Crypto Won’t Fix Music Streaming, It Will Create A New Frontier

If you enjoy listening to music via Spotify & Apple you’ve heard at some point how musicians are complaining on being paid too little. These statements are all too common in the music industry

Misplaced Anger: Big Tech Isn’t The Problem

Taking a quick flight back in time to the early 2000s, the music industry was in a state of flux. The widespread availability of high-speed internet and the development of file-sharing technologies had made it easy for people to download music illegally, leading to a decline in record sales and a decline in the profitability of the music industry as a whole. Many artists and music industry professionals were frustrated by the fact that it was difficult to monetize music effectively and that music piracy was rampant.

Against this backdrop, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzen founded Spotify in 2006 as a legal, subscription-based service that would allow users to stream music on demand. The idea behind Spotify was to provide a more convenient and user-friendly alternative to illegal downloads, and to provide a way for artists to monetize their music through streaming.

Initially, Spotify was only available in a few European countries, but it quickly gained popularity and expanded to other regions around the world. As of 2021, Spotify is available in over 100 countries and has over 345 million users, making it one of the most popular music streaming services in the world.

How Is Web3 Good For Music?

Web3 technologies, such as blockchain, have the potential to transform the music industry by creating new opportunities for artists to monetize their work and by providing new ways for fans to discover and support music.

One of the key benefits of web3 technologies is that they enable the creation of decentralized platforms that can facilitate transactions and interactions directly between artists and fans, without the need for intermediaries. This could allow artists to retain a greater share of the revenues generated by their music and to have more control over how their work is distributed and consumed.

Blockchain could also provide more transparency and fairness in the music industry by creating an immutable record of transactions and interactions. For example, blockchain-based platforms could track the usage of an artist’s music and automatically generate and distribute royalty payments in a more transparent and accurate way.

Web3 technologies could also enable the development of new business models in the music industry, such as decentralized music streaming platforms or music marketplaces that use smart contracts to automate royalty payments. Verse.audio, a web3 music streaming platform, is one of the leaders trying to pioneer the way between web2 and web3 giving musicians a way to tap into new monetization methods as well as incorporating fans into earning rewards based on their support of the ecosystem via nodes. These types of platforms could provide more equitable and sustainable revenue streams for artists while creating new opportunities for emerging artists to reach a wider audience.

Overall, web3 technologies have the potential to create a more equitable and sustainable music industry, where artists are able to more directly monetize their work and where fans have greater access to a diversity of music.

Zein Zaioud — Reshaping music streaming

Founder @ Verse.audio