Could bitcoin save the music industry?

[franky1]

thinking of methods that can work

imagine a song had a bitcoin address, users had a single address.. and this was all controlled by spotify/itunes/future youtube app

a user has their own wallet address to deposit funds into to cover costs(subscriptions). when a person chooses a song and pushes play, a couple bit's are sent to the songs address and spotify verifies which song was selected and the users client plays that song.

spotify/youtube no longer see's an api like "franky1 requests barbiegirl" and then streams the song to franky1

instead the services just check the blockchain and the transaction would look like this (standard raw transaction)

vin: 1FrankyAddress
Vout:1AquaBarbiegirladdress
Value: 0.00000300
Vout:1youtubegreedaddress
Value: 0.00000100

thus seeing franky1 chose barbiegirl and then streams the song to franky1. youtube gets their 25% cut and the music artist gets theirs. no payment processors, no fiddly accounting packages, no big databases of whats been requested, etc, etc

i thought of the brainfart above after hearing on the radio of youtube wanting to start a subcription service:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27891883

[franky1]

I don't see or understand the problem this is a solution to, could you tell me why an API is bad?

its not about an API exactly, its more about after the API, that then has to reference a database, and then has to deduct funds from user accounts, then has to do many other tasks.

bitcoin can get rid of alot of code, and other unneeded things and ensure the music labels get funds that they can clearly see and use instantly.
imagine the music labels not having to submit a privkey to youtube, just a public key to receive funds and to be part of youtube/spotify

its now known that music labels get paid $0.007per stream/play. so the solution in my last post can take alot of code out of the subscription process, remove accounting/payment processing and gives msic artists instant access to their funds.

i only mention it incase any geeks that love music wanted to develop such an app, and charge.. $0.008 per song(to incentivise record labls to use the geeks new app)

all music artists need to do then is upload their mastercopy of their song, give it a title, description, and post a unique bitcoin public address to receive revenue on

[Carlton Banks]

The industry could end up dying, and be much better off for it.

Artists can now produce recordings themselves, distribute recordings themselves, promote themselves, and now they can receive the payments themselves. Almost all the middlemen are gone when it's structured like that. I feel tempted to say that better artists will get more recognition if that became the prevalent model (some less commercially oriented artists these days are still seduced by the cachet of signing a record contract)

[franky1]

The industry could end up dying, and be much better off for it.

music industry wont die. just the corporations in it... music and bitcoin cant be killed,only businesses/humans can

my idea could be developed by anyone and offer artists a better rate then spotify/youtube. which will help the music industry, just not th music industrialists

[Carlton Banks]

The industry could end up dying, and be much better off for it.

music industry wont die. just the corporations in it... music and bitcoin cant be killed,only businesses/humans can

Yes, that's what I meant by saying the industry will die. Get rid of the middlemen, who are simply parasites

[franky1]

The industry could end up dying, and be much better off for it.

music industry wont die. just the corporations in it... music and bitcoin cant be killed,only businesses/humans can

Yes, that's what I meant by saying the industry will die. Get rid of the middlemen, who are simply parasites

well the way to get rid of the middle man would be to invent a flash player that only activates when it see's a TX appear.
that way music artists can have their own player on their own website with a QR code showing. and when someone pays to the qr code, it plays.. that is how i see a decentralised way, but i know users prefer to have one app that brings all songs together (a middleman)

[Beliathon]

The industry could end up dying, and be much better off for it.

Artists can now produce recordings themselves, distribute recordings themselves, promote themselves, and now they can receive the payments themselves. Almost all the middlemen are gone when it's structured like that. I feel tempted to say that better artists will get more recognition if that became the prevalent model (some less commercially oriented artists these days are still seduced by the cachet of signing a record contract)

Well said. The blockchain is going to do this for a whole slew of different industries. BTW, you and are going to get along like peanut butter and sex.

[cech4204a]

You have a great imagination and a good idea, somehow i still believe that music industry can't be saved in that way, since it's not preventing piracy, it's just making sure that the one that paid has the ability to stream. Problem comes when someone want's to audio-tape stream and put it on U-Torrent or simmilar. Torrent's have to be banned and blocked by every ISP and problem is solved forever.

[franky1]

You have a great imagination and a good idea, somehow i still believe that music industry can't be saved in that way, since it's not preventing piracy, it's just making sure that the one that paid has the ability to stream. Problem comes when someone want's to audio-tape stream and put it on U-Torrent or simmilar. Torrent's have to be banned and blocked by every ISP and problem is solved forever.

imagine that when playing there was a (out of ear's frequency range) a soundbite that was the address of the user. you personally cant hear it. but any sound ripping software or lowtech (tapedeck to speaker) method, recorded it. and then when on torrent sites. the music labels can use sound software to get to the address soundbite part. find out who ripped it. then ban that user from ever getting another song from them.

similar theory to how all files have metadata hidden inside

.. a new thought 1 minute after writing ..

now comes the problem of multiple user accounts to avoid the ban.

.. a new solution 1 minute after writing ..

knowing the address that recorded and uploaded to a torrent site. (if part of a subscriptions app where funds are deposited) youtube/spotify/bitcoin developed music service can then 'fine' deduct $0.0008 out of the users account per seed/leach sen on the torrent site, thus De-incentivising people from uploading to torrent sites as it would end up personally costing them

[cech4204a]

You have a great imagination and a good idea, somehow i still believe that music industry can't be saved in that way, since it's not preventing piracy, it's just making sure that the one that paid has the ability to stream. Problem comes when someone want's to audio-tape stream and put it on U-Torrent or simmilar. Torrent's have to be banned and blocked by every ISP and problem is solved forever.

imagine that when playing there was a (out of ear's frequency range) a soundbite that was the address of the user. you personally cant hear it. but any sound ripping software or lowtech (tapedeck to speaker) method, recorded it. and then when on torrent sites. the music labels can use sound software to get to the address soundbite part. find out who ripped it. then ban that user from ever getting another song from them.

similar theory to how all files have metadata hidden inside

.. a new thought 1 minute after writing ..

now comes the problem of multiple user accounts to avoid the ban.

But you can still make software to sense those frequencies and to eliminate them or to modify them, by doing that you lost trace. And you have piracy again.

[franky1]

But you can still make software to sense those frequencies and to eliminate them or to modify them, by doing that you lost trace. And you have piracy again.

i know its impossible to stop it, but im just throwing out idea's to not make it so easy. and it all depends on how the users bitcoin address is addd into the song, to make it normally indistinguishable from the song itself

[zimmah]

I'm not sure if people would go through the hassle of doing this rather than iTunes or Torrents

Free or paid music is so easy to download nowadays that it's hard to imagine people will actually pay for music. Theoretically it's possible to use blockchain-like technology to share data and use the blockchain as a form of DRM, but i'm not sure we can move away from our current systems.

It could make new games harder to pirate though.

[keithers]

I don't think the music industry necessarily needs saving. I do however think that btc had the ability to revolutionize the music industry. Artois are going to maybe be able to work support of as free agents once they doggie out they can make all of the profits from their records without the label taking such a huge cut.

[CoinHoarder]

I am all for decentralization, however for this to work you would need to eliminate sound.  

As long as music makes sound, it will always and forever be able to be ripped and pirated using recording equipment and peer to peer technology.

Someone somewhere would pay for the song, rip it, and share it. That's just how it works and that's how it will always be.

When people have the choice in between free music or the same exact version of the music at a cost, they tend to choose the free music.

I guess this could possibly replace some pay-for-music services, but really who pays for music nowadays?

[freedomno1]

Yes in a sense that it can decentralize the music industry by allowing indie artists a mechanism to gain popularity and tips for their work
Or by charging a small transaction fee from each user that is pooled together into one larger transaction over time
Leaving a balance in that persons account that slowly decreases add a faucet if people want to contribute for free.

As a music player maybe if combined with something like Maidsafe and decentralized storage may work theoretically
How it would play an audio file is complicated though lol.

[InwardContour]

Microtransactions would be a better solution then trying to store music in the blockchain. Having that much data in the blockchain would be extremely expensive to store and have a TX confirmed.

Buying a single song with a credit card for $0.99 would likely cost the merchant close to $0.30 as most credit card processors charge $0.27 plus 3%, the same transaction on the blockchain would cost close to $.06 if anything at all.

[rext]

Microtransactions would be a better solution then trying to store music in the blockchain. Having that much data in the blockchain would be extremely expensive to store and have a TX confirmed.

Buying a single song with a credit card for $0.99 would likely cost the merchant close to $0.30 as most credit card processors charge $0.27 plus 3%, the same transaction on the blockchain would cost close to $.06 if anything at all.

that is way lot cheaper

[InwardContour]

Microtransactions would be a better solution then trying to store music in the blockchain. Having that much data in the blockchain would be extremely expensive to store and have a TX confirmed.

Buying a single song with a credit card for $0.99 would likely cost the merchant close to $0.30 as most credit card processors charge $0.27 plus 3%, the same transaction on the blockchain would cost close to $.06 if anything at all.

that is way lot cheaper

It is a lot cheaper and the result will be that artists will get to keep substantially more of their revenue, it would be like them getting a 30% raise.

[phillipsjk]

imagine that when playing there was a (out of ear's frequency range) a soundbite that was the address of the user. you personally cant hear it. but any sound ripping software or lowtech (tapedeck to speaker) method, recorded it. and then when on torrent sites. the music labels can use sound software to get to the address soundbite part. find out who ripped it. then ban that user from ever getting another song from them.

I suspect HDCP does something like this. Why else would the High-definition video formats use a 192kHz sample rate for all of the audio channels? To put that in perspective, FM stereo broadcasts fit in 200kHz of bandwidth.

For those not aware, Nyquist's theorem states that the sample rate need only be twice the highest frequency in the audio. That means that a 192kHz sample rate is able to encode audio up to a frequency of 96kHz. It is generally accepted that the limit of human hearing is only 20kHz. I am one of the rare people that can hear over 18kHz as an adult.

And yes, HDCP does allow the studios to remotely shut-down your Blu-ray player or monitor if it was used to produce a copy found on Torrent websites. Thing is, these HD formats are huge. Trans-coding is often used to get the file-size down. It may very well filter frequencies people can't hear. Edit: people don't rip the decoded frames on the way to the display anyway: they simply break AACS (the on-disk encryption) before HDCP even sees the video.

[halfawake]

Microtransactions would be a better solution then trying to store music in the blockchain. Having that much data in the blockchain would be extremely expensive to store and have a TX confirmed.

Buying a single song with a credit card for $0.99 would likely cost the merchant close to $0.30 as most credit card processors charge $0.27 plus 3%, the same transaction on the blockchain would cost close to $.06 if anything at all.

Indeed.  And ultimately, a company has already created a decentralized version of itunes that they call bittunes.  But I'd think the logical thing to do if you're a musician is to just cut out the middlemen entirely, or if you're going to, use something like Coinbase so you can keep all the bitcoins.  That way, artists could charge $0.99 and get the full $0.99 instead of that less the middleman's fee.  Ultimately, I suspect the centralized route is always going to be more popular though because it's just easier for people to look for music in a central place like iTunes (currently the dominant place to sell music).