Hedera18 Developer Conference

The music industry has been a long tale of technological disruption. From records to CDs to Napster to iTunes to Spotify, the emergence of new technologies enabled new modes of distribution and new business models. One common theme has remained throughout: artists never get a fair shake. With the emergence of blockchain and distributed ledger technology, a lot of speculation has swirled around how smart contracts can increase transparency and efficiency of rights attribution. While this might help the existing music industry improve their status quo of paying artists minuscule amounts per stream over 2 years late, I believe most are missing the bigger picture. The incumbent music industry licensing frameworks are designed to take the majority of the streaming revenue before it reaches the artists, and distributed ledger technology enables new business models for the long tail of artists to go direct to fan and cut out the middlemen. Hedera Hashgraph is the first technology platform that will enable truly seamless global micropayments for music streaming which can be deployed on an app at scale. With the perfect trinity of high speed performance, mathematically sound consensus, and virtually no transaction fees, Hedera Hashgraph is lightyears ahead of its competitors in both hard technology and governance structures. The groundbreaking potential of hashgraph is to revolutionize the music industry and democratize music distribution by disrupting the existing industry juggernauts. The ripple effect will be profound and the power will lie back in the hands of the artists.