Is the music industry's future on the blockchain?

Today’s internet has created its share of big fandoms, who mostly work in exchange for likes, comments, and shares. About the best you can hope for is that your favorite artist replies to you, or shares one of your posts.

One idea suggested by Royal is that the label’s opinion — and the radio station’s — is about to matter a lot less. All of a sudden, if you can grow a big enough social following, you can make a living off whatever music makes you happiest. This is somewhat true today, of course, but primarily to musicians who can live off touring and streaming reve... See more

But it doesn’t feel too early to ask what might happen in a world where artists keep more or even most of the value that they create. This is personally relevant to me, of course, as a creative type who also stepped away from a “major” — a staff job at a big publication — in favor of selling my work directly to readers. But the larger cultural cons... See more

One question Royal raises is what happens if every song has its own stans who benefit financially the more it is played.

“We've seen this with other new internet platforms in the past — and YouTube is a great example — where you end up getting all these creators, and all this novel content, that you never would have gotten without the platform,” Ehrsam told me. “And I think something similar can happen here.”

Now imagine what might happen if an artist could effectively buy into a song by purchasing some of its tokens on Royal or another platform, and then profit directly from the success of the remix. Suddenly, all the right incentives are aligned. The creators can create, and the owners get paid.