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FREQUENCIES

In the music rights industry there are many decentralized organizations across the world that work together to make sure that music creators are paid for their creations in relation to copyrights and master rights. Each country has his own music rights organizations. In the Netherlands we have Buma/Stemra who controls all the copyrights and Sena who controls all the master rights of Dutch music creators. In Belgium you have Sabam who secures the copyrights and master rights for the Belgian artists, and the list goes on. There are more than 50 organizations worldwide that operate with the same purpose, securing copyrights and master rights for music creators.

Music right organizations collect money from streaming services like Spotify, music libraries like itunes, radio stations, restaurants, fitness centers, schools, etc. and calculate the royalties for each individual artist and distribute that money to them. For some businesses like for example Spotify it is very easy to know what they need to pay in royalties towards music rights organizations because every song that is played is registered digitally. But other types of businesses like for example restaurants pay their contribution not based upon the songs or artists they listened to but based upon the surface area the restaurant has. This is absurd, and the reason such policies exist is because music rights organizations don’t have effective tools to measure what songs businesses like for example restaurants listened to because businesses are not allowed to use streaming services like Spotify to play music in their business environment.

Therefore ‘Frequencies’ was created as a solution to this problem. ‘Frequencies’ is a decentralized blockchain network among music rights organizations which allows for the deployment of smart contracts. Instead of going to a music rights organization to protect your musical creations, music creators use the ‘Frequencies’ platform to create smart contracts which includes their songs together with the royalty distribution of the songs’ co-creators. These songs and rights can now be accessed by businesses through the ‘Frequencies’ platform. ‘Frequencies’ positions itself as an on demand music library within the business to business environment which allows music rights organizations to record more effectively how frequently businesses played certain songs and which songs they actually played. Existing streaming services, music libraries, etc. can link their existing platform to the ‘Frequencies’ platform to more easily manage their royalty payouts towards music rights organizations. Other types of businesses like for example restaurants can use the ‘Frequencies’ platform to play music similar to the experience existing streaming services are offering. With this concept ‘Frequencies’ is able to provide more transparency and 100% traceability which as a result leads to optimal royalty conversion rates for artists .

© Jacco Bleyen | Design & Innovation

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