I spent the first twenty years of my career building digital music services, from BeastieBoys and Winamp dot-com to Yahoo! and Apple Music. Now that I’m at Ledger, I’m often asked about the promise of music on the Blockchain. I tried to memorialize my thoughts at this moment in time in this op-ed piece on Blockworks. Please take a read and let me know your thoughts in the comments below. https://lnkd.in/eCQRQr-r
Alex Clapworthy
3mo
There a lot to talk about here! Music lost its primary product to streaming, we have moved from product to service. Ownership to license. There’s less value to the consumer in not owning something but not is cheaper… and unviable for an industry facing high costs and high risk.
Nina Gregory
3mo
my taylor swift-loving robloxian might like some digital tay trash along with all the other merch lol. Anastasia Tsioulcas curious what you think, esp after that fire at universal that burned all the masters having a master on the blockchain is fascinating.
mark montgomery
3mo
Smart man…
Ian R.
3mo
LP releases as NFTs have the chance to bring album art back into the spotlight.
Julie Ingle
3mo
Spot on, Ian! Thinking through how decentralized technologies can give artists and fans more ownership and control over their data is the right framing. It doesn’t mean we have to stuff everything onto a blockchain to solve it either.
David Beach
3mo
100% Ian!
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3moian rogers This was a thought provoking read. "Listening to Music on the Internet is a solved problem and listeners don't need the help of blockchain to hear what they want." Way to come out swinging. I love the recommendation of artist ownership of a service, that was my recommendation to Tidal a few years ago, and I think who ever does that successfully can truly change the game for everyone. The Visa analogy is a great way to look at it that I never considered. And I agree with you that blockchain seems unnecessary and only an abstraction, but ultimately you seem to be advocating for that abstraction with digital collectables and on chain masters. That feels disconnected to me, or perhaps it only works in new vision of the world. Thanks for writing and sharing. Hope you are doing well.