Blockchain Bitcoin technology could change streaming industry forever
Blockchain Bitcoin technology could affect the streaming industry in a major way. Over the last few decades not much has changed in the way that the music industry generates profit. If you are a musician, you are still paid royalties from the number of albums or singles that you have sold. Now with streaming, you get paid royalties for the amount of times your song was streamed on streaming sites like Apple Music, TIDAL and Spotify.
One of the biggest profit eaters of the music industry is piracy. This has greatly impacted the amount of profit made on music. Artists continue to make music though, only record companies are having to figure out new ways to make money off of them. Generally most musicians get paid less than one cent per play, which is a bit of a joke. This happens even if the song is streamed from an official page or channel.
On sites such as YouTube, content can legally be streamed from unofficial sources. This is also another point of contention for the creatives in the business as they are the last to see any of the money. It all has the potential to be turned around with the use Bitcoin technology known as Blockchain.
Enter Blockchain
The illegal uploads to YouTube and other streaming sites is due to the reality that .mp3 and AAC files are easy to manipulate and can be altered to completely remove the artist and label metadata from the track. The altered track can then be streamed from an unofficial channel with no way to index or flag the offending file.
Blockchain is aiming to disrupt this and in doing so potentially change streaming forever. Songs could soon be put into an unhackable format by using Blockchain, although unhackable is relevant depending on who you’re talking to.
Blockchain is the decentralized public ledger on which the online cryptocurrency Bitcoin runs which allows everyone in the chain to see real time transactions. With this tech they are looking to hardwire the artist and other important metadata into the track itself, ensuring that the money made per play goes to the right people, no matter where the song was streamed from.
If this works Blockchain could finally turn a page on intellectual property law and solve the copyright issue most artists fret over.
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