The Future of Music Technology

The Evolution:

Technology has completely shifted the landscape of music. Music consumers have gone from buying vinyls in a record shop — to digital albums on their ipod — to streaming music at a moments notice for 9.99 a month. Technology has consistently been improving for the consumer. Music has gotten cheaper, faster, more accessible than ever. What people seem to forget is that as the cost of music becomes cheaper for the consumer, the price of being an artist steadily rises. Artist’s today are only earning around $0.003 per stream on Spotify while only 13,400 out of the over 3 million artists on Spotify are earning a livable wage of $50,000 per year or more. Artists aren’t making money and this problem is only getting worse.

For the past 50+ years, the music industry has been evolving to line the pockets of executives, however, things are beginning to change. Many interject and claim that the music industry is “broken”; blame the institutions that encourage this type of behavior — but admit it — your life is better with Spotify. So to clarify, the music industry isn’t broken, it’s evolving. In recent years, a light has been shined on the starving artists and this evolution is starting to cater from the consumer to the artist.

A New Era

In the past, record labels have been the only feasible solution for artists to attain the money needed to survive. Labels won’t cut it anymore. Artists are tired of getting bled dry and many are opting out to stay independent. Forging their own path through new marketing tools like Tiktok which help promote their music on streaming services. Although still earning pennies on the dollar, independent artists are able to own 100% of their masters and work for themselves.

As groundbreaking music technology begins to break into the mainstream, new opportunities are presenting themselves. Technologies are emerging that provide the capability for artists to generate substantial capital which has been the biggest struggle for independent artists everywhere.

Explaining Tokens

Have you ever heard of tokens or NFTs? Right now, digital artists are using tokens as a way to sell their art to investors. Tokens are one of a kind digital assets that work similarly to stocks; they rise in fall in price depending on how much demand is backing them.

Skeptics believe that the rise and fall in price correlates to hype and the belief of crypto, while supporters believe that rise and fall is correlated to the supply and demand of the art itself. Neither are wrong. Tokens now are practically pointless. Right now, they are just ones and zeros that compile a tradable, customizable, digital asset which generally contains a JPG or GIF file that fans and investors can purchase into.

No matter how hard token adopters try to fight, there is one argument they can’t run away from:

“Tokens have no intrinsic value. The only value that tokens carry at the moment is the price appreciation which is only determined by crypto fanatics and hardcore believers.”

It is true that tokens hold no intrinsic value, but that’s about to change.

The Value of Tokens

‘So let me get this clear: tokens have value, but not right now?’

Exactly. The technology behind tokens are brilliant yet severely underutilized. Smart contracts are the code behind tokens and encode the building blocks of its future. Without going too much into the nitty gritty, smart contracts allow for digital assets to trigger an action. Let me explain:

The best way to picture smart contracts is as a vending machine. When I input 5A, the vending machine has an action to go to slot 5A and drop a bag of Cheetos.

With tokens in music, these same principles can be applied. Artists can tie a percentage of their royalties to the tokens they sell. Investors won’t just be purchasing into a JPG file, but a real percentage of the money these artists make from Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

Now, instead of a piece of art embedded in the token, it is a line of code executing that whoever owns each token earns a percentage of the revenue made from Spotify. And the best part: smart contracts allow for complete automation of these royalties. As an investor, you don’t need to trust a third party to send you the royalties, it can be completely automated from Spotify to you.

With intrinsic value, skepticists have no room to complain. Each token is now a real dividend bearing asset.

The Future — Tokn Music

Tokn Music is providing a marketplace for artists to unlock the potential of tokens. Artists convert one stream of revenue into four by selling shares of their royalties to fans and investors.

Artists keep complete control in regards to the amount of royalties they sell, how many tokens they sell, without the constraint of recording contracts.

Tokn achieves security for investors and artists by managing the distribution to Spotify, Apple Music, Tiktok, and over 60 other digital service providers and publishers. When money comes in from these services, Tokn immediately sends the according percentage to each investor via Smart Contract.