SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/654804
3 4 S X S W o r l d | M U S I C M A R C H 2 0 1 6 | S X S W. C O M hen PledgeMusic founder and CEO, Benji Rogers, got the idea for a new music file format, one that could be worth an immense amount of money and solve the complex issues of rights, usage, and licensing for years to come, he was so struck by its potential impact that he went out and filed a provisional patent on it. "I told my wife 'this is a really, extremely big idea,' " says Rogers. He then published a post on Medium explaining it and has gotten a really, extremely big response. Rogers' idea? Getting the music industry to adopt a new file format built on the Bitcoin blockchain, with the emergence of VR technology as impetus. He named the file codec .bc (dot B C), for blockchain, and explained how VR looked to him like a moment for the music industry to change course. "Every VR expe- rience has music in it of some kind. My question is 'are VR companies going to basically embrace the old way of doing business?' I believe the answer is 'no,' what they'll do is they'll get music from wherever they can and payments will be made fairly or not," says Rogers. Rogers thinks that the potential size and scale of VR technology could be enough motivation for the business to undertake a project of this scope. As Rogers conceives of it, the .bc file codec would require a Minimum Viable Data set that would help streamline everything from messy metadata to streaming permissions and payments to licensing. The MVD could start with the basics: who recorded the song, who wrote it, who controls the publishing. Unlike the metadata of a .wav or mp3 file, it would be a verifiable and permanent record of origin, anchored in the blockchain. It could also contain licensing and streaming rights. "You've basically got a global decentralized database of rights created every single time a song is encoded," says Rogers. The decentralized nature of the database is an inherent feature of its underlying foundation, the Bitcoin blockchain. In the blockchain, the backbone of the cryptocurrency, transactions are timestamped and verified across a distributed network of hundreds of thousands of networked computers. "It's a trustless system, meaning you can do business with other entities in the blockchain even if you don't trust them, because this is a neutral layer. That is really compelling and very appropriate for this industry," says consultant Vickie Nauman of CrossBorderWorks. Nauman has been in digital music spaces for as long as they've existed, and agrees with Rogers that the lack of a way to accurately determine recording ownership is a massive problem. "It's not only not knowing who to license from but also who to pay, how much, and consumers want to search for a particular song and if the metadata isn't right they're not going to get the music that they want," she said. Other movers in the industry are exploring blockchain technology, although in different ways. Marketing and sales platform Revelator is building an API using Colu, which uses the Bitcoin blockchain. Musician and tech vanguard Imogen Heap has begun work on a project called Mycelia, built on Ethereum, a Bitcoin alternative with a focus on self-exe- cuting contracts. "I think their blockchain holds the most hope and options currently and we are excited to be working with their tech- nology and people," Heap wrote in an email. "What we don't want is a number of dif- ferent blockchains that are all trying to solve music in their own unique way and then those things don't work together either," said Nauman. "What we have now are many many many silos of data that live all over and none of them are connected to anything that allows the resolution of problems in one place. And ultimately that is part of where the blockchain could work." Rogers strongly believes an effective block- chain format couldn't be privately owned: "It has to be public by its very nature, and it needs to be open source so that anyone can use it. I believe if it's done by a private company, it won't get mass adoption." Getting artists, songwriters, labels, publishers, and performing rights organizations all on board will require incentivizing the effort. "After having talked with so many different stakeholders in this industry, I don't believe any of them feel there is enough money asso- ciated with this problem that it's worth fixing. But in aggregate, I think it is an absolutely massive problem with an equally massive amount of money that we haven't yet been able to quantify," says Nauman. "This should be the most talked about thing at South by, because what we're talking about here is the music industry taking hold of its destiny for the first time in this digital age," says Rogers. "The consequences of not doing this and leaving things as they are, are just disastrous." T Benji Rogers and Vickie Nauman are both participants on SXSW Music Confer- ence panels this week. See schedule.sxsw.com for more details. Is Blockchain the Missing Link in Music's Digital Future? by susaN elizabeth shePard W B e nji Ro g e r s