How STEEMIT COULD REVOLUTIONIZE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY towards a fairer and more profitable business model
As always, hello to all steemers and i apologize for not beeing word-perfect in English. I am from germany and always trying to improve my english :)
As all of us know, or at least as all of us should know, steemit is an exciting platform and many of us feel like they would had used a time machine, going back to 2009 discovering "this new internet money called Bitcoin". And rigtly so!
There are many use cases for steemit we do not even remotely think of at the moment. Today i want to share my thoughts about Steemit in regard to the music industry.
1) "Profit machine music" stumbling
Recording to ifpi.org, the music industrys overall global revenues in 2014 were almost 15 billion US Dollar. Well that sounds like veeeeeeery much, and thats true. But as we know, the industry is permanently crying. In fact, the music industry made much more money by the year 2000. Let me make that clear with a graph from "Business insider". It illustrates the album sales per capita:
As you can see, the album sales dropped significantly per capita. But why did that happen? The chart shows that too:
Only our grand parents use cassettes anymore. Only our parents use CDs anymore. And only hipsters use vinyls anymore :P
Digital music takes a higher and higher percentage of the revenues generated. And digital music is a lot easier to steal than CDs or cassettes. The most thing on the internet are free (at least if you dont care that they use your data and are spamming you with advertisements), people are sharing much more in the internet than in the real world and i love that! But it is poison for the industry. So the music industry loses more and more money. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY NEEDS CHANGE!
2) The big industry vs. the starving talents
The down trend of the music industry is a problem from a capitalistic point of view. Every label must increase their profits to be able to survive in capitalism. But their problems are laughable if you compare them with the problems of small musicians who dont have a label deal. They are the real victims of the retrogressive mindset of people, not willing to pay for good music anymore.
Stars like Taylor Swift are crying because they make a few millions less. A few days ago the AP reported on her and other multi million musicians fighting YouTube because of that. If you are interested in that story i can recommend this Video from The Young Turks.
A few hours ago i saw a post from a singer who is trying to get attention on steemit. His artists name is edgeater and this was his post.
I love his music, he has talent and i am sure that he could become very succesful. I dont know his story, but it is a fact, that a lot people who have very much talent will never be discovered by a big label and dont get enough respect for their work. They often have financial troubles and cant use their talent. THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE!
3) How the big Stars AND the undiscovered talents can profit from steemit
Many people were convinced that micro payments would be the future and could save the big industry and undiscovered talents too. With steemit, you can throw micro payments in the trash.
Micro payments dont work smooth enough. For a normal user it is complicated and means unnecessary stress. On steemit you just click on "up" and thats it. Steemit uses the like button from facebook we are all clicking so often and gives this button a real value. It is sooooo easy to support musicians you like.
And obviously, do you prefer paying money, even if it are just micro payments, ago getting paid if the musician you like is succesful?
You saw how much money people make on steemit. I am 100% sure that musicians would make much more money with this social platform than selling their music on itunes, google play or amazon.
I think that steemit has the power to revolutionize the music industry. The steemit developement is going on and when the first bigger musician joins steemit, i think there will be a chain reaction which will be irreversible. It will help the industry as well as small artists who try to make a living with their music. Lets make this world to a better place!
We are actively trying to make this a reality. We are hiring right now, so if anyone knows badass blockchain devs, send them my way!
This is so true! I know such talented musicians that just cannot live off their art, but they would have so much to share! You made me realize that I have to spread steemit especially amongst my struggling musician friends. Seems kind of obvious now, duh! However I love your passion. Und so schlecht ist dein Englisch aber gar nicht ;)
The steemit model would work great for music and artist to really get paid by the votes of the people!!!!!
I hope youre friends will be successful :)
Thank you very much, vielen vielen Dank :)
I totally agree. Please take a look at this. https://steemit.com/music/@domavila/imagine-if-rihanna-posted-a-new-music-video-to-steemit
That is so true about digital music. Artists would make so much more selling on Steemit.
I think coupled with digital distribution networks it would give artists a lot of exposure and even more avenues to directly monetize their work. The future is definitely looking exciting!
Yes it would mean more great music would be made!
This is great news for me, I've just chosen the "Starving artist" path where everyone tells you to "Get a job! Move out!" and this is like a whole new world is opening up. Very excited for things to come!
Very intriguing. Perhaps steemit can be used to compensate open source software developers for their time as well.
true! :)
Just thought I'd pop back in and let you know that I was inspired to write an article after reading yours, in case you wanted to read it.
https://steemit.com/github/@benslayton/how-steem-changes-the-game-for-open-source-software
Regarding this problem look at MUSE project based on BitShares
Web http://peertracks.com/
MUSE is an automated, Peer-to-Peer network specifically tailored for the music industry. It is a Membership Organisation in the cloud that aims to be the foundation for the music industry’s new ecosystem. It serves as a global database for copyrights, a means of payment for all music related transactions as well as a tool to simplify licensing of musical works. It provides artists with transparent accounting, automatically split up royalty payments and the capability to create their Notes so they can get discovered and engage their fan bases. Fans can interact, participate and even benefit from the success of their favorite artists!
This is interesting...signed up on the waiting list, (to LBRY as well) waiting for updates.
Heard about this through a friend. I hope it will work, however their aim to be the new model for the industry is quite audacious, so they will need to gain a lot of traction pretty early to have any chance I think. That's why it's essential to start the work now on Steemit, so we can actually prove the pay-outs work!
I could sell you about 400000 MUSE coins from presale if you want :) Just want to exchange them to STEEM.
Thanks so much for featuring me in your article!
you are very welcome :)
Steemit definitely has this potential. In my opinion, since the advent of the digital age, large record labels are a completely unnecessary middleman in the music industry. The price of recording music has come down astronomically. The price of a professional-quality recording studio has as well. Artists need more platforms where they can directly monetize their content--and Steemit fits the bill perfectly. Thanks for the post, I enjoyed reading it!
Yes, steem does have the user friendly one button click upvote built in. But, a gigantic barrier to entry for many is the process of explaining where the "magic internet money" comes from. Or why it is when they upvote a post it gives the artist a penny, versus some other artist getting $200 from an upvote of a power user. Not every average user is going to read the whitepaper.
I think before this Utopian idea takes place, a LOT of really well researched and implemented user experience needs to be built to get this to be more friendly to the average non crypto savvy music consuming user. This is not to say these ideas are bad, just that they might be farther away than expected.
I wholeheartedly support your sentiments. However, I agree with the OP that's there's a lot of untapped potential with this type of platform that needs to be explored. That's the very reason I actually joined Steemit, to check the potential market and be in the vanguard for this new development, that I hope will change biz'. Because quite frankly - musicians have it bad these days. I don't know when I'll be able to write my post and give my two cents on the issue, but it will hopefully clarify what we as music-producers and consumers need.
People coming to the platform and interacting will be how the word-of-mouth will spread. We are the catalyst for that change, my friend. :)