The blend of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain is poised to reinvent the music industry, elevating artists’ creative potential while ensuring transparency and equitable revenue distribution.
AI’s growing application in music creation blurs the line between human and AI-generated content, raising ethical and legal concerns.
Blockchain can address these by tracking music content’s origin, safeguarding copyrights, and guaranteeing artists’ fair remuneration.
Including middlemen like labels and centralized streaming platforms, it fosters a direct relationship between artists and fans.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift’s struggle to regain control over her music illustrates the industry’s complexity for young artists.
Blockchain, often touted as the “Promised Land” for musicians, promises to democratize the music industry, giving artists a larger slice of the profit pie by connecting directly with fans via non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Tokenizing a song’s royalties, a growing use case for “music NFTs,” allows fans to earn a share of their favorite artists’ music revenue.
However, music copyright law and royalty collection are highly complex and largely off-chain. The fusion of blockchain into the music industry is seen as a way to simplify this complexity.
Platforms like Royal, Anotherblock, and Bolero are tokenizing traditional music royalty streams, enabling artists to retain copyright ownership while sharing royalties. These blockchain royalties are generated from the secondary sales of their NFTs, offering a new revenue stream for artists.
For fans, buying into musicians’ tokenized royalties offers a new way to support their favorite artists and share in their success.
Historically, purchasing music catalogs was limited to record labels and major institutional funds.
Through fractionalization, everyday fans can access music rights, which typically offer stable assets with reliable returns.
As the traditional music industry remains off-chain, the transition to a decentralized music industry is a gradual and complex process, with uncertainties surrounding the legal status of NFTs and crypto in the U.S.
Despite these challenges, proponents believe that in time, platforms like Spotify will pay out royalties directly on-chain, making the system more efficient.
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