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One solid argument I’ve heard from people who dived into NFTs is royalties. In this case, we discussed music royalties and how complicated they are. With NFTs,

One solid argument I’ve heard from people who dived into NFTs is royalties. In this case, we discussed music royalties and how complicated they are. With NFTs, there would be a huge boost in productivity in terms of licensing content (song for a movie). I haven’t seen this mentioned in other threads nor is there a good current system, from my understanding. (P.S. I know nothing about NFTs — just sharing a perspective.)

jfengel 4y ago
NFTs can come with programmable contracts, so there was some thought that this could be used to manage royalties. For example, resell the art for a profit, and the original artist gets a cut. But... instead of that, it was just pure speculation, with nobody really wanting any of the art. And none of it ever came with that contract to give original artists money anyway. So even the smidge of a good idea in there never got done.
- whatisweb3 4y ago
  There is plenty of NFT art that does take advantage of on chain royalties. Art Basel is happening now and features a lot of NFTs.
- bardworx 4y ago
  His point was applying smart contracts to old libraries and new music. BAYC is a different approach as they use the NFT is an access token vs. art work, in my opinion. He’s in PE so he’s probably looking at this from a particular lease, which isn’t the wide adoption folks are hoping for.
Closi 4y ago
How would NFT's solve the complexities of music royalty payments? (i.e. the complexity here is that Time Warner needs to ensure they get paid when one of their songs is played on a TV show).
- whatisweb3 4y ago
  NFT royalties often relate to resale, not media access. But in some web3 platforms, sales and revenue could be directed automatically to creators through smart contract functionality.
  - bardworx 4y ago
    This conversation was explicitly about licensing. I don’t know enough of the technology to know how feasible that is, however.
- bardworx 4y ago
  So there are multiple layers of rights ownership in music, and multiple ways to license music. There are songs that may have 10+ different owners of specific rights (author, composer, singer, recording, distribution, exclusive vs non-exclusive, regional vs national vs international). With a smart contracts, you can abstract a ton of the lawyer-y stuff. Smart contracts are also good for indie, in terms of licensing samples. [edit]: here’s a link with more info. https://blog.reverbnation.com/2018/05/09/music-law-101-owns-copyright-song/ https://blog.reverbnation.com/2018/05/09/music-law-101-owns-...
  - Closi 4y ago
    This doesn’t really answer the question - I mean from a process perspective how does it work. Like I write a song that has 10 different owners - is the idea then that I purchase rights via purchase of an NFT? Because that will need a lawyer-y real world contract attached to it anyway, so I’m not sure what it’s replacing. And how does that NFT determine the cost of rights, which will be different if I am using it as the theme song for my movie compared to a tiny sample in a song? I understand the complexities from that post, I just don’t understand how NFTs and smart contracts are the solution to the complexity.
    - bardworx 4y ago
      The first step is for RIAA to adopt a centralized database/block chain. This would be similar to how HomeDepot uses IBMs prop blockchain to handle their inventory. I will use DB, for short. The DB would allow current, and previous, copywriter holders to opt-in to the system. Ownership stake would be written into the smart contract with trenches of rights. Once you have a "movie" contract, that attributes X percent to Y people, based on rights, the contract can be easily reused for another project. In most cases, music royalties are a fixed income business and the profits are easy to model. This was the foundation of the WB/Pershing Sq deal. Their prospectus is quite interesting. Using the WB case for simplicity, the idea would be to take the current licenses and create trenches of rights, which would be sold/minted (not sure of right work) with all the legal/operational stuff baked in. For a real world example: - WB owns the rights to song X - DMX (hospitality) licenses music from WB to play on their connected devices, which service the hospitality sector, primarily (restaurants/bars) - DMX renews their license on annual basis. - Copy write owners would receive royalties per non-exclusive, commercial, non-reproducible trench when their song is played. With NFTs, the initial licensing and renewal could be performed from a user interface similar to Amazon vs the current paper process. This is applicable to chains like Starbucks too, as they license songs, burn them on CDs that have specific DRM and play on a (what I would guess) is a specialized CD player. Those CDs cannot be played outside the store, from my understanding. TL;DR - you encode different licenses in smart contracts and once you have a framework, it’s easy to grant similar rights without the overhead. Specialized licenses can be created quicker. This would be applicable to large copywrite holders and flow down to indie, with time. Edit: spelling and formatting.
ravivyas 4y ago
Most systems are not complicated because of centralised tech, but rather due to the number of parties involved (countries & copyrights/licensing when it comes to music) or systems have not become digital yet (Law + Owenrship etc). NFTs can't solve for either.
- bardworx 4y ago
  Sure they can. I mean, HomeDepot uses blockchain for inventory with multiple parties involved. I don’t know if they ever went through with it but Chipotle was heavily investing into blockchain for food supply chains and the tech is 100% coming to specific food items that have higher chance of food born illness (think listeria vs. E. Coli —- foods that may contain listeria is heavily monitored. For example, you can tell a lot more about Feta cheese from their barcode than Mozz because feta is susceptible to listeria). Real world example: - I worked for a hospitality chain and we have an order management system for our locations. - we had many different vendors, different SKUs, and vendors went in/out based on annual contracts. - when a vendor was switched, someone had to update the entire database and propagate it to stores. - all vendors, stores, etc. had different databases and there were times were wrong items are sent, items never sent, or damaged/bad items. It takes an hour, on average, to check in an order. With Smart Contracts, this process would be simplified: order management would require less data entry, loading orders on truck would have higher accuracy (removing errors when entering new item into the system), and there are general savings since order management protocol that all the big players use is proprietary and a pain to use.

jfengel 4y ago

NFTs can come with programmable contracts, so there was some thought that this could be used to manage royalties. For example, resell the art for a profit, and the original artist gets a cut. But... instead of that, it was just pure speculation, with nobody really wanting any of the art. And none of it ever came with that contract to give original artists money anyway. So even the smidge of a good idea in there never got done.

whatisweb3 4y ago
There is plenty of NFT art that does take advantage of on chain royalties. Art Basel is happening now and features a lot of NFTs.
bardworx 4y ago
His point was applying smart contracts to old libraries and new music. BAYC is a different approach as they use the NFT is an access token vs. art work, in my opinion. He’s in PE so he’s probably looking at this from a particular lease, which isn’t the wide adoption folks are hoping for.

Closi 4y ago

How would NFT's solve the complexities of music royalty payments? (i.e. the complexity here is that Time Warner needs to ensure they get paid when one of their songs is played on a TV show).

whatisweb3 4y ago
NFT royalties often relate to resale, not media access. But in some web3 platforms, sales and revenue could be directed automatically to creators through smart contract functionality.
- bardworx 4y ago
  This conversation was explicitly about licensing. I don’t know enough of the technology to know how feasible that is, however.
bardworx 4y ago
So there are multiple layers of rights ownership in music, and multiple ways to license music. There are songs that may have 10+ different owners of specific rights (author, composer, singer, recording, distribution, exclusive vs non-exclusive, regional vs national vs international). With a smart contracts, you can abstract a ton of the lawyer-y stuff. Smart contracts are also good for indie, in terms of licensing samples. [edit]: here’s a link with more info. https://blog.reverbnation.com/2018/05/09/music-law-101-owns-copyright-song/ https://blog.reverbnation.com/2018/05/09/music-law-101-owns-...
- Closi 4y ago
  This doesn’t really answer the question - I mean from a process perspective how does it work. Like I write a song that has 10 different owners - is the idea then that I purchase rights via purchase of an NFT? Because that will need a lawyer-y real world contract attached to it anyway, so I’m not sure what it’s replacing. And how does that NFT determine the cost of rights, which will be different if I am using it as the theme song for my movie compared to a tiny sample in a song? I understand the complexities from that post, I just don’t understand how NFTs and smart contracts are the solution to the complexity.
  - bardworx 4y ago
    The first step is for RIAA to adopt a centralized database/block chain. This would be similar to how HomeDepot uses IBMs prop blockchain to handle their inventory. I will use DB, for short. The DB would allow current, and previous, copywriter holders to opt-in to the system. Ownership stake would be written into the smart contract with trenches of rights. Once you have a "movie" contract, that attributes X percent to Y people, based on rights, the contract can be easily reused for another project. In most cases, music royalties are a fixed income business and the profits are easy to model. This was the foundation of the WB/Pershing Sq deal. Their prospectus is quite interesting. Using the WB case for simplicity, the idea would be to take the current licenses and create trenches of rights, which would be sold/minted (not sure of right work) with all the legal/operational stuff baked in. For a real world example: - WB owns the rights to song X - DMX (hospitality) licenses music from WB to play on their connected devices, which service the hospitality sector, primarily (restaurants/bars) - DMX renews their license on annual basis. - Copy write owners would receive royalties per non-exclusive, commercial, non-reproducible trench when their song is played. With NFTs, the initial licensing and renewal could be performed from a user interface similar to Amazon vs the current paper process. This is applicable to chains like Starbucks too, as they license songs, burn them on CDs that have specific DRM and play on a (what I would guess) is a specialized CD player. Those CDs cannot be played outside the store, from my understanding. TL;DR - you encode different licenses in smart contracts and once you have a framework, it’s easy to grant similar rights without the overhead. Specialized licenses can be created quicker. This would be applicable to large copywrite holders and flow down to indie, with time. Edit: spelling and formatting.

ravivyas 4y ago

Most systems are not complicated because of centralised tech, but rather due to the number of parties involved (countries & copyrights/licensing when it comes to music) or systems have not become digital yet (Law + Owenrship etc). NFTs can't solve for either.

bardworx 4y ago
Sure they can. I mean, HomeDepot uses blockchain for inventory with multiple parties involved. I don’t know if they ever went through with it but Chipotle was heavily investing into blockchain for food supply chains and the tech is 100% coming to specific food items that have higher chance of food born illness (think listeria vs. E. Coli —- foods that may contain listeria is heavily monitored. For example, you can tell a lot more about Feta cheese from their barcode than Mozz because feta is susceptible to listeria). Real world example: - I worked for a hospitality chain and we have an order management system for our locations. - we had many different vendors, different SKUs, and vendors went in/out based on annual contracts. - when a vendor was switched, someone had to update the entire database and propagate it to stores. - all vendors, stores, etc. had different databases and there were times were wrong items are sent, items never sent, or damaged/bad items. It takes an hour, on average, to check in an order. With Smart Contracts, this process would be simplified: order management would require less data entry, loading orders on truck would have higher accuracy (removing errors when entering new item into the system), and there are general savings since order management protocol that all the big players use is proprietary and a pain to use.