In today’s digital world, as the music lovers we either credit some penny to the music company to download the music files or we copy it illegally from pirated websites at free of cost. In the increasing music #piracy world, album sales are long dead and its highly impossible to reinstate it. The music composers, creative group and the supporting artists are continuously facing problems in collecting money from the consumers in using the music files. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), has long waged a war against the illegal downloading of music from P2P sites – and received plenty of criticism for it. An analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation determines that global music piracy leads to a loss of $12.5 billion every year and a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings.
Can Blockchain really change the music industry? Music artists find themselves left with crumbs after labels, streaming services and file-sharing sites take most of the value that musicians produce. Blockchain could help the composers and artists to bypass third parties, avoid copyright infringement and receive fair compensation for their work. Fundamentally blockchain is a distributed ledger that can authenticate and record transactions without the need for a central authority. In blockchain platform, any recording artist or songwriter could present their music directly off a ledger. Smart contracts would enable direct micro-payments from fans to musicians, ensuring the copyright holders are rewarded, and specify how the content is to be used. For example, a music composer could float the music tracks for free and its karaoke backing track or a ringtone for a cost through a smart contract.
How Blockchain is advantageous? Primarily, music can be published on the ledger with a unique ID and timestamp in a way that is permanent and traceable. This can solve the historic problem of digital content being downloaded, copied and modified at the leisure of users. Records accompanying music files can store metadata containing the creator and privileges information in a transparent and in an absolute way for verification. This will ensure that the correct people will get paid for the use of the content. Users can select the record of their choice and immediately reward the stakeholders with cryptocurrency upon playing it. Another benefit of leveraging blockchain ledger is it could establish a more direct relationship between creators and consumers.
What are the limitations? Blockchain will not bring down any major record label, but the evolution could be on the business operating model. Irrespective of the negative impacts by the press and media on the record labels, they have provided a much-needed service such as taking care of business-orientated tasks that most artists would rather not deal with. The established relationships with media outlets and experienced teams have helped musicians reach their goals, which could be hampered through blockchain.
Conclusion: There is no doubt that blockchain has a huge potential when it comes to revolutionizing the music industry. The #music industry’s business model transformation may not be revolutionary but rather it would be evolutionary with #blockchain. The data integrity would be ensured when it comes to taking ownership of creative property and artists information, whilst also assisting artists who wish to have more control over the creation, distribution and sale of their music and products.
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