The Music industry and the Blockchain with Ceek VR

Music industry revenue continues to shift from physical and digital sales to streaming revenues and VR represents the highest level of engagement and revenue opportunity for interactive music streaming. Live festivals and concerts continue to domenate the global music spend with up to 49% attending live shows, concerts and festivasl across the world. Ceek VR are providing new and exciting revenue streams for labels, artists, publishers, etc, and if you think about this carefully people have the opportunity to see their chosen artists LIVE with out the disappointment of not receiving a ticket or to the point the artist is not providing a show in your country, and unable to attend.

CEEK VR established in 2015, is an award winning developer of premium social virtual and augmented reality experiences. Headquartered in Miami Beach, Florida the mission is to make virtual reality experiences universally accessible and enjoyable. CEEK simulates the communal experience of attending a live concert, being in a classroom, attending a sporting event and other ‘money can’t buy’ exclusive experiences with friends from anywhere at anytime. CEEK is now embarking on a new era looking towards the blockchain technology to accelerate growth. Even big multinationals and banks are working on their own blockchain projects, looking to maximize the technology’s capabilities.

Why the music industry needs Blockchain?

While music lovers have hailed as the democracy of the music industry, the 15.7 billion global music industry remains the same. Music piracy through illegally downloaded, copied and shared content eats into the artist’s royalties and music labels revenues worldwide. Added to this, the lack of a robust rights management system, which leads to loss of revenue to the artist. And the revenue, by the time the revenue's  reach the artist, this can take up to two years! Another area of concern is unpaid royalties, which are often suspended in various stages due to missing information or with rights ownership. Also their is a lack of access to real-time digital sales data, which if was available this can be used to strategise marketing & PR campaigns in a more positive way.

Artists are also plagued by a lack of sales transparency where  Digital Service Providers (DSPs) report a huge volume of streaming transactions, they end up receiving payment for only 20 to 40 percent of these transactions. This has led to several artists choosing to keep their music off such on-demand streaming services, causing huge gaps in the libraries of popular services like Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and Google.

These very areas are where Blockchain can make a difference. As a publicly assessable and decentralised database that is distributed across the internet, Blockchain maintains permanent and undeletable records in cryptographic form. Transactions occur across a peer-to-peer network, and are computed, verified and recorded using an automated consensus method, eliminating the need for an intermediator or third party to manage or control information. The very architecture of Blockchain being immutable, distributed and peer-to-peer brings immense potential to deal with the present woes affecting the music industry.

A recent quote from Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, when he says '' If Blockchain technology is going to be the future, we need to dig in and make it happen''. 

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Blockchain can initiate change in several areas

A major area in which Blockchain can bring positive change is in the creation of a digital rights database. Digital rights expression is one of the main issues in today’s music industry. Identifying copyright of a song and defining how royalties should be split between songwriters, performers, publishers and producers is extremly difficult in the digital space. Often artists lose out on royalties due to complicated copyright environment. Blockchain’s immutable distributed ledger system, which ensure that no single entity can claim ownership, provides the perfect solution. Secure files with all relevant information such as composition, lyrics, linear notes, cover art, licensing, etc., this can be encoded onto the Blockchain creating a permanent and inerasable record.

As a VR platform that targets the entertainment industry and also founded in 2015, Ceek enables artists to create VR experiences for their fans and audiences. It has already worked with several industry giants and headlining acts to power VR events through their hardware and software.

Ceek will also be using its own token to power its “entertainment metaverse.” The user can spend their tokens on Ceek’s Virtual Mint that would allow them to create their own virtual tokens, which can be then used as tickets to VR events and virtual items that could be traded as merchandise. Ceek will be running its own protocol, which is claimed to be cheaper to use compared to other blockchain platforms in the market today.

Currently the company is working on a VR event destination using blockchain technology, www.ceek.io  which will also provide artists and acts easy access to the blockchain functionalities such as token and virtual merchandise creation. To accelerate that development, Ceek is set to run its token event through December 2017 and will provide the public sale through January / February 2018.

Blockchain tokens could transform the entertainment industry

PRB Media are looking at the Blockchain and Cryptocurrency world and how this effects / benefits the entertainment industry.

Blockchain is ushering in disruption in various industries. Even big multinationals like IBM etc are working on their own blockchain projects, hoping to maximize the technology’s. Yet despite the upsurge in adoption and amid the rise and rise of Bitcoin, not all of blockchain’s applications are being used by established companies, there are exceptions, for example, messaging platform Kik, Hamburg-based fintech NAGA Group AG with its ecosystem and virtual reality (VR) platform Ceek, who have turned towards token sales to accelerate their respective growth. This article looks at how the blockchain could transform the music / entertainment industry.

Twenty years after peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing decimated the music industry, blockchain is emerging as a new P2P technology that could rip into the industry. But this time, the revolution promises to be different. Whereas digital and illegal downloading once wreaked havoc on the industry at large (from music creators to record labels, none were spared), a blockchain-based model for music pledges to boost the fortunes of artists. Industry middlemen and gatekeepers, however, could be in danger.

This is according to the vision proposed by SingularDTV, a company that is developing an entertainment app ecosystem on top of Ethereum — the blockchain computing platform for launching decentralized apps. Through its apps, SingularDTV hopes to enrich and empower artists, and rewrite the rules of the music and broader creative industry. Some of key steps its taking to accomplish this include:

Creating a token-based economy where value is derived from an artist’s work.Tokens are the native crypto-assets of a blockchain app. They are powered by smart contracts (code-based financial agreements) that are programmed into Ethereum. When an artist tokenizes, they’re turning their intellectual property (IP) into a financial asset, so an artist’s token reflects the value of their creative output. Those who buy into an artist’s tokens buy into owning a share of the artist’s creations and its revenue flows. The more people who consume the artist’s creation, the higher the value of the token.

Enabling artists and consumers to earn money from selling and buying tokens. Artists can raise money through a token launch, which is similar to an initial coin offering (ICO). Here, anyone can buy the tokens upfront. The majority of the windfall will go the artist, and the token launch platform-provider (such as SingularDTV) will retain a service fee. These tokens are programmed via smart contracts to dispense royalty flows: If someone pays a dollar for an artist’s content, then all of that artist’s token-holders will receive a pro rata share of that dollar, explains SingularDTV CEO Zach LeBeau. Tokens can also be exchanged for perks, like special access at a concert or early access to a new film release.

Eliminating middlemen and undermining the influence of industry gatekeepers.Tokenization lets artists raise funds upfront without relying on an advance from their record label. Meanwhile, distributing content via blockchain would allow artists to skirt streaming platforms like Spotify to earn royalties on their own terms. Of course, the success of this model hinges on attracting users, but there are reciprocal incentives in place — on both the artist- and consumer-side — for it to take off, and LeBeau believes this model could become mainstream in as little as two years. 

One artist who has a passionate and large following is already onboard with SingularDTV’s vision. Gramatik, the New York-based hip-hop and electronic artist, is the first musician to sign on the company’s tokenization program, and he's set to launch 100 million GRMTK tokens on November 9. “This is something artists have been dreaming about since the beginning of time, to be free of gatekeepers, and to communicate freely — and even be in a business relationship — directly with their fans,” Gramatik told BI Intelligence. It’s not hard to imagine his excitement spreading to legions of artists and fans in the near future too.

Witten by - Robert Elder