Music industry is, like any other entertainment consumer body, a giant structural behemoth with power over financial, or creative management of musicians product. Since its inception, the model has been relatively same — overseeing songs and albums road from author to listener. Blockchain technology promise to break this circle, but before closely examining how, let’s dig deeper into mechanisms and rules of how publishing works.
Regarding Industry hierarchy, there are several important compartments dealing with ownership issues. Publishing companies have the most critical leverages over musician. Depending on their influence and prominence of performers they represent, we differentiate between majors, major-affiliated and independent. The majors are the big boys, Sony BMG, Vivendi’s Universal Music, Warner Music Group. These have usually total control of creative process, they may uphold s.c. 360-degree deals, which means getting a cut from every revenue sources, even non-related sponsorships contracts.
So where does DECENT Music stand? First, as a platform, it allows musician, songwriter or producer to set a direct channel with fans and let them purchase song, or album. On peer-to-peer basis, minus intermediaries. Copyright isn’t shared among creative and promoting entities. For example, artist may assign rights to a label for the full term of copyright, which approximates up to 90 years in US. Those three publishing houses, we mentioned before may enforce the full control of copyrighted music.
DECENT Music, holding a banner of decentralized solution, wouldn’t require or initiate copyright transaction, since protocol functionality doesn’t depend on mechanics of an application. Creators would keep control over data as they circulate, but not to the detriment of users comfort.
Although this system is designed to help smaller artist to push their product more in the spotlight, indie publishers could benefit as well. In many cases, they depend on affiliation with major labels, therefore are subjected to fees or various payments for administration related services publishers can’t provide for themselves otherwise. With blockchain-centered innovation at place, publishers may avoid paying unnecessarily high rites, rather they apply (for example) inclusive royalties, data rights management, reputation system based on bitcoin transaction history.
Relationship between musician and label brings obvious benefits in shape of promotion, handling finances, providing media coverage. Disputable part comes with royalties and licensing fees though. Some contracts transfer copyright in its entirety to label, which then pays the artist via royalties. In some instances it could resemble 50/50 ratio. With DECENT Music, this skewed level of being paid for artistic endeavour disproportionally won’t occur because the artist controls his own publishing activities, or cooperate with publisher, exploiting the apps blockchain potential.
One of those artists that fully embraced blockchain distribution system comes from Great Britain. Pushing for ‘Fair Trade’ music industry, Imogen Heap is a singer and believer in blockchain solutions for ownership rights. According to her, consumers “want music industry that reflects the cultural, technological, social, and commercial sense of our times and allows for sustainable and viable future for creators and consumers alike.” But for this to happen, “the first thing is to create some kind of hope that there is an alternative to a major label deal and that it’s coming, but it’s not quite there yet.”
She’s engaged in a platform called Mycelia, a service build around blockchain protocol, that procures faster, direct payments and gives authors control over data like terms of usage and flexibly enforce any action in case of breach of contract. She also uses Ujo Music, where people pay with cryptocurrency ETC and payments spread proportionally to creative staff in terms of their involvement. DECENT’s would allow for suchlike principles to be adopted in its platform with distinctive cryptography-based security features.
Our mission is to reform music industry, comparably to Heap’s pursuit. DECENT Music disregards price-gouging fees; instead, it gives monetization power to artists himself. They decide the price, while you, the customer, may even have the word in negotiating what he’s obliged to pay.
Our app has undoubtedly unparallel potential to liberate musicians, songwriters, or any other artist from clutches of label companies or hugh distribution and publishing companies. This age bears an attribute of unfairness towards independent creatives waiting to get recognized, and for them to sustain financial stability, they often sign disadvantageous deals. DECENT Music would give everybody opportunity to kickstart their careers, with ability to control their fate.
For more information about the ideas and technology we, in DECENT develop, follow our channels and wait for additional info on our journey to innovate.
Originally published at decent.ch on November 10, 2016.
