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Blockchain in the Music Industry
9.16 CONCLUSION
Music has always been a very important part of everyone’s life. The modes of listen
ing to it have changed from physical devices such as cassettes or CDs or USBs to
online streaming. The number of users streaming or downloading music has been
booming since 2015. The revenue of the music industry has also increased, but the
people involved in the value chain do not receive their dues on time and probably
may well not receive a fair amount either. This is where blockchain technology plays
an important role. Using blockchain-based platforms provides a fully decentralized,
peer-to-peer network with a distributed ledger to store the data related to the royalties
and rights of the songs when streamed or downloaded. Based on the impact of online
streaming of music in India and some companies that have already implemented
blockchain for music industries from across the globe, we proposed a blockchain-
based system for the Indian music industry in this chapter. A new cryptocurrency
term, “Mol”, was also proposed as a part of the system.
9.17 FUTURE SCOPE
In future, the platform developed can be used as a medium for upcoming artists to
interact with their users; they can ask their fans to choose a certain genre in which
the artist must create his or her next song or album. In other words, it would be like
a social media platform for artists to interact with their fans (Chalmers et al., 2019).
The features of the platform can be enhanced by making use of artificial intelligence
techniques to identify the correct recipient of the royalty for a given song or music,
making the platform more reliable and transparent (Owen and O’Dair, 2020). This
would ensure more royalties for the artist, as the level of appreciation by the audience
would be higher.
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