Considering that-in addition to paying artists an average of a mere $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream-Spotify recently settled a multimillion-dollar suit in which execs claimed the company had failed to pay rights holders for songs because it didn’t know whom to pay, it’s unsurprising that some artists might consider hopping onto the blockchain train. Using smart contracts, which can store information and enforce terms and transactions using code rather than middlemen, it can also automate royalties, seamlessly transferring payments from art consumer to artist. As a distributed ledger, blockchain can store information and form the basis of a transparent system to track the rights holders of creations like music tracks. Second, artists and distributors are looking to blockchain technology to streamline payments and better track rights holders.
Just as technological changes in the past have shaped art in profound ways, blockchain, too, has the potential to create some distorted economic and creative incentives. (Though, of course, the question of what meaningful aesthetic difference-let alone monetary value-there is in owning an “original” digital artwork over its digtital copy remains.) In this model, art on the internet adheres to the same rules of authenticity and rarity that it does offline, in which owning an original Van Gogh, for example, is more valuable both artistically- the brushstrokes! the colors!-and financially- the auction bidding wars! the status marking!-than a copy. Institutions can release limited quantities of a good and, with the help of blockchain, certify that said good is authentic. First, blockchain has the potential to facilitate the creation of true digital scarcity, as we saw with CryptoKitties and can see in the booming business of cryptocollectible CryptoPuppies, CryptoBunnies, CryptoPunks, CryptoBots, CryptoFighters, CryptoTulips ( irony not lost), and more. Artists and entrepreneurs are still experimenting with using it as a new form of distribution, but, so far, three main trends seem to be emerging. CryptoKitties hint at the ways blockchain, on its face, has the potential to change that.
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