Something To Believe In

We’re working hard on the eMusic Blockchain Project, so it was exciting to launch our updated whitepaper and introduce the EMU token last week. Have you read our whitepaper yet? Thanks to the talents of our team, and especially our in-house designer Bryan Farevaag, it looks like a million bucks (that’s 2,208.87 ETH as of this writing).

Every month we’re following new and exciting blockchain projects in the music or related industries. What differentiates us from the competition? I’d like to address a few of those points here.

Since we’re not becoming a replacement for Spotify or Apple Music, our infrastructure will facilitate a different economic relationship between artist and service platforms. We will reward the artists, while providing the financial incentive to the service providers for more plays. In these two ways we’re changing everything behind the scenes while preserving the way fans want to listen to their music. Not to mention the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re responsibly listening. Most other music tokens you’ve heard about, like Ujo, Musiconomi, and Soundeon, are working on building a new destination, which they expect to bring customers to.

We’ve been very clear on our different approach on this point: our ecosystem belongs to and enhances the current platforms, as most consumers are already committed to their favorite platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, eMusic, Tidal, and whatever comes next.

The essential element of our proposal that differentiates us is a commitment to building an infrastructure based on trust and fair pay for plays. The 50/50 partnership we’re committed to (split between artist and platform) will put more money in the artist’s pocket and bring them closer to their fans. The consumers can continue using the technology they like, but know that it’s responsible listening. Additionally:

• eMusic has the history. When we started in 1998, it was still a year before Napster entered the scene. Since then we’ve become the #1 independent music service with over 1 billion downloads. Over the course of 20 years, we have made a good reputation with the music community as a forward-facing platform that believes in responsible music consumption. What the EMU represents is a commitment to the artists we have cultivated relationships with and the fans who inspire them to keep making music.
• eMusic has the reach. Most other projects start out with no community. Taking a note from our whitepaper — there’s an active community looking to benefit from more music and more rewards ready to adopt EMU.
• eMusic has the knowhow. Look at our awesome board of advisors, who collectively bring knowledge from huge blockchain projects such as WePower, TaTaTu, Blox, and Matchpool, to name just a few. Our guiding team runs the gamut from music distribution to crowdfunding to actual musicians –– if you haven’t met Bill Campbell yet, check out our introductory Medium article here.
• eMusic has the technology. We’ve been in the music retail and distribution business for years, so we have a crack team of app developers working to release the new technology quickly. We are prepared for anything that comes, from bugs to outages. We’ve seen it all.

In short, eMusic is something to believe in. Most other tokens start from nothing, and, to quote the great Billy Preston, nothing from nothing leaves nothing.