Cryptocurrency's Inevitable Affect on the Music Industry
Hey guys!
My name is Cooper Turley and I'm a huge supporter of the Steem community and Cryptocurrencies as a whole. I'm currently a music business major at the University of Colorado Denver and was recently in a class where we discussed the potential impact(s) smart contracts could have on helping artists streamline the royalty collection process. The implementation of these smart contracts would effectively allow artists to receive their royalties at a much faster rate than they are today. I'm currently a music journalist for a small electronic blog based out of Colorado and have formerly worked as a music discovery intern for a well-know blog called ThisSongIsSick. I've included a few articles that dive deeper into this topic for those of you who are interesting in learning more about what I'm talking about before reading the rest of this post.
Forbes Article with D.A. Wallach: https://goo.gl/yXmjcT
TechCrunch Article: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/08/how-blockchain-can-change-the-music-industry/
Now you may be wondering, what does this have to do with me?
With only a year left in college I'm about to experience a tremendous financial shift in my life thanks to a thing called student loans. These loans are hands down one of the scariest and most challenging obstacles I will ever have to overcome and in order to try and prepare for this challenge, I'm in the process of launching an LLC called "Xeno" to try and help revolutionize the music industry as a whole. Our company's name stems from a definition found in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and I think the word perfectly exemplifies our values as a whole.
xeno - n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.
With Xeno I'm hoping to be one of the first companies to openly support the use of cryptocurrencies as we slowly make a name for ourselves in the digital world. Aside from ultimately managing up and coming artists and trying to implement smart contracts we're currently focused on throwing events in the United States that specialize in bringing our audience some of the most memorable shows to date.
How do we plan on doing this?
It's simple really. In the US today 9 out of 10 electronic shows are nothing more than an hour long DJ set from some of the most popular producers on Soundcloud, Youtube, and Spotify. You may have heard of acts like Marshmello, Illenium, or Cheat Codes and despite their awesome music, I was baffled to find out that when these artists were playing shows, they were doing nothing more than transitioning from song to song on their Pioneer CDJs. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but I first saw Marshmello here in Colorado on his first ever tour performing to a sold out crowd of less than 400 people. Flash forward to a this past weekend and Marshmello played a sold out show at Red Rocks Ampitheatre to just under 10,000 people. For as happy as I was for him as an artist, I was extremely discouraged by the fact that he played 75% of the same set that he had played at the Bluebird over 2 years back. The love for electronic music that I once I enjoyed time and time again had gone right out the window and I found myself sitting in the crowd wondering... Is this really the peak of electronic music? There's got to be more to offer! What can I do to provide show experiences that are truly as captivating as possible?
The answer to this question is obviously extremely complicated but to me, I believe that live instrumentation is the future of EDM. Whether it be similar to a live band such as STS9 or one artist adding an instrument such as GRiZ does with the saxophone, I want to do my best to challenge these artists to be the best possible performer that they can be.
For the sake of making sure that this post isn't too long, I wanted to wrap up by saying that I will be extremely active in the Steem community moving forward. I don't know how many of you in here have a vested interest in electronic music but as far as I'm concerned, the more music I can help you guys discover new music that you enjoy, the closer I am to achieving my visions of helping to push music as a whole to the next level. I'll end by dropping a link to my Soundcloud profile where I have been curating mixes for over 3 years to date. I hope you guys enjoy the tunes and if you took time the time to read this post, thank you so much for giving me a chance and I look forward to showing you guys the potential impact of how cryptocurrencies can revolutionize the music industry as a whole.
Coopahtroopa Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/coopahtroopamusic
Thanks so much and I hope everyone has a wonderful day!
- Cooper T
Maybe SteemIt can evolve into hosting audio tracks and each play earns Steem or SteemPower. Or maybe a different platform does this and of course has it's own crypto. But anyways I believe the blockchain technology to be powerful enough to reward all content creators. I was thinking about my friend who creates music and uploads his tracks to Soundcloud. This friend of mine is always on Facebook constantly. I was just thinking if he devoted his Facebook time on SteemIt instead he could be generating crypto value and then buy better software or a better studio to create even more music. I will bring the idea to him one day.
Exactly!! That's why I love the idea of SteemIt so much. Even the fact that we can give each other a 3 cent boost simply for commenting is amazing in itself. I've put time and effort into boosting Facebook posts and have gotten close to nothing out of it. Why spend my hard earned money on boosting a post on Facebook when I can do it on Steem and be rewarded for using this platform. Show him this post and get his opinion! I know this is still a new idea but so far the support from the people active on this site has been tremendous!
This is an excellent idea! And I'm about as rare as they come to say something like this.
I think the challenge you're going to face is distribution and awareness though. I'd seriously try to invest your time in building something along side other platforms that can help in that arena.
I don't think there is anything readily available yet, but there will be soon. STEEM plus a storage blockchain like Storj/Sia, LBRY, and others will surely lay the groundwork for this.
How do you plan to address the DRM issues?
Honestly, a music centric solution where reputation/karma, distribution and music library integration with popular DJ apps, or even just a "cloud bucket", possibly built on Storj, would probably be great.
I just wonder how you're going to ensure that people are going to get paid on the contracts and the songs won't leave and be shared outside the contract.
Hey Jacob,
Thanks so much for reading my post :) this was my first one and I was super curious to see if it would actually reach anyone!
I couldn't agree more. Even more so then distribution this technology is so new that I feel like it will be extremely tough to convince artists that being paid in crypto is as reliable as being paid in USD. I think we will see this mindset shift of the next 5-10 years but I'm definitely going to be keeping a running record on this platform of how this process is going.
What do yo mean by "DRM" issues? Not familiar with that term but would love to learn!
As you mentioned the big picture would be to try and integrate these contracts into platforms such as Spotify or Soundcloud so that the information is 100% transparent and there aren't any "black box royalties" like we are seeing today.
I will say that I am also heavily invested in DigiByte as they have been very open about trying to integrate themselves into the gaming community which in my opinion is very closely related to electronic music. I'm extremely open to hearing any ideas about how to go about approaching this because right now it is truthfully nothing more than an idea with no real way to go about executing these contracts in today's crypto landscape.
DRM is digital rights management, and I think Jacob meant this in the sense of how files on the blockchain will be protected against copyright infringement. That's actually a beautiful aspect of this, that blockchains can be used as a registry of ownership. This is what BlockAI (now binded.com/) is aiming to solve by letting artists register and timestamp their work. The only thing about this is it'll be possible to identify infringement of someone's digital work, but not necessarily enforce the takedown of said work. Obviously there is a solution to this problem... someone like you just hasn't thought of it yet!
Looks like people are making moves on this front as we speak! https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/07/stem-raises-8m-to-get-music-artists-paid-more-seamlessly/
Great post! I can't imagine the effect blockchains will have on almost every industry in the next half a decade or so. Finances, music, social media, and just about any business/idea that involves a third-party or centralized medium. I'm excited to see what the future holds, to say the least. :)