Case Study: Using Blockchain to Disrupt the Music Industry

Farah Allen is the founder of The LABZ, a cloud-based blockchain music creation and real-time collaboration platform.

The LABZ makes it easy to protect artists’ music by collecting song data to facilitate electronic exchanges of contracts and digital copyrights. For Farah, the first spark came with her husband, who is in the music industry, having issues with artists not knowing anything about business. By not protecting their music, they were leaving money on the table and being sued. This problem led to her first solution, the Song Society App, which allowed professionals and aspiring songwriters to complete the songwriting process in a single step.

DID’s network helped give Farah access to other CEOs and Founders further along in their entrepreneurial journey. “I don’t think anyone tops DID’s network”, she said. “The effort it takes to nurture and grow black women entrepreneurs, I don’t take for granted”.

Empathetic understanding of the pain point, combined with Farah’s problem-solving nature and IT background helped her conceptualize a solution that led her to be accepted in Comcast Universal’s “The Farm” Accelerator program post BIG Incubator. Farah’s family is also a source of support, pushing her to be big. At first, her family had some concerns due to stories they had heard about failed entrepreneurs, but once she brought them into the world of startups at the BIG Demo Day, they really understood that Farah could go the distance.

At BIG, Farah learned what it meant to be a high-tech, high growth potential enterprise, but she was also empowered to think of herself as leading that enterprise. Farah often refers to that empowerment as one of the greatest benefits derived from BIG: “They have empowered me to think bigger…to think big. You can be big”.