The Chainsmokers is one of the most-known music duos. The two composers received many awards for their music pieces since 2004, when they released the song #Selfie. From that point, they started collaborating with other artists, like Halsey or Coldplay, which set the band to success. But now that the music market is overfilled with content, certain artists, among the Chainsmokers, wanted to bring something new to the industry and merge sounds with cryptocurrencies. Here’s how this innovative change will become a revolution for all artists. 

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What did the Chainsmokers do?

At the beginning of 2022, the duo released 5,000 NFTs (non-fungible tokens) for free, which provided fans with 1 percent of the streaming royalties from their latest album, So Far So Good. Along with this ownership percentage, fans got priority access to concert tickets and merchandise, which is not new in the music industry. Still, it’s the first major band to experiment with NFTs.

 

The Chainsmokers partnered with Royal, a music NFT marketplace that previously collaborated with Diplo, another roaring success in the music industry, and Nas, a famous rapper. Although the Chainsmokers were the first to offer such NFTs freely, they stated that this decision was to harness “a new disruptive technology in an effective way that truly shows what is possible” in the music industry.

 

The problem with property rights

Another example of an artist transforming music is Wu, the leader of the group Echo. He has always been a significant player in the movement to change the issues in the Asian music industry, for which he founded iNDIEVOX, the first DRM-free music store in Taiwan. He, therefore, contributed to removing digital rights management since it was restricting the property rights of consumers who buy digital music.

 

This process is especially crucial for indie music creators since the process of paying royalties is pretty challenging for those who want to start on their own in the music industry. So, Wu is using the Bitmark digital property blockchain to provide a solution to this tedious process of song rights and royalty payouts. Now artists can register their creations on the blockchain to track who owns which right more effectively and transfer their holdings more easily.

 

Why blockchain-based streaming platforms are better

There are numerous other problems with the current music system, such as:

  • Intermediaries, like record labels and radio companies, get a particular part of the artists’ royalties due to high administrative fees;

  • Centralized streaming services that have an algorithmic bias and give exposure to certain artists while others remain unreachable;

  • The lack of a global database for copyrights led to a complicated process of publishing and recording;

 

But since blockchain technology is based on decentralization, security and transparency, it’s the perfect tool for changing the music industry forever. Now developers have altered the blockchain platform and promoted this technology as more than using it for learning how to buy cryptocurrency. Those third parties can be eliminated through smart contracts, and music streaming platforms can become decentralized. Hence, the power is only in artists’ hands regarding what they do with their music.

 

Now, managing copyrights and intellectual property won’t be that challenging because the blockchain can help securely manage music rights through transparency in music ownership rights and royalties. Music creators can have a peer-to-peer database where they can store detailed music information so that the right people can get compensated for the content’s use.

 

Smart contracts can solve this compensation problem with instant micro-payments, where artists can set the terms under which the music can be downloaded and used so that they can be paid for fractions of a cent for each sale or stream. This way, instead of waiting months for the royalty payments to be transferred, artists will get them in a matter of seconds.

 

Finally, this solution will foster a closer artist-fan relationship. As the Chainsmokers said in an interview, the whole thing was about “connecting more deeply” with their fans and not a matter of profit since they’re one of the best-paid music duos in history by now. They have also agreed on fans selling their NFTs on the secondary market, and while they won’t be receiving a penny on these sales, the 7.5% secondary fee will be directed to the 14 songwriters who wrote the songs on the So Far So Good album.

 

How other companies are changing the industry

Many other businesses saw a big potential in decentralizing music and making music releases more transparent, so now, more companies combine music and blockchain to create something useful for artists. For example, the Sound company creates a way for fans to interact with their favorite artists on its Web3-based NFT platform. When artists publish a new song, the very early version offers specific numbers that allow artists to sell their NFTs for more value on the market. This also encourages people to buy their compositions since they are able to engage with music composers.

 

Next, we have Mediachain, which has become a part of Spotify's worldwide leading music platform. This is a peer-to-peer database where artists can share information on their music across different organizations and applications to get more exposure. It also ensures that the artists are paid fairly and issues smart contracts with musicians to share their royalty stipulations without other third parties involved.

 

Finally, the Musicoin Foundation is a music streaming platform that allows a secure and transparent transfer of music, encouraging music creation, consumption and distribution. The company provides users with a token called MUSIC, with which they can make transactions to support their favorite artists and make other music-related purchases. Like most blockchain-based technologies, this business eliminates the need for third parties, so 100% of all streaming revenue goes to artists.

 

Wrapping up

What do you think about this new thing? Can the blockchain help artists? Until now, we see that most blockchain solutions are beneficial for music creators and fans as well since it supports them financially wholly, and no other entities can take advantage of indie music artists.