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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.
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.
...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, ...
It's been possible to know and track this information for decades. What hasn't been present, and still does not look to be present, is the desire of the music industry executives to share revenues with those who actually create the music. As the old adage goes, ~unless you are a large enough music act that you can dictate the terms of your contract, the record companies will own you and your music.~
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Anything the record industry does is probably more oriented towards two main goals: (1) extract more money from the consumers of the content, and (2) channel as much of that revenue to the record company executives as possible. Everything else is most likely little more than a smoke screen.
I work for one of those collection societies and this is exactly what is required (i even know exactly how this would work but is had major issues becuase of the record companies and the way they operate).
The problem is that none of the major record companies can even begin to add suitable attribution information and pass that onto the collection societies (or tights metadata to the likes of Spotify), hell, they can't even get basic information correct half the time, even what the tracks are even called and you expect that the'll transition to a model that allows money to not even get paid to them (and subsequently kept by them due to bad rights management)...
Good luck with that.