Go through blockchain use in the music industry

The invention of blockchain technology, an online ledger of transactions grouped into blocks, can remove intermediaries in many industries and create a direct economic relationship between producers and consumers. If you want entirely automated trading services, you can visit websites with Click here, you will get all the advanced bitcoin trading features. In theory, it should also allow for value-added services at the point of consumption.

This post will explore how companies can apply blockchain technology to music industry transactions to optimize efficiency while increasing transparency – which is fundamental in any business moving forward. A digital product’s lifecycle, including licensing, sale, distribution, and consumption on platforms such as streaming services or mobile music sales, is complex and can involve many providers.

The process begins with the rights owner and ends with the consumer. In between are numerous intermediaries, including publishers, labels, and distributors. These intermediaries take a percentage of revenues for facilitating transactions. It is mainly applied to copyrights – or properties that have a title (e.g., song copyright) – rather than other intangibles such as brands or works that lack title. Companies can apply it to the transfer of rights in intangible assets (i.e., copyrights, trademarks, or patents) expressed as code or a smart contract.

Let’s take a look at the types of intermediaries involved and how they currently operate:

Re-productions:

To re-produce a song, it must be acquired from distributors who have bought songs from rightsholders. It is usually done through digital music services licensed to store and play digital works on behalf of users. The music file is hosted on one or more servers operated by service providers such as Apple Music and Spotify.

Rights holders: These are the rights holders who create and own the intellectual property that is being transferred. These are usually music publishers, songwriters, and artists.

Music publishers: Through them, artists and songwriters own their creations. While the artist may be responsible for recording the song, they are often not involved in publishing – it’s up to the publisher to transfer ownership to a music label. Music publishers provide advice on how companies can use songs. They also help manage copyrights, collect royalties and deal with third-party licenses, such as streaming platforms or films that want to use copyrighted music. Let’s explore the use of blockchain in the music industry:

Copyright management:

The copyright management process can be divided into three separate steps.

1) Creation of the work

2) Registration and protection of copyright rights in the country with jurisdiction:

It can be performed by a music publisher who registers the creative work with a rights society or library, which then administrates copyrights in that country. The registration process is recorded on a national database maintained by the rights societies or libraries. A digital file (or ‘file’) is created that includes information on all music composition and copyright ownership as well as making it publicly available on one or more digital stores such as iTunes or Spotify, where every time it is played, royalties are paid to authors and publishers.

3) The licensing process: This is done by music publishers and distributors who license their work to other companies, such as broadcasters or online video platforms.

Today’s licensing system:

Licensing is a highly manual and time-consuming process that relies on intermediaries. For example, when a film production company wants to use an existing song in their film and has signed a deal with the music publisher, they will then require a master license from the label that holds the rights over that song – which can be difficult if they do not have a direct relationship with them. Overall, the current licensing process lacks transparency because it is difficult to track how often content has been licensed and how much it has earned.

Blockchain can make it all easy:

With blockchain technology, everything solved above will be a thing of the past. First, creating an immutable blockchain-based digital file that includes all essential information for every song to securely manage copyright ownership is possible. In this way, every time a song is played, the rights holders are paid automatically through the digital store. Copyright ownership data is unalterable and can be viewed by right holders and publishers at any time via their blockchain account. It also provides transparency on how much money has been earned from each broadcast and allows rights holders to access all of its data related to copyright management.

Blockchain can create revenue streams for the music industry:

Through blockchain, it is possible to create a mechanism through which music publishers and rights holders can receive revenue from their work and remunerate their artists. It is possible by giving them intelligent contracts using Ethereum-based technology and payments in a new digital currency that appears as an application on the blockchain.

In this system, rights holders will get designated shares for each broadcast, resulting in a client making payments. They will also have access to all the data related to their song’s usage, royalties, and payments received from platforms such as Spotify or Apple Music. Now, labels must pay each time their work is played to get back some of these revenues.

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