PRS for Music hosts Blockchain debate featuring key industry speakers for series ‘PRS Explores'

21 April 2016 - Press release

Yesterday evening, PRS for Music hosted a ‘PRS Explores: Blockchain’ session, with an afternoon of debate and discussion between industry panellists comprising of music industry innovators who are exploring Blockchain technology, royalty collection and metadata.
 
Chaired by PRS for Music’s Director of Strategy and Digital, Graham Davies, the first ‘Using Blockchain Tech’ panel kicked off with insights from musician/technologist Imogen Heap, renowned for her experimental work with Blockchain, Alan Graham, co-founder of One Click Licensing, Benji Rogers Chief Strategy Officer at Pledge Music, tech entrepreneur/Blokur’s Phil Barry, Internet Music’s Thor Petterson, PRS for Music’s Keith Hill and PPL’s Mark Douglas.
The discussions focused on the technicalities of Blockchain and its various uses, with clear differences in points of views expressed – one toward a belief that it would create a transparent system and the other questioning its value without a link to a robust governing authority to adjudicate over potential copyright ownership disputes.
 
There was a general agreement that opening up data availability would assist in enabling the tech entrepreneurs of tomorrow, however the usual speciesism around whether this would be in the best interests of all current industry stakeholders.
 
Blockchain advocate and music creator Imogen Heap said: “Blockchain is about trying to get us all to connect those dots, try to lose the ownership problem so we create an open global music database which I feel the whole industry needs. There’s nothing more important than getting that verified official information up in a global music database that all services could access – if they need any information they have no excuse not to pay somebody – so the Blockchain is where to house that, where to keep that information.”
 
Chief Strategy Officer of PledgeMusic Benji Rogers said: “We have data issues on the way in but we also don’t bind the data to the track. So if I send an MP3 I can alter it almost completely. The music industry should run a central system, a distributed system where everyone is running in order of the blockchain and every time a work is created, it is dropped into a P2P distributed file storage, attached is the metadata to that song itself and from there you can serve those files. You can essentially create a digital ‘Library of Alexandria’ every time a song is created and because everyone is running the same system, they can corroborate information.”
 
Keith Hill, PRS for Music’s Head of Operations Change, Research & Development said: “Our data matching is fast scale and is being replicated by societies around the world. We are interested to see how Blockchain can be used to encapsulate the relationship of how information can be made accessible to the music licensing community.”
 
The second panel session extended the debate with discussion amongst music industry stakeholders on the possible applications of Blockchain and suggestions for developing it further for the music industry, alongside other tech initiatives.  Panellists included Beggars Music’s Andy Heath, Omnifone co-founder Phil Sant, ATC Management’s Ric Salmon, songwriters Crispin Hunt and Rupert Hine.
 
Omnifone’s Phil Sant said: “All discussions about Blockchain are discussions about a tool not an approach.”  He added “[the] music industry will repair itself by moving to cloud based systems. You've got to start using the cloud.”
 
Summarising, Graham Davies, PRS for Music’s Director Strategy and Digital said: “Our first ‘PRS Explores’ event provided an afternoon of extremely interesting debate from a panel of experts looking into the potential of blockchain for the music industry.  PRS for Music sits at the heart of the debate representing the interests of creators and publishers, working with technology and businesses using music. It was great to kick off with a packed event which shows great interest in this and other changes happening in the industry. We look forward to continuing the debate. "
 
The majority of panellists concluded that Blockchain was of great interest, and may become a useful tool, however its potential is in enhancing rather than replacing the rights management process.