In analyzing the interview data, six themes emerged throughout the data which allowed specific
differences to be compared between traditional music streaming platforms and blockchain music
streaming platforms, these will be discussed in this section. These themes were: Governance, Revenue Sources, Currency, Agreements, Type of Users and Relationships. The themes and associative keywords can be found below in tables 4.1 and 4.2.
Table 4.1 Top associative words recorded concerning traditional music streaming platforms
Variable Keywords Frequenc
y
Exemplary quotation
Governance Centralized
Intermediarie
s
Middlemen
Bureaucratic
Outdated
Inefficient
57
53
39
34
26
22
‘Centralized user-generated music distribution
platforms have succumbed to the influence of legacy
institutions, struggling to find sustainable business
models as existing institutions reap the rewards of their
(and artists’) labor.
The network of intermediaries and middlemen that
formed in the early days of recorded music still
persists” (Audius Whitepaper)
Revenue
Sources
Royalties
Licensing
Complex
Contract
50
41
28
17
“Artists' only source of income is from royalties, these
are the payments that an artist earns from streams.
Spotify royalties are specifically distributed from the
net revenue collected from ads and Premium
subscription fees” (Jack Spallone, Ujo music)
Currency Cent
Dollar
Penny
46
28
19
“Most artists on major platforms continue to earn less
than half a penny per stream. On average, they would
need more than 500,000 plays to earn a monthly
minimum wage of $1,472 USD” (Isaac Mao,
Musicoin)
Agreements License (deal)
Complex
fixed
37
28
22
“In license contracts between record labels and
streaming companies, most of the revenue goes
towards paying the intermediaries, and musicians are
almost always left out of these discussions. This results
in a royalty distribution scheme that heavily favors
intermediaries, at the expense of the musicians,
ultimately undervaluing the musician’s work and
revenue” (Musicoin whitepaper)
Type of users Listener
Artist
Platform
59
38
28
“Spotify really only classifies users into two groups,
the artists and the listeners” (Jesse Grushack, Ujo)
Relationship Spotify
Apple music
Middleman
Soundcloud
Deezer
Intermediary
19
18
13
13
12
12
“What we see in the streaming industry today is that all
communication is done through the streaming
platform, without the ability for artists to communicate
directly to their listeners” (Lulian Anghelin, Bitsong)
Notes. Frequencies reflect the number of time a keyword was mentioned when discussing the variable
Table 4.2 Top associative words recorded concerning blockchain music streaming platforms
Variable Keywords Frequency Exemplary quotation
Governance Community
Decentralized
Distributed
Ecosystem
Open
Transparency
Trust
57
52
38
37
30
28
28
“We're a music streaming service that
connects fans directly with artists and
exclusive new content. So the the way that we
enable that is by being fully decentralised,
Audius is operated by a community of artists,
listeners and node operators that effectively
have come together to build an open
community built on trust” (Roneil Rumburg,
Audius)
Revenue Sources NFT
Token
PPP
Tipping
Micropayments
48
36
35
28
22
“Besides Pay-per-play we also allow fans to
buy a $5 collectible badge or NFT using Ether
as a cryptocurrency” (Jesse Grushack, Ujo)
Currency Crypto
Ethereum
$AUDIO
$MUSIC
Tokens
Stablecoin
47
34
27
18
18
15
“So I think, you know, we want to build
something that the entire globe can access and
have the same level of access. And I think in
terms of like getting artists paid globally,
crypto is the best solution”. (Ranidu Lankage,
Audius co-founder)
Agreements Smart (contracts)
Automatic
Direct
62
38
29
“And so with Audius, as I mentioned earlier,
with smart contracts, we want to create direct
automatic payment channels, that means that
if I stream your song, you're gonna get that
royalty payment in real time, and you're able
to sort of customise that rate” (Ray Lee,
Audius)
Type of users Artist
Listener
Miner
66
52
41
“So Audius is operated by a community of
artists, listeners and validators that effectively
have come together” (Roneil Rumburg,
Validator
Token holder
38
30
Audius)
Relationship P2P
Fans
Artist
Direct
Interact
Connect
44
36
28
22
22
20
“Our platform is built on a transparent
Peer-to-Peer network to directly connect
artists with their fans to enable fair
remuneration for all musical content and
services” (River Yan, Musicoin)
Notes. Frequencies reflect the number of time a keyword was mentioned when discussing the variable
Comparing the results of each case study, it is possible to identify both commonalities and differences between these different blockchain music streaming platforms and traditional music streaming platforms. Looking into the data, the word frequency counter allows clear differences to be identified between inter-related themes.
Governance. Looking at the governance of traditional and blockchain-enabled music streaming platforms. For traditional music streaming platforms the words ‘Centralized’ and
‘Intermediaries’ provide the most representative words demonstrating the degree of control that the music streaming platforms have within the music industry today, for example Jack Spalllone (Ujo) said “When artists upload music to Spotify they agree that their music will be managed by a central authority, they often are not aware of the amount of intermediaries involved like labels and publishers”. This clearly demonstrates how centralized authorities are able to exert their bureaucratic rules in maintaining their grip within the music industry. Also did the words
“Outdated” and “Inefficient” demonstrate how little the music industry has changed compared to
100 years ago. Jesse Grushack (Ujo) mentioned how “publishing, selling and distributing music
are all part of pieces in play when a lot of the stuff was created a few 100 years ago” urging that
the industry catches up to the technology we have today. In contrast looking at the keywords that
define blockchain music streaming platforms the top keyword that came out were “Community”
and “Decentralized”, indicating an fierce difference between the top keywords compared to traditional music streaming platforms, and emphasizing how the industry is now not in the hands of a handful of companies but is instead collectively controlled by a community where control is shared. Ranidu Lankage (Audius) mentioned how “platforms come and go, and we really want to create a protocol that's owned by a community and not by a company. So our vision really is to create this so that a community owns and operates this” and therefore placing the platform's success in everyone’s best interest instead of only the best interest of the platform provider.
Revenue Sources. After analyzing the data that related to the artists earning from the streaming platforms, the keywords ‘Royalties’ and ‘Streaming’ were the most referred to. This being the only revenue source that was identified suggested that the streaming revenue or royalties, which are essentially the same thing, is the only source of revenue that artists receive from the license deal with the streaming platform. This is in line with what Jack Spallone (Ujo) mentioned in his interview where he mentioned “Artists' only source of income is from royalties, these are the payments that an artist earns from streams. Spotify royalties are specifically distributed from the net revenue collected from ads and Premium subscription fees” where he elegantly puts the keywords into context. In contrast to the traditional music streaming platforms, when analyzing text regarding sources of income from blockchain streaming platforms, multiple sources of income came up. Besides pay-per-play (which would be similar to the traditional streaming royalties) it also included non-fungible tokens, which is a “unit of data stored, that certifies a digital asset that can represent items such as photos, videos or maybe a special fan badge”
(Cooper Turley, Audius). Another noticeable payment method that Bitsong and Audius seemed
to be exploring is the ability to ‘tip’ your favorite artist. Not only is this a nonexistent source of
income on current streaming platforms but according to Isaac Mao (Musicoin) “Empirical data from our blockchain shows that revenue to musicians from tips is five-fold higher than their revenue from PPP” demonstrating these multiple sources of income have a positive effect on artist revenue from their music.
Currency. In terms of the currencies that were used across the different types of platforms, what stood out was that throughout the blockchain streaming platforms a vibrant range of currencies existed that are used to compensate platform users. The highest frequency keyword was ‘Crypto’
demonstrating that the blockchain platforms use cryptocurrencies as the main exchange of value.
Audius ($AUDIO), Musicoin ($MUSIC) and Bitsong ($BTSG) all have their own currency to fuel their platform, this is because these companies have created their own blockchain for the platform which allows them to also create their own token or currency. As Angelo Reccca (Bitsong) mentioned “we have our own Blockchain, totally distributed and open source and we make our Token in this way, minable”. Ujo does not have their own crypto token on their platform as they run on the Ethereum blockchain, which explains why ‘Ethereum’ was another key word. Traditional music streaming platforms, on the other hand, had the keywords ‘cent’,
‘dollar’ and ‘penny’ demonstrating their use of fiat currency like Dollars or Euros to distribute value across their platform.
Agreements. Regarding the agreements that take place on the platform including artist streaming
revenue or music copyrights, the most occurring keyword that came up regarding traditional
streaming platforms was unsurprisingly ‘license’, put into context this demonstrated that all
artists are compensated in the form of a standard licensing deal that is is created by the streaming
platform and that must be agreed upon by the artist for their music to be present on such
platform. The revenue earned by artists has a reputation of being rather low as Riven Yan
(Musicoin) mentioned that “They often enforce unfair contracts in negotiations with streaming services, receive large advances and bargain for minimum payment and ownership positions under non-disclosure agreements”, not to mention how ‘complex’ it may be for artists to actually receive the recognition for their music as “the old music that has so many rights is tangled in mess of complexities of users and owners” as mentioned by Jesse Grushack (Ujo). In contrast to traditional streaming platforms, the blockchain streaming platforms had a clear association with the keyword combination ‘Smart contract”, it is not surprising that all the five blockchain companies analyzed used smart contracts as “with the use of smart contracts, payment can be automatically done based on the terms of the contracts for various content. The self- executing smart contracts used for the various country’s rights and fluid subscription models will improve the overall music experience when going to different countries” as mentioned by Jack Spallone (Ujo), and therefore taking away the control from the intermediaries.
Type of users. Comparing the types of users present at traditional and blockchain streaming platforms it has become clear that traditional streaming platforms only consist of listeners, artists and the platform itself. In contrast, blockchain platform users are not only artists or listeners, but also include ‘Miners’, ‘Validators’ and ‘Token holders’ as was often referred to in the interviews.
The miners and validators play a crucial role in keeping the platform running. The miners are
those that provide the “computational work in creating the next block on the blockchain in which
transactions are recorded” (Whitepaper, Musicoin) whereas the validators are “economic agents
that verify the transactions that are triggered by the users” (Whitepaper, Bitsong), they are thus
responsible resolving conflicts between two peers engaged in a transaction. They are selected by
the system and are an impartial supervisor of the transaction. Together all the users have the
shared ownership of the platform and are all responsible for keeping the platform running,
cooperatively taking over the function of the platform provider in the case of traditional music streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. What also stood out from the interviews is that when discussing these traditional streaming platforms the word frequency for ‘listener’ (59) was considerable higher than for ‘artist’(38), whereas when discussing the blockchain variant of the platform ‘artist’ was mentioned more often (66) than the ‘listener’ (52), demonstrating that in traditional streaming platforms the attention is more focused on the listener than on the artist and vice versa with blockchain streaming platforms.
Relationships. Looking at the different types of relationships that exist on the traditional music streaming platforms, we see that interaction is rather limited. The keywords that came up from the interviews were almost the names of streaming platforms, especially Spotify, Apple Music, Soundcloud & Deezer. This represents how “all communication is done through the streaming platform, without the ability for artists to communicate directly to their listeners'' (Lulian Anghelin, Bitsong). The words ‘intermediary’ and ‘middlemen’ also popped up indicating how these middlemen stand in between most of the interaction between the users as “when you go on to Spotify today, there's no way to tell who was listening to your music, you might have some very obscure data about like, what region of the world they're located in, or how old they are.
But being able to do anything on a more personal level is just non existent” (Cooper Turley, Audius). Comparing this to blockchain music platforms where the word ‘peer-to-peer’ or ‘P2P’
was the most frequently mentioned, we see how interaction and the building of relationships is
not only encouraged but a necessity in order for the platform economy to survive. All the
different types of users play a critical role in order for the music ecosystem to function where the
disappearance of one type of user would cause the whole ecosystem to fall apart. Cooper Turley
(Audius) mentioned how “a music platform should support a community and allow them to sort
of grow and interact with one another. And so at Audius, we want to build an ecosystem where,
you know, you don't have to go to a different platform to be able to talk about how much you love
an artist or to connect with them in the first place” demonstrating how direct interaction is
stimulated and how the platform should be a place where people can come together to share their
love for music and their favorite artists, and the ability to directly connect with their favorite
artists.
