Blockchain Revolution

The New Artists and Repertoire (A&R)
Finally, a key aspect of any creative industry is talent scouting and coaching.
Musicians naturally embrace mentoring and play an “artists and repertoire” role in
such competitions as The Voice. The blockchain supports this type of A&R with usage
algorithms. Consider PeerTracks. According to its landing page, it is “the ultimate one
stop music platform” for both music lovers and artists. PeerTracks attaches a smart
contract to every song that an artist uploads, and the contract automatically divvies up
the revenues according to whatever deal the performer made with the lyricist, the
composer, and other members of the band. Artists create their own tokens, bearing
their name and likeness similar to a virtual baseball card. Tokens are collectibles. The
artist sets the number of available tokens. So there could be limited editions, so to
speak. The concept is simple: create a store of value, the valuation of which correlates
to the artist’s popularity.
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Users get full access, on demand, to the entire PeerTracks music catalog for free
without advertising interruptions. They can save songs and playlists for offline use

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and download any song or album from the catalog. Unlike with Spotify or iTunes,
users can also purchase tokens of artists and trade these tokens like baseball cards. As
an artist’s star rises, the value of the tokens rises, and so users could potentially
benefit financially from supporting artists before they become famous. Loving an
artist translates into VIP treatment, perquisites, and freebies from artists. This
incentive turns people who would be passive listeners on Spotify into active
promoters and builds a long-term, engaged fan base. PeerTracks intends to pay artists
more for streams and downloads—specifically 95 percent of revenues—and to pay
them instantaneously on the blockchain. Artists can set their own price for music
downloads and merchandise. PeerTracks claims that “swarms of profit driven talent
scouts/curators looking for the next hot star/token” will hear a new artist’s song
because PeerTracks users will vote them to visibility.
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