to help support those efforts.
It seems like a great next step for the music industry to grow and evolve. What are the CIC’s goals?
Capitol360’s ultimate goal is to unite creatives and developers to unlock the value of a unified music industry. Capitol360 and its parent company Universal Music Group (UMG) are making efforts to provide support for startups in early stages by granting access to legal content without the all-or-nothing proposition of negotiating a license for UMG’s complete repertoire.
The CIC held its first Hackathon in June of this year. How did everything go?
I think it was an incredible start. There were over 100 developers participating and some pretty awesome projects that came out. This is just the beginning of innovation. Hackathons are a great way to get an energized and excited group together to build new innovative apps. This hackathon was able to accomplish the message that a new generation of music innovation is upon us. We’re stoked to see what’s next.
Which was your favorite use of the Ujo API you saw at the Hackathon?
We chose SoundBrowser as the winner of the Ujo Prize. This app, built for Amazon FireTV, was a way to watch music videos and then shop all of the products inside the video. We can see this becoming a great way for artists to sell merch and more. Perhaps a more subtle way to include product placement inside videos, as well.
Take back your autonomy as an artist and join the movement. For more from Ujo and the Creators Portal, click here. Stay up to date with Capitol Records events and future hackathons here.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
