Blockchain to my ears...

“Music is the weapon of the future”… and blockchain is the trigger. 

​Big streaming audio services had taken a huge piece of the pie, leaving artists with few crumbs, less control over their work and little knowledge of those who interact with it. The business had become so complex and powerful, so concentrated, that musicians like Taylor Swift and Jay-Z had taken themselves off of Spotify, which is not an option to all artists… 
However, the time has already come for the whole music industry to collaborate on a healthy, sustainable, and frictionless ecosystem which benefits everyone in the value chain. I do want to listen to music that is made and given to me this way.

Various companies are now teaming up with forward-thinking musicians to develop a fair and sustainable music ecosystem that will allow artists to turn a song into a fair business for the parties concerned. 

​Blockchain will allow artists to link all elements, from lyrics to musical composition to audio and video performances, and thus register their intellectual property for everyone to see. This creates the very much needed global, inclusive, and most importantly verified, database of music, which currently does not exist.

Smart contracts will constitute templates to set terms of service and usage for fans, distributors, sponsors, and licensees and templates to distribute revenues to contributors, collaborators, and promoters of the work. This gives back the well-deserved power to artists, who can now decide who can interact with their work, how, and how much each type of interaction is worth, with a lot less paperwork. All parties can now see all transactions on the blockchain and track who paid what for which right and who received which portion of revenues.

We can very well imagine by how much responsibility is increased for all shareholders through complete transparency in accounting, thus no confusion over the ownership of the work and no payment delays.

This new music ecosystem based on blockchain technology has the potential to create a new marketplace for new music services.
We believe that through the blockchain, new collaborations and organizational matters (hiring, booking shows) can be created, for better renewal and flow in the industry, without institutional intervention.

Moreover, new opportunities can arise for labels and distributors, such as Spotify, only if they embrace blockchain (as Spotify did with Mediachain), because this new database for music can help them provide a better service to music lovers and leverage this accuracy and transparency in data for better brand reputation. We are persuaded that blockchain will be key for them to stay ahead of the competition, innovative, and relevant to consumers.

​Blockchain creates a fairer and better world for artists who have been struggling for too long. Artists are now back at the center of the music ecosystem, instead of starving at its edges.

And that is, to me, music to my ears. 

Isaline Nguyen

Bachelor of Commerce Graduate from McGill University & IE Business School MiM Candidate

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