Canadian Musician - November/December 2017 | Page 41

DOT BLOCKCHAIN MEDIA’S BENJI ROGERS
Though their approaches –
disruption versus partnership
– are at odds, Rogers and the
folks at Musiconomi seem to
share a genuine desire to make
the industry fairer. And the one
point they do agree on is that
the inherent transparency and
efficiency of blockchain will
weed out the music industry’s
least valuable actors. “Those
who currently profit from a
lack of transparency, slowing
down, or the diminishment of
payments to artists, will find
that that becomes more diffi-
cult,” says Rogers. “But if they
add value, they will make 10
times more money from the
efficiencies in the system than
they will from the lags in lega-
cy. One of the predictions that
I made is that we can basically
get to a $100 billion business in
about a year if we focused and
deployed this at speed.” That
is one hell of a bold prediction
considering the music rights
industry is currently valued at
$25 billion, according to the di-
rector of economics at Spotify.
SOCAN’S JEFF KING
“He’s got it figured out I think,”
says Jeff King, SOCAN’s chief
operation officer, about Rogers
and the dotBC proposal. “We’re
involved in a couple initiatives,
but Benji’s Dot Blockchain ini-
tiative is the one that we put
the most funds and anonymous
data into. We’re working with the Open Music Ini-
tiative (OMI), which is run by the Berklee School
of Music [and George Howard is a part of] and
we’ve been doing some work with IBM Watson on
the blockchain that they’re trying to develop. But
the one we really put most of our heart and soul
into, and some engineering time on, has been
[dotBC].”
Rogers credits SOCAN as being one of the
most forward-looking organizations in the music
industry. The Canadian society has made great
strides over the last few years to modernize all
facets of its business, from digital distribution
and licencing by acquiring MediaNet and Audiam,
to live performance reporting in its recent part-
nerships with Muzooka and Pioneer DJ.
“I think some [music blockchain start-ups
respect,” he makes it clear they disagree on the
approach to moving blockchain forward in the
industry.
“For the most part, ‘partnering’ with incum-
bents in the music space has not worked out
well,” Howard replied in an email. He says that
labels have “consistently attempted to destroy/
sandbag [new technologies], whether overtly or
via ‘partnerships’ designed to imply they ‘tried’
the new tech, then sandbag it so they can say,
‘We tried…it failed,’ in order to send a signal to
the market/venture funds that the new tech is
untenable. This has occurred from piano rolls all
the way through streaming, so why in the world
would they treat blockchain, which is an existen-
tial threat, differently? You don’t cut the branch
of the tree off upon which you sit.”
“Those who currently profit
from a lack of transparency,
slowing down, or the diminishment
of payments to artists, will find
that that becomes more difficult [with blockchain].
But if they add value, they will make
10 times more money from the
efficiencies in the system than
they will from the lags in legacy.”
-Dot Blockchain Media’s Benji Rogers
and developers] were looking to really pull out
the intermediaries – the labels, publishers, the
collecting societies like SOCAN... But the more
you dig, the more you realize that the ability for
blockchain to do that isn’t there. It’s more of an
opportunity to make the pipes run better, but it
is not necessarily a replacement for the pipes.
That’s why we’re keenly interested in it. We see
it as a way to improve the network,” says King.
“But the idea of cutting out all the intermediar-
ies? I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
The biggest reason blockchain, and the dotBC
proposal specifically, appeals to SOCAN is its po-
tential to ensure all music users have the correct
information about a song. “It helps with the data
cleansing and really the push/pull of updating
data across a broad number of databases quickly.
That’s the thing that appealed to us, and when
we started talking to Benji and his engineers,
that’s what they were focusing on,” says King.
A fter speaking with Rogers and King, Cana-
dian Musician went back to Howard to see how
he felt about dotBC’s more conciliatory approach
with the established music industry. Though
he calls Rogers “a dear friend who I love and
We’re in the very early days of blockchain in the
music industry. The technology still has a long
way to go, and it’ll likely take even longer to get
the public – including musicians, fans, and those
working in the industry – to comprehend its pos-
sibilities and why it’s worth adopting.
And frankly, you may be left thinking, “What
the hell did I just read?” Fair enough. In 1995, it
wasn’t easy to explain or predict the evolution of
the internet, either.
But it’s the wide swath of possibilities that
make blockchain both fascinating and important.
In 10, 15, 20 years’ time, when maybe blockchain
is widely adopted and understood across all in-
dustries, what will the music industry look like?
Will the great disruption have occurred, or will it
be bigger and richer than ever before?
Michael Raine is the Senior Editor
of Canadian Musician.
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N • 41