Viberate, a crowdsourced live music ecosystem and a blockchain-based marketplace backed by the European Commission, Republic of Slovenia and other well-respected experts including Charlie Shrem and Stanford professor Jure Leskovec, is challenging major music streaming service providers such as Spotify to a blockchain race.
In late April, $8 billion music streaming platform Spotify announced the acquisition of Mediachain, a blockchain infrastructure provider focused on securing music royalties and copyrights on the blockchain.
A few months prior to the acquisition of Mediachain, Spotify settled a $25 million deal and a $5 million penalty over unpaid and unmatched songs after being sued by the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA). Through the legal conflict with NMPA, the Spotify development team decided to integrate a blockchain system in order to better protect rights of music creators with increased transparency and immutability.
In an official statement, Spotify announced:
“Brooklyn-based Mediachain Labs has been the driving force behind the Mediachain project, a world-class blockchain research agenda and open source protocol to better manage data that is critical to the health of the music industry. The Mediachain team will join our New York City offices and help further Spotify’s journey towards a more fair, transparent and rewarding music industry for creators and rights owners.”
Essentially, Viberate and the development team behind the blockchain project is attempting to solve the problem Spotify is targeting. By utilizing an immutable blockchain and the smart contract protocol of the Ethereum network, Viberate is trying to create an open, free, fair and transparent marketplace for music creators where revenues and profits are fairly distributed amongst stakeholders.
“Viberate is the first service to cover all aspects of the live music industry. Our entity database covers musicians, booking agencies, music venues, event organizers and events, and our user groups stretch from musicians and other music professionals, all the way to fans and media,” said the Viberate development team.
Already, Viberate has secured more than 120,000 artists and creators to distribute their digital content and music on the Viberate platform.
In addition to music royalties, Viberate is also investigating into the possibility of rendering the presence of intermediaries and music agencies unnecessary by automating the entire market.
“Today, 20% of musicians are being represented by booking agents that usually get a 10-20% commission on each booking. The other 80% are being booked without intermediaries, with no one taking commission on that. By enabling the opportunity to book every musician in the world, regardless of genre, country and popularity, Viberate will act as a de facto booking agency for all musicians with a profile on Viberate,” added the Viberate team.
By targeting the $250 billion music industry, Viberate aims to utilize and integrate blockchain technology to assist musicians and music creators to secure their fair share of revenues. According to Viberate, more than $35 billion is being spent on an annual basis as fees by musicians in events. With blockchain, musicians will be able to reduce their expenses and secure their share of their rights.
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