The music industry has not shied away from its keenness to adopt Web3 solutions. Blockchain is all about empowering the individual, helping artists connect with their communities and providing a platform where individuals can exchange value for value, without the middleman.
From NFTs (nonfungible tokens), to various blockchain use cases, including event ticketing, it’s not uncommon for musicians and artists to have thousands or even millions of MP3 files in their music libraries. To make this manageable, artists, musicians, and other industry professionals often use various tools, apps and services such as Dropbox to organize and share their work. The most interesting aspect of this use case is selling a product directly to a customer.
Music industry organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA exist to manage and license the music rights to a song. Web 3.0 developments, such as the blockchain, make data management questions more important. Metadata is currently delivered by a major label through the industry standard Digital Data Exchange (DDEX). This can create huge XML files of over 200 MB, which contain information on the contributors, artists, rights and more.
The creation of full-length NFTs for more than just personal use is underway. These blockchain-based products allow them to contain metadata that is made available for use and access on the web3. Digital technology inevitably changes our lives and creates the space for new ways of doing things. A blockchain-based standard for the creative industry is the use of blockchains to present all parties involved in the creation and licensing of a creative work with a single view of the work. This could help companies become more data conscious by effectively reporting on data usage and how to improve that usage. It’s the first wave of the technology. It will take a while to fully adopt the innovations, but it’s moving fast.
There are several WEB3 streaming music platforms, where music artist can monetize their music and grow their community without any contracts or intermediaries, such as Audius, Opulous, ModaDAO and others.
It’s tough to convince famous artists to change their old ways, but the biggest music labels are already innovating, making their own decisions and getting their products out there. Recently, Mastercard announced its plan to launch a Web3 musician accelerator program with Polygon.
