Can the anti-establishment ideals of blockchain technology convince artists to take back control of their creations?
A handful of new start-up companies are declaring that blockchain will revolutionize digital music and transform how artists produce and distribute their art online. Imagine a public record of transactions where the origin of every digital file can be traced and recorded. This enables file ownership, copyright and distribution to be automatically enforced and documented by the protocol of the network. In a similar vein to the file history that you can see when using services like Google Docs or Dropbox that show and log the events of a file every time it is edited, the blockchain essentially does that to every file, but stores this history via a p2p network of computers, creating a solid infrastructure of ‘recorded’ files and transactions. This p2p infrastructure presents a new landscape for digital creatives’ where ownership, authenticity and creative control have the potential to be reclaimed by their authors. Will creatives look pass the instability of crypto-currencies – that all run on blockchain’s protocol – and trust in blockchain to manage, distribute and license their work?
The music business was the first industry to be blown apart by p2p networks in the early nineties when the affects of music download websites such as Napster crippled the record industry. Perhaps that is why music labels are eager to learn about the potential implications of blockchain as an alternative to online streaming. A recent report conducted by Berklee Institute for creative entrepreneurship (www.rethink-music.com), reveals the disproportionate and exploitative revenue split between artists and publishers and describes blockchain as the solution.
There has been no shortage of musicians speaking out against ITunes or Spotify lately (David Bryne, Taylor Swift) but the musician Imogen Heap is the first to attempt to do something about it. She has teamed up with Ethereum to co-develop a platform called “Mycelia” that uses the blockchain to distribute her new single “Tiny Human”. The Mycelia platform is a prototype that uses the blockchain to distribute Heap’s music, which she describes as
“Open source, a living, breathing, smart, decentralised, transparent, adaptable, useful, shining home for our love of music. A home that allows creativity to flow, connect and facilitate collaboration on so many levels, many of which just haven’t been possible. With this grand library of all music forming the basis upon which all music businesses from digital radio to tour bookings can then grow and thrive from. Empowering the artists, turning and landing the industry finally on its feet.”
Although Heap does not go into technical details about how the Mycelia platform operates, she does envision how the blockchain application could change the music industry.
The attraction for musicians is the opportunity to operate independently, distribute your music online via your own website and immediately receive the financial returns on your music – rather than relying on centralized platforms like Spotify or iTunes to provide slow and disproportionate advertising revenue. The immediacy of the blockchain network enables for a more direct relationship between artist and customer that not only allows for faster financial returns, it could also inspire closer communities between artists and their fan base. For example, the artist can write their own licenses and give the large percentage of profit normally taken from the publisher to the loyal fans who share and promote their songs, thus creating a community of shared ownership.
A handful of new services have sprouted of late that aim to get musicians acquainted with the blockchain without having to get their hands dirty with the code. From publishing firms like Kobalt (who interestingly funded the initial report by Berklee) and new streaming services such as Peertracks that use the blockchain to enable a p2p music streaming network, these new blockchain platforms are singing the blockchain gospel and hope to sign-up enough musicians to infiltrate the music industry and perhaps other creative sectors. The potential for blockchain to alter the digital streaming sector seems viable on paper, but will artists take the plunge or will blockchain music services crash as quickly as Jay-Z’s ‘Tidal’ streaming service?
To find out I looked at one of these companies, the newly launched Peertracks, that uses the bitshare music blockchain – a set of bits allocated to trading music shares on the blockchain. On Peertracks musicians can upload their songs and set an amount of credits (shares) for that song. The digital file is given a unique blockchain ID that authenticates its origin and records that file on the blockchain network. Every time that file is streamed or accessed this can be recorded and tracked via the blockchain; making a public ledger of transactions. These networked and distributed records in turn create the chain of blocks that can be used as contracts and provide the legal authenticity to license digital files.
Peertracks offers the potential for co-ownership or crowd sourcing your rights and shares to your music. Each artist can set the rights for each file and sell shares in ownership using bitUSD – a currency similar to bitcoin that is traded against the dollar. By using the record of transactions created by the blockchain, the revenue of music sales and streaming charges are automatically returned to the shareholder(s). As people begin to pay for your music with prices you have set (similar to music publisher site Bandcamp and small streaming chargers begin to accumulate, the artist and shareholders begin to see a financial return. Peertracks does not attempt to restrict the sharing of your music (which is probably a good thing for publicity and viral marketing) but allows for artists to write their own licenses and set their own financial return. The attraction for musicians to use the blockchain lies in (re)gaining control over their work through managing their own licenses and setting up direct contracts with fans that could evolve into a community of shared owners and producers of the work. Peertracks is one of the first blockchain applications specializing in music but the attributes of Blockchain are being applied in other areas of creative culture.
“Everybody is looking for the killer use-case” (Bruce Pon, Ascribe 2015)
Ascribe uses the blockchain to authenticate digital artworks and license intellectual copyright by writing a digital file onto the blockchain network. The blockchain ID of a work of art attempts to solve the issue of authenticating digital artworks have been strife since the days of net-art. Companies like Ascribe and Monegraph use the blockchain to authenticate the artist, and to license a digital file. The creation of authenticity from the blockchain ID of a digital file enables a market for selling, loaning and buying of digital art. When an artwork is registered on the blockchain via the platform, a unique bit hash is generated ensuring the origin of each bit can be traced. The belief is that the ‘fair use’ policy of creative commons licenses will no longer have to be enforced, as it becomes techno-protocol via the blockchain. The idea of an original is much more pertinent in the arena of digital art than music, and one can see the appeal for digital artists to use blockchain methods to certify, license and distribute their work.
The current landscape of companies using the blockchain to create autonomous marketplaces for music and art represents conflicting views on rights and property. One the one hand you have the techno-libertarian fantasy of a de-centralized unregulated exchange network that inspired models of exchange like bitcoin and can be traced back to the p2p foundation. On the other hand these new companies are using the blockchain to monetize immaterial or reproducible art by creating copyright clauses and traditional legislation out of blockchain protocol. These companies argue that the transparency of the blockchain will enable artists to regain ownership over their creations.
There will be plenty other uses for the blockchain in society, however these initial start-ups are focused on how the blockchain can be used in the creative market. The permanence of blockchain and the success of the blockchain platform for the creative industries lie partly in the resilience and willingness of musicians and artists to begin distributing their work on these new platforms. If musicians see and seize the potential for unregulated exchange, than blockchain might receive a valuable blessing from the creative class.
The contracts created via the blockchain protocol can go much further than copyright. Ethereum, the application that Heap built Mycelia on, is actively encouraging people to build their own applications on the blockchain and so far some exciting prototypes have been shared. These range from democratic online voting systems or online marriage certificates. For these blockchain start-ups it is a case of getting the musicians and artists on board to blockchain their work, but the exciting part is what happens if and when these platforms reaches a critical mass.