Blockchain in music industry is one of the trending benefits for the entire media industry. Blockchain in music and media protects content and rights from digital theft. Smart contracts ensure that the sale of music content has appropriate digital authorization. It also ensures necessary digital protection in case of theft and plagiarism. Smart contracts also help in receiving royalties for the music content published and released. In short, smart contracts add value and enhance the operability of all operations that take place within the music industry. 

Traditional Challenges Faced in The Music Industry   

Consider a chain of operation in music industry where, the process starts from songwriters,  performers, publishers and ends with fans. Each operation starting from creation of music until it reaches the fans involves multiple parties. These parties include labelling companies, profession digital marketers, digital aggregators, producers, recording facilities, etc.

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Traditionally, there existed a huge constant confusion between parties due intervention by multiple parties. 

For example, a songwriter asks where is their money? A publisher focuses only on collecting royalties and says ask the professionals. A labelling partner focuses only on promoting the content and they say they don’t know. A professional says they only know the songwriter and does not know what is going on with the publisher and labelling partners. It finally leaves an aggregator in confusion about who owns the song. At the end, a song writer is still left with the question, how long song a will it take to reach their fans? and where is their money? 

You see the confusion here? It is due to loss of information somewhere in between the chain of command or supply chain or due to manipulation of data and operations, etc. All these confusions can be eliminated completely with the usage of smart contracts. 

Opportunities from Smart Contracts in the Music Industry 

Safeguarding and protecting Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

Smart contracts in music industry monitor each and every song released on blockchain platform. This in turn, assigns a unique number to each song authorized and published. This unique number allows artists to have control over their music content. And, ensure that their music is not digitally copied or stolen. Smart contracts also encrypt songs with public or private encryption according to the requirement. This encryption does not allow money launderers to get a hold of a digital copy of the IPR of a song. 

Music artists get to be entrepreneurs 

Music artists can control and monitor royalty payments with smart contracts in real-time. This ensures that publishers, labelers, performance artists and all necessary personnel get paid on time. It also allows receiving royalties or song bought from licensee or franchisee on-time without delay. Music artists can now conveniently make their own decisions without having to hire a middle-manager to handle decision-making. 

Earning creatively with blockchain based music startups 

Smart contracts allow music artists to provide free streaming to fans in their own Convenient time and platform. This cuts down middlemen which reduces the cost of subscription packages and premium privileges in live-streaming of music events. Using smart contracts, music artists can predict how much money they could earn from copyrights using data management systems for accuracy integrated with smart contracts. 

Faster P2P transactions allow direct payments 

One-touch, instantaneous payments is possible with smart contracts as it is decentralized. There is no central authority that has to verify and pass through transactions. Peers can directly connect with each other. For instance, the recording studio can instantly connect with publishers and labelers to acquire trademark and copyrights for the music. Simultaneously, fans can pay for the song. Blockchain ensures equal division of  money gets paid in equal share accordingly between the recording studio, publishers, labelers and music artists, etc.  

P2P payments become more faster and easier if music artists wish to use smart contracts that allow cryptocurrencies as one of the payment options too. 

Direct connection between music artists and fans 

Music artists can directly connect with their fans at any point of time and day to acquire feedback, suggestions, ideas or just interact. Say goodbye to the traditional obstacles of waiting to authorize music artists to interact with fans. Fans and music artists can transact and transfer files among each other quickly and easily with smart contracts without any restriction. 

Transparency in royalty payments and ownership 

Smart contracts in music industry allow music creators to receive payments directly without any third-party intervention to handle their transactions. Thus, the payment is received in real time without any legal restrictions. Also, data manipulation is not possible with smart contracts as it uses blockchain. In order to change an information, the complete system has to be re-structured or re-programmed which is not logically encouraged. 

Blockchain-based projects that are providing opportunities for the music industry 

Choon 

Allows music artists to gain income with an increase of 80% from their investment through decentralized distribution approach. 

Bitsong 

Provides decentralized platform for streaming of music. Music artists can directly receive donations from their fans. 

Revelator 

Allows key personnel to monitor copyrights of the music at all times to ensure digital security and protection of the music content. 

BitTunes 

Offers a bitcoin-based platform to share music files and also allows fan themselves to stream songs digitally with appropriate protection. 

Over to you!  

Traditionally, Blockchain development for music industry can play important role in an artist’s life. A music artist also didn’t have the freedom of speech in their song content due to various regulatory limitations. Now, using blockchain and smart contracts, music artists have complete freedom to express emotions through their songs. In addition, smart contracts in music industry record all operations in real-time. Hence, all involved get real-time updates on the progress of the published song at each stage. This enhances transparency, trust and confidence between studio managers, artists and fans.

Use smart contracts and gear your song with freedom. Let us know, what are the other opportunities you think that smart contracts will bring music industry.