The latest in royalties, music tech & blockchain — December 22 2016 Edition
Blockchain’s Key Economic Impact: Verifying Transactions and Operating a Network
When a distributed ledger is tied to a native cryptographic token, marketplaces can function without the need of intermediaries, lowering networking costs. Bitcoin for the first time in history demonstrated value could be transferred reliably between untrusting parties without the need of an intermediary. Read more
OMG, Ethereum Is So Hard Forked
Basically we think any consternation about recent (intentional and unintentional) forks or their effects is misplaced. In our view, the events of last week represent natural growing pains. The swift and effective way they were handled is further proof that our toddler-age platform is growing up into something special. Read more
The major advancements in Deep Learning in 2016
The ability to naturally communicate with machines has been also one of the dream goals and several approaches have been presented by giants like Google and Facebook. In this context, 2016 was all about innovation in Natural Language Processing (NLP) problems which are crucial to reach this goal. Read more
Why Blockchain Won’t Save the Music Industry (at Least Not Yet)
The challenge with using the blockchain for music isn’t a technological one. It’s a set of interlocking business problems that have been around since the beginning of music licensing. Music remains one of the most complicated copyright environments. Read more
How Streaming Is Changing Music (Again)
While music is still an industry associated with superstars, a greater variety of artists are producing best-sellers over time. Looking at the data, the sales going to the top 100 albums has dropped by about 20% over the past 20 years — nontrivial gains for other artists. Read more
Music Community Letter to President-Elect Trump on Even of Meeting with Tech Leaders
As partners, many in the technology and corporate community should be commended for doing their part to help value creators and their content. Some have developed systems to promote a healthy market for music and deter theft. However, much more needs to be done. Search engines, user upload content platforms, hosting companies, and domain name registrars and registries should follow others’ example to effectively stop theft and assure fair payment. Read more
APRA AMCOS Reports Record Revenues
Australasian collecting society APRA AMCOS reported record revenue of a third of a billion Australian dollars for its financial year 2015–2016, thanks in no small part to a gain of more than A$20 million ($15 million) in digital revenue. APRA AMCOS CEO Brett Cottle said the organizations enjoyed “an exceptional year”as overall revenue grew 11% year-on-year to A$333 million ($254 million), and net distributable revenue rose 8.73% to A$285.5 million ($218 million). Read more
How to spot a half-baked blockchain
In order to serve as a viable basis for peer-to-peer database sharing, a blockchain has to protect its participants against all six types of database failure — forgery, censorship, reversal, illegitimate transactions, inconsistency and downtime. While many products in the market fulfill these requirements, quite a few of them come up short. I call these blockchains “half-baked” because they may address some of these risks, but not all. In some respects at least, the database’s users remain dependent on the good behavior of a single participant, which is precisely the scenario we want to avoid. Read more
Originally published at blog.paperchain.io on December 22, 2016.
