Blockchain Revolution

Value Templates to construct deals that respect the artist as entrepreneur and equal partner in any venture, integral to value creation. Good-bye archaic paper contracts that perpetuate unfair beginnings. “No more clawing back royalty percentages,” said Heap.

Inclusive Royalties that divide revenues fairly according to each person’s contribution to the creative process, not only composers and performers, but also the other artists and engineers. Everyone could have an upside in a smash hit, not just the labels and the distributors.

Transparent Ledgers distributed on the blockchain so that everyone could see how much revenue a song was generating, the timing and magnitude of the revenue streams, and who was getting what percentage. No more archaic and proprietary paper-based accounting systems to hide behind. Separate tags for the nature of

revenues, from work-made-for-hire to royalty revenues. Easy accounting, easy auditing, easy payment of taxes.

Micrometering, Micromonetizing functionality to stream the revenues, not just the music. If the music were metered, where consumers made micro- or picopayments per play, the royalty payments could be streamed immediately to the artists and contributors. No more payment delays, no more biannual or quarterly royalty checks, no more cryptic royalty statements. No more hand-to-mouth artists! Blockchain theorist Andreas Antonopoulos gave this example: “Streamium in Argentina is a streaming video service. It allows video producers to charge thousandths of a penny for downloading, say, two hundred milliseconds of live streaming video. It uses multisig[nature], time-locked transactions, atomicity, and sum integrity to implement its scheme. Producers deliver only the video that has actually been paid for, and consumers pay for only the video actually consumed. They automatically renegotiate that contract five times a second. If either of them drops out at any point in time, the contract ends and they cash in the most advantageous transaction between them.”²⁰

Rich Databases that can interface with one another and associate the core copyrighted material—lyrics, composition, and recordings—with all their metadata, the liner notes, the artwork and photographs, the individual tracks, the rights that the composer and the performer are willing to license, the terms of licensing, contact information, and so forth—in the digital ledger for all to see. No more incomplete databases of rights. Rights availability at your fingertips! Rights holders would be easy to find.

Usage Data Analytics in the hands of artists at last, to attract the right advertisers and sponsors, organize tours, plan promotions and crowdfunding resources and future creative collaborations with other artists. The model could capture “so much of this lost data around the world, like where are your fans, how old are they, what are they interested in,” said Heap. “With that information, we could really tailor-make tours, we could connect up with brands and initiatives that resonate with us, or promote artists, products, or charities we love and support. I’m not talking names and e-mail addresses type of info, a bit more zoomed out but still vitally useful data. We could cross-reference it with other bands’ data for all kinds of interesting uses for fans and artists alike!”²¹