The music industry is one of the biggest industries and it’s generating massive revenue. According to the reports music industry, it generates more than $43 billion in revenue but only $5.16 billion is handed over to the artists. This is very low compared to the work and effort put in by them. It is mainly due to the middlemen in this business. There are artists, songwriters, label-selling companies, publishers, producers, aggregators, digital service providers (DSPs) and many more people. So to solve this problem we have to cut the middlemen and have a direct connection with the fans and the artists. To achieve that we are using blockchain technology.
In centralized music streaming services, there can be artists-biases like an artist who manipulated/bribed the centralized streaming service so a particular artist chart/songs will always be shown in the feed to the users and other artists who could not afford those will not show in the featured list or their songs will not be available frequently.
One of the biggest problems in the music industry is that it doesn’t have a global fixed database that he/she is the owner of this chart/album. It is mostly unknown or it is provided to their music label company.
There are some cases in which users subscribe to a centralized music streaming service but there is a high chance that their streaming platform may not have their favourite song because its rights will be owned by some other streaming service if we want to listen to that song then we have to use that streaming service.
Centralized music streaming services gain a lot of revenue by providing music to the users which the artists generate but artists do not get paid quickly some artists received a paycheck after two years after the song was streamed.
Let’s see how blockchain technology can solve these issues. Let’s split up the solution based on three forms. They are:
Using Blockchain! for Music Storage
Using Blockchain! for Artists
Using Blockchain! for User
Blockchain technology can help to manage all the music ownership rights by having a transparent system through a marketplace just like the Opensea network for NFT’s here we can have it for music ownership where artists can buy, and sell music content rights by paying through cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain can bring a safe, secure and transparent management system by having a peer-peer database where if someone alters the data it will not be different for other peers in the network and he would be caught for manipulating/stealing the artist’s work.
The music will be recorded in the ledger based on the unique ID and it will be timestamped accordingly this will help us to prevent unauthorized access for other persons downloading their work and just altering their work and publishing it as a remix without their consent.
Music will be uploaded to the blockchain, one of its traits is its immutability through which there will be no one claiming that someone has copied their song or someone claiming ownership of that song as it can be easily tracked down via the blockchain network.
Artists can own their work instead of other third parties owning their work this will allow them to receive royalties rather than others. The ownership is transparent as anyone can see which song is owned by which person.
The streaming revenue of the songs will be directly given to the artists. Artists receive the payments within minutes based on the streaming activity, unlike the traditional system which takes so many years.
NFT’s can be used to create a proof of authenticity that this work belongs to this artist and it also has a resale value.
Smart Contracts are used to automate payments rather than meeting a bank manager and informing him about the transaction here it is fully automated by the smart contract.
Users will be directly able to connect with artists and interact accordingly i.e they can tip them if they like their work or if there is any other contest they can directly get in touch with them.
Users can directly receive any royalties from the artist. If he/she decides to release an NFT then the people holding their NFT will get special privileges like their next concert is free for people having them.
We could also initiate stable coin payments to improve the no of users in this space.
It is a decentralized music streaming service where the music data lies in the blockchain network rather than the centralized server.
It allows artists to upload songs and immediately receive payments for them.
Audius has chosen Solana blockchain to scale the network with nearly 5M unique users per month. It uses Proof of Authority consensus.
The artist uploads music or asks someone else to upload music for them. The person who is uploading music is called the content node.
It also gets published in the Audius content ledger to check who uploaded the music.
Then the discovery nodes take the content and index the metadata so that it will be easy for users to query the data. It will be indexed in simple terms so that the users don’t need to struggle.
Then the fans get to listen to the music.
It is operated by either the artists or someone who the artists want to upload the music.
Content nodes maintain the availability of content and the metadata in the Audius Storage protocol(AuSP).
Content Ledgers are the ones which hold all the data in Audius Network.
Content ledgers act as a source of truth between all fan/artist engagements which is happening within the audius network.
Discovery nodes are operated by the users and they index the metadata in an efficient manner which is simple enough to understand for all the other users.
The network ensures this process is decentralized.
Audio tokens help the network achieve its goals like security and network governance.
Fans can send their audio token to artists as a source of appreciation for their work and artists can also leverage their audio tokens as collateral for any tools they wish to use.
Artists can also gift their audio tokens to their top fans for their support.
Audius works on 90/10 rule where 90% of the earning from the stream goes directly to the artists and 10% goes to the network where nodes participate for securing the network.
Audius is not a profit generating company rather tries to maintain a system which is self-sustaining, self-governing and serves the community better.
Score = (0.75*least(streams_on_your_content,2500)/2500) + (0.1*least(followers,1000)/1000) + (0.05*least(favorites_on_your_playlists, 100)/100) + (0.05*least(favorites, 100)/100) + (0.05*least(reposts,100)/100)
Streams 75% , followers 10% , favorite playlists(which the user has made favourite) 5%, songs favourite(no fo songs users has favourites) 5%, no of songs reposted 5%.
They are paid through AUDIO token.
There is difficulty in accepting and establishing blockchain technology over the old user-friendly and well know service which has been running for several years. THere is less awareness about blockchain technology.
Blockchain-based solutions will work in the upcoming music copyrights issue but there is great difficulty in finding the music artist’s owners prior to these blockchain solutions.
Most people don’t want to pay gas fees (which is a way to secure the blockchain network from spamming) in the network as it charges money for a transaction. As the users are getting a service for free why do they need to pay money for the service?
When the artists are getting directly paid they are paid in cryptocurrencies. There is no legislation or law about cryptocurrencies and some countries have still banned them.
The music industry in Europe must all be registered and have to accept the terms of the EU General data protection authority.