The Blockchained Music Business – the Intermediaries’ Perspective

On March 3, 2017, an international workshop on “The Blockchained Music Business” was organized by the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Music Information Center Austria (MICA). Carlotta De Ninni (Mycelia for Music Foundation, London), Peter Jenner (Sincere Management, London) and Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York) were the workshop supervisors focusing on different aspects of the blockchain technology’s impact on the music business. In the second part of the workshop’s summary, we focus on the discussion of the workshop-group on the impact of blockchain technology on the music industry’s intermediaries that was supervised by Benji Rogers (PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music, New York).

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Who Benefits from Spotify & Co.?

The recently published Ernst & Young study that was commissioned by the French music industry body SNEP highlights the revenue split of a premium subscription of EUR 9.99 Spotify, Deezer and other comparable music streaming services. The study’s results confirm the conclusions drawn in the blog series “Is Streaming the Next Big Thing?” that – beside the music consumers – the (major) record labels are the main beneficiaries of the current boom of music streaming. In contrast, the musicians get just a small piece of the streaming pie and the streaming services for their part have severe problems to establish a sustainable business model. In the following, I would like to highlight and to comment on the main results of the study.