This morning I want to briefly talk about one of the most f*cked up parts of the modern music industry: artists actually getting paid fairly. Now, don’t get out the violins for me – I make 99% of my income touring and I have absolutely nothing to complain about. But, this business really sucks for newer artists who are not as fortunate as me, and who can’t earn an income touring. They basically have 3 options.
1. Accept music is a hobby and you will always need a day job (great).
2. Become a successful live act and make money touring (this takes a long time, and only works if you don’t mind spending half your life away from home)
3. Produce for other people, either behind-the-scenes for pop acts, OR worse, as a ghost producer in dance music, staying in the shadows whilst a ‘superstar’ gets paid millions for tunes you actually made, paying you just enough to stay quiet.
The generally accepted wisdom for this all round shitty situation is “there is no money in music”. Well, there is. It’s a $16b dollar industry. There are just so many middleman in the process that the money doesn’t flow to the right people.
Over the last six months, I have been working hard as co-founder of a new project called Choon which we believe could fundamentally change all this.
It’s a music streaming service based on the Ethereum blockchain (for the uninitiated, Ethereum is like Bitcoin’s better, more advanced sibling) which will make it way, WAY easier for up and coming artists to earn a living.
I’m not going to get too detailed here as I know only a limited number of you will be into this topic, but if you are l, I’d love you to check out our site at CHOON.CO where you can read our White Paper explaining our business model and the impact we plan to make on this fucked up industry.
I will also be doing a few AMA type events next week to take your questions on all this stuff.
It’s early days but this is one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on, which could solve many problems that have existed since I started out in this industry. Massively excited to get going.
Gaz xx
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