Can Blockchain Save The Music Industry? (wired.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Wired: Last fall, a group of music industry heavyweights gathered in New York City to do something they'd mostly failed to do up to that point: work together. Representatives from major labels like Universal, Sony, and Warner sat next to technologists from companies like Spotify, YouTube, and Ideo and discussed the collective issues threatening their industry... The participants of that confab would later form a group called the Open Music Initiative... "Pretty early on it was obvious that there's an information gap in the industry," says Erik Beijnoff, a product developer at Spotify and a member of the OMI.

That "information gap" refers to the data around who helped create a song. Publishers might keep track of who wrote the underlying composition of a song, or the session drummer on a recording, but that information doesn't always show up in a digital file's metadata. This disconnect between the person who composed a song, the person who recorded it, and the subsequent plays, has led to problems like writers and artists not getting paid for their work, and publishers suing streaming companies as they struggle to identify who is owed royalties. "It's a simple question of attribution," says Berklee College of Music's vice president of innovation and strategy, Panos A. Panay. "And payments follow attribution."

Over the last year, members of the OMI -- almost 200 organizations in total -- have worked to develop just that. As a first step, they've created an API that companies can voluntarily build into their systems to help identify key data points like the names of musicians and composers, plus how many times and where tracks are played. This information is then stored on a decentralized database using blockchain technology -- which means no one owns the information, but everyone can access it.

Comments

Unlikely

[dprimary]

Getting rid of record companies could save music though.

Re: Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't really an industry. It's a bunch of people claiming stuff is "theirs." Once it's been played out loud it's ours.

No

[thegarbz]

Blockchain technology so far has failed to achieve ... anything. It does sound like everyone just wants to throw it at everything and hope it sticks to something.

Re:Oh yeah...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yeah, the idea that the underlying problem is due to a supposed "information gap" is mystifying. Each of these groups already knows (or can easily find out) exactly who was involved in producing the songs they're talking about... they just don't want to share.

Not the right question.

[jwhyche]

The correct question is "should block chain save the music industry?" What the big record companies seem to not have grasp is their tight grip on music is over. Nobody really needs a big ass record company with a huge printing and distribution network to make it.

All they need is a good streaming service and a decent group of followers on social media. it's all coming full circle. The artists can control their own music again.

Big Music (tm) isn't dead yet but the farm is coming out of the house with the shotgun. Time for that trip behind the barn.

Not getting paid for their work

[willoughby]

Not getting paid, er, when and by who? Look, I have a stack of books around here, all of which I bought used. The authors don't get paid - again - when I pick up one from the stack and read it. Why do you people in the music industry think you are so much more special than other artists?

Re:Worse than that

[mikael]

The problem is that everyone who was involved in the creation of a particular track; the lead singers, backing vocals, musicians (individual royalties), orchestras (collective royalties), plus any sampled sounds (other tracks), recording studios, directors, all get a percentage of the actual royalty. Sometimes people get subcontracted by movie companies, recording studios and bands. But then the problem is that the publisher collects the profits from the sales and marketing, sends them down to their subcontractors, but the whole chain of financial distribution breaks down, leading to unpaid artists. The distribution of payments is done through individual agreements between separate financial entities.

What if the entire chain of royalty percentages could be stored in a blockchain. Every contributor has an account number, their percentage is stored as well, and all the publisher has to do is go through the blockchain and send the money directly to their account. Because of the encoding process, it's impossible for anyone to fiddle the royalty percentages afterwards.