The imusify Platform Introduction
imusify, the project, has many missions; each addressing different and often overlapping audiences within the music industry. From the perspective of platform architecture and product design, though, there is one overarching vision that encompasses all of the missions:
“Anything and anyone who adds value to the economy should be compensated by the economy, equitably, immediately and frictionlessly”
Let’s explore that a bit from the perspective of two of the more common participants in the music industry.
The Artist
As a generator of new art, be it musical, visual or lyrical, the Artist needs to have a way to profit from the sale of their art. This may sound crass to some of the more idealistic Artists and artisans out there, but it’s better to make your living doing what you love, than doing something you hate to put beer in the fridge and strings on your guitar. Following our vision, an artist publishing their work on our platform should be compensated for any use of their work equitably, immediately and without having to jump through any institutional hoops. If someone streams their song, the revenue (paid by the listener) should immediately show up in the artist’s wallet. This is just one of many ways our vision applies to the Artist, but hopefully you can extrapolate the others easily enough, or wait for the coming articles.
The Consumer
Without the fans, listeners and audiophiles, there is no industry. Prior to our current Golden Age of Mankind, the average Musician was someone who had only one way to publish their art; live performance. (We’re talking pre-industrial era, here). Back in ye olde days, if you stopped to listen to a busker and were entertained, you dropped a farthing in the hat and moved on. A good musician generally fared better than a lousy one (they often were louse ridden too!), and the Consumer was always in control of where they bestowed their hard-earned shillings. With the advent of recording, radio, MTV, and finally digital distribution, the economic models changed, usually radically; we at imusify are hoping to change them one more time — by going BACK. We won’t go into why subscription models are unfair to both consumers and artists, nor any of the other injustices currently being perpetrated within the industry (not in this article, anyway).
We will say that within the imusify ecosystem, everyone pays for everything on a pay-per-use basis. Listen to a song, and you will immediately and automatically bestow a farthing upon the Artist for that single stream. Comment on a story in a channel, you will bestow three mites on the author. Comment, Like, Share, every act will have a small price. Where do all those mites, farthings and shillings go? They go to the creator that inspired the action. If you post a story and hundreds of people “Like” it; their “Like fees” will arrive in your wallet; Curation and engagement add value to the economy no differently than an Artist’s music; they enlighten communities, they promote obscured beauty and in every way are as important as any other activity within the economy. As our vision implies; quality is rewarded, noise is discouraged.
The Platform
To wrap up this overview, and setup the next several articles, let’s take a stroll through some of the fundamental principles and components of the imusify platform. These will all be explained in more detail in upcoming articles. This is just a taste, there are many more to come.
1. The User Owns Everything They CREATE. imusify doesn’t want you to sign over anything, no rights, no privileges, nothing! Our privacy policy will only talk about aggregate data, because we don’t keep your personal data, you do.
2. The User Owns Everything They DO. Having said the above, the platform will keep everyone accountable. If you behave badly, you can’t hide it, or hide from it.
3. Personas Are the Key. Every day you jump between many different personas (IRL). You may be a musician, a waiter, a dance fiend, a lover, a sibling, definitely a child to someone, and maybe even a parent; it’s so obvious, we rarely even notice it about ourselves. Capturing the essence of this reality is crucial to building any effective ecosystem.
4. Content Has a Life of Its Own. This is another very large conceptual leap which we’ll delve into in upcoming articles.
5. Cash Me Outside. Our tokenomic solution to the crypto conundrum — “Who really wants to be paid in crypto?”
6. Stages, Bars and Rental Guitars. Recordings are only one part of this industry, live events are a significant part of the ecosystem, and therefore are a significant part of imusify.
7. What About Ads? Sometimes considered the necessary evil of the tech world, there will be Ads on imusify, but not the way you think!
8. DRM, Licensing and Other Things Lawyers Love! imusify isn’t trying to bypass the rights world. We’re hoping to slowly make it irrelevant.
9. I’m an Industry Behemoth, Do I Need to Crush You? We’ll show you how even the large traditional players in the industry have a place within imusify.
We know; this is a dense article, short on details and long on questions. Next, we’ll be bringing you “The User Owns Everything They Create” and we’ll head down this road together!
Whether this is your first introduction to imusify or a long-awaited introduction to our product, welcome to the journey!
And finally, if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to reach out to us on twitter, telegram, discord, or facebook! Check out our new steemit channel too!
Written by Marc Aniballi; Product Designer, imusify
