The challenges of Tokens & NFTs in the Music Industry

Transcript

hi everybody do you hear me well yeah really happy to be here i hope that you have an amazing experience here at cc as a parisian i'm really happy to see all this community around here uh today we are going to talk about how to leverage blockchain in the music industry so first of all i would like to ask a simple question who here owns any kind of music related tokens wow that's just a few that's why we're here so i'm glad to have you as an audience guys um so without more waiting we need to admit that music is not as profitable as before obviously uh what do we mean by that it's simple since the streaming platform has raised

uh like the business model of music has really struggled to reinvent itself and actually hear me well on that established artists and global stars are really profitable without no doubts but all the mid-level artists that you are listening to every day struggle to find a way to make a living with the art so this is the first first issue which is really important secondly live revenues are not enough you need to know that 90 of an artist's income stream comes from live concerts and merchandising since the coving and the several lockdowns artists just realized that they could not be such as the dependent of one revenue stream

so we definitely need to find something to diversify their incomes in the meantime music has never been so much played and consumed around the world uh like you you should know that in the 90s a regular listener would be used to listen to 20 to 30 artists per year but since 10 years the trend has radically changed and now you are listening to 200 to 250 artists per year so how do you do to create a kind of relationship with them how do you do to be kept in the loop and this is we're going to see that with blockchain it is possible to answer such a demand and to answer

such a trend artists have never produced and published so much tracks so you need to know that now play listing is very critical for them like if you are not playlisted you will struggle to find an audience and that's why they are producing more and more tracks each year 10 years ago artists were used to release an album every two years now they are releasing on average 10 tracks per year and that's their way to growing an audience and to find profitability but like it's really a struggle and uh actually it's not profitable because you have a huge cost associated with this trend so this is our observation the music

industry is economically broken but it's also socially booming and uh the good news is that uh in every industry when it is socially booming uh you have a bright future in front of you so what should we do we could talk to the streaming platforms we could ask them to render themselves but since they are in a price war and they are in growth mode they are not going to change everything about how they are paying artists for their music so we definitely need them as a booster for artists but i think that the the answer in the artist's revenue is not in the streaming platforms we could also work with the record labels but actually they already have a

really controversial model uh it's really hard for them to render themselves uh all their revenues are in in a major part based on an older catalog and the old stars in the music industry so we should it should be better if they keep at what they are doing at the best uh which is developing artists artistically and economically so obviously we need to leverage blockchain to engage fan bases and that's why we're here today and i will show you how at bolero music we have built an erc20 smart contract on ethereum and actually we are based on polygon today

[Music] what it means for artists it helps them to monetize their fan base it helps them to grow a significant additional income and it also keep them artistically free while extending their audience so it's a really a smart way for them to grow as an artist we also have built an erc 70 101 smart contracts uh what it means for them is that obviously you all know about nfts uh now artists on board your music are able to mint nfts and sell them but what we have done and we think it's a significant improvement is that we have built four core market standards for them um what it means also is that it's difficult for an artist and

and the team to project themselves with the nfcs because basically an nft can be whatever they want but when you have a lot of content as an artist with these four core standards you are now able to see how you can monetize some tracks and some content that were not meant to be monetized on the traditional australian platforms obviously it's easier said than done and there is a lot of work to do so we are going to see what are the roadblocks to adoption we have great community here all the people here are really invested in the development of blockchain and ethereum but when you ask someone who is outside this community it's really like difficult for them to project so here are a few roadblocks uh so that

everyone is uh like concerned about this issue uh first of all artists in the major part are skeptical what it means for that is that uh not every artist is really innovative they are sometimes really under pressure and they need to be to have some reassurance about what it brings for them with blockchain we need to explain to them that they will find a new way to grow an audience and they will find a new way to monetize their audience and since any kind of tokens are not related to phonographic rights it's really simple for them to step in they are not constrained by any legal constraint

furthermore artists tend to shy away from any financial market aspects if you ask a regular artist he doesn't want to become the new hot stock the new amazon stock to be traded on on wall street but obviously there's a lot of money uh to to make in this space so uh it is safe to say that we need to show them that it's an amazing space for them to bring new experiences and new kind of loyalty to the fans so that's a nice way to squeeze this constraint this is one of the most talk topic on the music rooms on clubhouse

during this spring like the legal vacuum regarding nfts uh obviously if you sell a multi-track file as an nft to someone maybe he will be able to commercially exploit it so how do we do with that how do we manage the relation with record labels distributors editors publishers regarding this concern what we have been doing with boreal music is that we have set two kinds of standards you have the first one which is the mp3 track uh you don't have any possibility to express it commercially but it's just based on digital scarcity and the subjective value that the user assigned to it but you also have the multi-track

file and if someone's sell you the multi-track file with a copyright session maybe you will be able to exploit it commercially so we need to bring like new relation with all the syndicates and all the rights management agencies that we have in a few countries uh for instance here in france we have the sasem and the cssm doesn't allow uh such a thing so artists are protected by the law like in any cultural industry influential leaders must validate the technology and we definitely need opinion leaders and influencers to take on the subjects so it's really difficult also because as you know

sometimes crypto has a bad reputation uh unfortunately in some different environments and like the old executive in this industry are really not keen on the crypto economy so uh with the opinion leaders and with the influencer we will be able to reverse back this trend and uh finally artists must ensure the evangelization of token what it means as i've told you outside the crypto community people need to be like reassured about the value behind the token and to really understand what is the utility of the token and the nft so we need artists to be educated enough about this topic and uh

to bring like easy to use feature and easy to use platform that's what we are trying to build at boreal music so thank you for listening it was really quick because we have another talk but uh i'd love to have your question and comment so feel free to share um just a little news here we just raised phones so we are hiring in product engineering and marketing positions and uh our core mission is quite nice we just want to help artists and the teams to make a better living from their art so if you like this mission join us any question guys yep

thanks a lot for the talk i have a question regarding the management of moral rights so especially in the french law for instance an artist has an indefinite control over the work of art not commercially but about the essence of the work of art so how would you do you manage that so to give you an example if as an artist i mean something on your platform and then 10 years from now um someone does something to my piece of music that um makes it so that it's uh not according to the nature that from which it originated i i cannot post this in the french law so how do you do you manage this uh well um thanks to our smart contract nfc smart contract we are able to track

all the modification and we are also able to use the epfs file system so we are able to see what kind of edits modification was done on the file so we will always be able to relate the piece of file that you provide in the first place to the nft so that if someone uh creates another version or modifies it it will not be related to the nft and it will not be able to use it commercially he will he will need to produce a new kind of nft and he will obviously need to request uh your agreement so this is this is this is a not a live feature but this is what we

are trying to build and we are talking with artists and management agencies to see how we can create it as smoothly as possible thank you um i guess i have two questions do you do anything around sync rights and also in terms of the nfts and the tokens what is the legal framework that you're using and in which countries okay so thank you for your question first question uh we are not uh working this uh synchronized business for the moment uh it's something that we are looking at very like seriously but uh as i told you we need to onboard

thousands and millions of users so for the moment if we want to like create a real interest from the for from the industry for this topic we need to first of all focus our work on exclusive content and new experience related to the nfts and the token but yeah we are really looking this seriously so i think that next year we will like propose something about this topic and uh regarding the second question uh the legal right that we are using like the legal framework uh is not something like related to law we have just managed to create a framework with the artists and their managers to see how they could keep

control on the piece of content inside the nft so today for instance uh as i've told you hey you have two market standards you have the mp3 track file but you have also the multi-track file for the multi-track file we are giving the possibility for people for artists or producers and bit makers to attach a copyright session to the file if they want to so uh like in september or october for the release of our new version we will try something really new uh we will have several bit makers who will sell bits as nfts two artists and they will let them use it commercially so this is something really new and we are really exciting about this uh this new topic so yeah keep connected to

see how we move forward on this topic hey yeah so um i feel like the as a musician the streaming aspect is probably the most like straightforward transactional relationship we have with our our fans um but i it seems like that's like a big hurdle that hasn't been tackled yet like even if you think about audience like i put a song up each listen still isn't really transactional so have you guys saw that or if not what's the hurdle uh basically we we chose

strategically to note uh to to to to not assign the listening part of this industry uh we we think that audios does it really well for the moment and it's really hard to go against spotify in all these platforms but what we think is that tokens can enhance the experience related to that and what we are trying to build is that with all tokens that you buy on our platform you will have associated perks so let's say that you are an artist you can tell if you buy five tokens ten tokens fifteen tokens you will be able to access this perk these perks and desperate so what we are uh imagine for um like the close future is that when you

come onto a streaming platform based on the amount of tokens that you have you are able to like discover this custom experience that the artist and his team or her team have created but now as soon as we are since we are not trying to build a new listening platform it's hard to like make a listening transactional but what we want to do is to give a new experience around the listening so we will try this kind of things for concerts and live venues what we want to create also is to create festivals in concert with only artists of the platform tokenized artists and to come into this venue you will need to

be a token holder or the artist and based on the amount of tokens that you own you will like unlock customer experiences dms are open so if you have any questions i'll be happy to to answer oh let's uh we have another question now it was it's the next one just after me right after me thank you very much guys see you there