Empowering Artists, Songwriters & Musicians in a Data Cooperative through Blockchains and Smart Contracts

TL;DR

This paper explores how data cooperatives utilizing blockchain technology and smart contracts can empower artists, songwriters, and musicians by enhancing data management, transparency, and fair licensing in the gig economy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel concept of data cooperatives for artists that leverage blockchain and smart contracts to address industry challenges.

Findings

Proposes a blockchain-based data cooperative model for artists.

Demonstrates potential for improved license tracking and management.

Highlights benefits of shared IT resources and transparency.

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a continuing decline in social trust on the part of individuals with regards to the handling and fair use of personal data, digital assets and other related rights in general. At the same time, there has been a change in the employment patterns for many people through the emergence of the gig economy. These gig workers include artists, songwriters and musicians in the music industry. We discuss the notion of the data cooperative with fiduciary responsibilities to its members, which is similar in purpose to credit unions in the financial sector. A data cooperative for artists and musicians allows the community to share IT resources, such as data storage, analytics processing, blockchains and distributed ledgers. A cooperative can also employ smart contracts to remedy the various challenges currently faced by the music industry with regards to the license tracking management.