Blockchain helps connect the musical dots

“Chain,” sang iconic rock band Fleetwood Mac on their classic 1977 album ‘Rumours’, “keep us together…”. Even all those decades ago, the quintet might well have been soothsayers, but the concept behind blockchain really is a set of authoritative databases called a distribution ledger, providing a secure manner to store and manage data that is shared across a network and all those who are part of the network, each one owning an identical copy of it. In other words, blockchain is a continuously growing list of accounts or archives, called “blocks”, which are linked in a manner wherein each block is connected with the one prior to it. All members can have access to any one or more blocks or to the entire blockchain. Effectively, what that means is that if anyone having access to this data makes a change to it, the “change” is immediately known to all stakeholders. This serves an additional purpose that, if anyone makes an unauthorized change or tampers with the data, all the members of the blockchain are aware of it.

The necessity of blockchain technology arose with the shift in music consumption from analogue to digital – although, having said that, vinyl has made a comeback and how [read this article on Vinyl sales, posted on 20.09.2021] – as anyone who has access to a computer loaded with relevant software is now a composer and a potential hit-maker. Hence, digitization has led to a cluttered market with thousands of songs being uploaded daily as even more individuals now hope to shift their interests from being merely individual creators to international ones. With clutter arrives competition and with each creator attempting to showcase their creative talents over others, has often led to another “c” word – collaboration. Take, for instance, 2016’s ‘Despacito’, originally sung by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, or “My Universe”, recorded by Coldplay with South Korean boy band BTS, which was released on September 24, 2021. Both these songs have one thing in common, they were composed by five or more writers. Now, for each of these songwriters – spread across cities and/or continents – to be made aware of what their rightful royalties are, it becomes nothing short of a nightmare for them to monitor it as individuals.

But this too shall pass via the common and effective resolution: blockchain. After all, now that the database is decentralized, it has overcome the paradox of the music business moving online yet with an inherent inability to obtain access to data across multiple digital platforms, and the failure to receive information on revenues in real-time. Rights holders suddenly find that opaqueness has now given way to much required transparency wherein songwriters no longer need to wait forever to learn what is rightfully theirs, as earnings are now accounted for at the point of every sale.

With it, the often complicated process of rights – and royalty – management stands eased for processing and understanding as composers, producers, publishers, and rights societies all find themselves on a level playing musical field.

While people still find themselves struggling to differentiate between bitcoin and blockchain, dual Grammy-winner, British singer-songwriter/record producer/audio engineer Imogen Heap first introduced Mycelia in 2015, her blockchain-based service “that gives artists more control over how their songs and associated data circulate among fans and other musicians”, as well as supporting the enforcement of smarter contracts via blockchain-based technology like Ethereum, a crypto currency which is apparently second in usage to Bitcoins. Heap’s intent can be mapped against the upsides of blockchain which include, but is not restricted to, a platform for placement of metadata containing artist songs that can be conveniently accessed with details of those listening to the songs, and an identification of the platform, as well as providing answers to: when was it consumed, and where. Other artistes who provided early support to blockchain include Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork, and Grammy-winning, Portland-based Portuguese-American musician and record producer André Allen Anjos, more popularly known as DJ RAC.

In 2017, IBM partnered with ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; a non-profit performance-rights organization that protects its members’ musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music] and with PRS for Music [formerly MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited, UK’s leading collection society, which amalgamated the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) with the Performing Right Society (PRS)], for adopting blockchain technology in music distribution. In Japan too, the Japan Music Copyright Association (JASRAC) first demonstrated blockchain for music copyright management on February 13, 2020.

As mentioned earlier, India is not too far behind in introducing blockchain technology, simplifying the management of rights and royalties, regardless of territories, and saving the industry from lost revenues, delayed payments, and unnecessary legal costs. Despite piracy continuing to prove itself  as an irritant, this battle appears to be heading for an early victory for the law-abiding music industry.

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