blockchain and the music industry

glasshand

dj panic attack
where are my crypto-posers on here, only found a 3 page thread on bitcoin

i've been reading some stuff about blockchain and music streaming/music industry, want to know if anyone else has read anything about it or is at all interested.

i really resent the direction streaming platforms like spotify are taking music in an economic (and cultural) sense. i hardly use spotify and definitely don't pay to subscribe cuz i like to download and own all my music. spotify pays even relatively big artists very little compared to number of streams, the focus on playlists and link ups with major labels has taken all the internet's potential to level out the music money stream and funneled it back to the old established ppl. there's loads of stats online about how unequal the money distribution on there is, and how ppl are directed to the same music more and more, echochamber algorithm style. also read a really interesting article about the way a lot of the playlists on spotify direct u to pacifying ambient stuff, smooth out the daily grind of capitalism an all that.

i'm fully behind bandcamp, really taken out the middleman for small labels and individuals looking to distribute tracks, but i think it's mostly going to continue to appeal to more hardcore fans and ppl who want to own tracks for djing. so altho it's a good way for smaller organisations to make a bit of money, they're still getting robbed by the big streaming platforms on the side. really interesting seeing via von pif's twitter that tha god fahim is selling music exclusively on bandcamp for quite high prices and presumably doing well out of it.

obviously atm the cryptocurrency and blockchain thing has been hyped to extremes and it's pretty tiresome the amount of shit that's got blockchain thrown into it as a talking point. fuck actually making music "on/with the blockchain", whatever that means. but the 'smart contract' ethereum thing does seem like a viable way that the music industry is going to be totally overhauled pretty soon. cryptocurrency as far as i can tell would make it financially viable to make tiny transfers of value direct to artists, as you might want to do for a single stream of a track. also means u can set up contracts to automatically distribute royalties with far less intermediary stages.

here's an article mat dryhurst wrote about a blockchain version of soundcloud, for example -
so far i've seen two different streaming platforms that use (or plan to use) blockchain - Resonate and Choon

resonate and its founder talk a lot about cooperatives and the whole thing generally gives me more socialist vibes. sadly the resonate 'stream to own' system of paying seems a bit clunky and not sure it'll catch on easy. choon has got a load of really rich EDM looking types involved from the west coast of the US. it looks like the hypercapitalist alternative that will swoop in and just replace loads of intermediaries with a single big platform intermediary.

the cryptocurrency wave has got the potential to completely change a lot of creative industries, i think music will definitely be one of the first up, it's still open as to whether it goes down a more cooperative/socialist leaning route or just becomes a more efficient way to rip the majority of artists off. i'm not so cynical that i reckon the second one is the only way forward.

anyone on here got any thoughts or read anything good about this type of stuff? realise this is all v niche so may just drop into the archives fairly silently.
 

glasshand

dj panic attack
you got a link to that, was it a blog post?

googled it, seems to be something in a post about imogen heap, but then i clicked it takes me to the blog itself, not the post... maybe it's been deleted?
 

luka

Well-known member
hes posted it twice and deleted it twice but id assumed it was just a joke anyway.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
Hey Matt - have you really canned the blog again?

Please say no.

hi droid,

...yes.

but i'm writing a book that's more of the same. and i'll be popping in here again from time to time so people can insult me to my face.

yours sincerely,
matt
 

kevinoak

Active member
Actually Blockchain-applications for music only arose. They need time for "swing". However, just the participation of artists is not enough. One of the obstacles to blockade in music is the lack of understanding of the fans, what kind of technology it is. Another is the unwillingness of music labels to introduce technology. Reading Blockchain Books can help understand this issue better.
 
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poetix

we murder to dissect
The current ETH transaction cost is about 11p, which is historically low but still a bit hefty for tip-jar-size micropayments.
 
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