BLOCKCHAIN
blockchain to deliver smart record contracts , so if an artist makes a track with somebody and they split the royalties 50 / 50 , it ’ s written into the contract on the Ethereum network which is then used to divide up Notes in real time . “ Today , it can take up to two years to get paid for royalties , which is absolute madness , it should happen in days ,” maintains Emery . “ This also has wider applications . An artist could pre-authorise people to be able to produce remixes of their tracks . We can also implement this for management contracts . Rather than having an offline paper contract that you may need to enforce via the courts if you don ’ t get paid , a smart management contract could stipulate , for example , that for the next two years a manager will get 15 % of an artist ’ s earnings so that this can be actioned in real time .”
Choon is aiming to disrupt the hegemony of major players like Spotify , which in their early days sold large chunks of their companies to the major record labels in order to develop catalogue . “ It probably seemed like a good decision at the time to build up the music available , but when you ’ re
74 April 2018