Spotify Acquires Ethereum Startup Mediachain - Interest in Blockchain and Decentralization Grows

Spotify Acquires Ethereum Startup: Mediachain

Spotify acquires Mediachain, a startup developing decentralized music attribution solutions on Ethereum. This marks a milestone towards a future with large-scale deployments of decentralized software.


img ethereum and Spotify

Spotify has just acquired Mediachain Labs, a startup that is developing an attribution engine for the new connected audience of today. They are developing an open source and peer-to-peer network for identifying and attributing digital works across the internet. Mediachain is developing on the Ethereum blockchain for their logic and IPFS for decentralized storage. Essentially using blockchain technology to ensure creators and other members of the creative process such as studios get the rewards and attribution they deserve. The current investment hovers around 1.5 million from according to CrunchBase.

Spotify's content attribution is in dire need of blockchain technology; recently paying a 30 million dollar settlement for unpaid royalties. Spotify claims the issue lies around the data: they didn't have the data necessary to determine what claims are legitimate. Spotify states that it would need a centralized and authoritative database to settle all the claims. With Spotify's recent acquisition, it looks like they will be building a decentralized one.

The ability to reduce a legal burden on a commercial business is an interesting use case for open source and decentralized technology. One might be asking, why would Spotify want this system open and accessible to their competitors? The reasons are clear, if a system like this is ever to exist successfully it must become so widespread that everyone uses it but not remain under the control of any single group. The Mediachain co-founder Jesse Walden explains their reasoning:

“A music blockchain would be a single place to publish all information about who made what song, without having to trust a third-party organization,”
-Jesse Walden

From this acquisition, it is clear Spotify understands the importance of decentralization in this new form of monolithic world databases. Hopefully, Spotify will mark one of the many successful integrations of decentralized technology into commercial products.

Stay decentralized
-Kyle

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I hope this allows for smaller, independent artists to thrive

Thank you for your take on this - really tremendous news for the music industry in particular I think, and artists of all kinds in general.

This is something the music industry really needs - dotblockchainmusic.com is another company trying to do it.

The only problem is IDK how I feel about Spotify owning the attribution engine for the music industry

I've heard of dotblockchainmusic and from the looks of it, it's a cool project. The more teams working the better.

Now your second point is the very reason I made this post, it does not mater that Spotify is "owning" the team working to solve their attribution problem; this is the beauty of decenteralized projects and blockchain technology. Spotify "owns" the team that is now going to make their attribution product a reality. They own the team because they see this as a worthwhile investment (see 30 million settlement) to improve their capabilities. It is interesting that they have chosen to design a service that they are not the owners of: i.e. blockchain. I think this is a sound decision for the type of problem they are attacking. Your right, if they were the owners of the attribution database - that would be a huge problem. I'm sure they saw how big a problem centeralization of that database would be and thus: their Mediachain acquisition.

MAYBE. You have way more faith than I do regarding the ability for blockchain to stop people from being biased in their own favor.

If Spotify controls the funding and management of the project - they can still have a large impact on what happens.

Steemit inc. basically owns steem, even though technically the steem blockchain is open source. Hopefully steem has been designed sound enough to resist a hostile takeover. Mediachain is in a much diferent position, not vulnerable to the same "custodian" problem that faces steem.

Surely Spotify will attempt to design a system that brings them value, that is on them. They are hoping this system will be valuable to others too; creating a positive feedback loop as the service becomes more useful to Spotify as others use it. The whole point of these services and blockchain in general is every actor is assumed to be biased in their favor. This design decision is the entire reason systems like Mediachain are so important.

"The whole point of these services and blockchain in general is every actor is assumed to be biased in their favor"

good point!

Thanks for sending this along Kyle.

I think Omar aka Crypt0 recently discussed this - this week in one of his YT videos but I am not sure. I cannot get to everything.

Have a good weekend man, keep up your good work.

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