Streaming Content

While the Internet gives everyone an opportunity to be noticed, it is not a “a bonanza for young bands", as observed by Damon Krukowski, a decade ago. Personally streaming one’s own music economically successfully, is an extremely expensive and complex task, best left to the streaming music providers. So, young bands are at the mercy of streaming music providers if they want to make their music available to the masses. Today, using aggregation services such as TuneCore, CD Baby, Distrokid and others, songs can easily be placed with steaming providers, but the idea of a Play on Demand licensing right, is completely missed. It might be argued that paying a content creator for each stream, is a form of Play on Demand licensing. However, streaming on demand is more akin to playing a song from a jukebox. The listener can stream music, but cannot sell it to another person, nor play it on any other service with which they do not have a subscription. In essence, the listener does not own anything. In contrast, a NFTiPoD is the digital form of owning a physical recording, since the licensing is transferable. In the future, with Fair Trade Music Distribution Group technology, part of the content uploading process with aggregation services, will include creating NFTiPoDs for listeners to purchase.

There is little room in the market place for another streaming service. To be fair, if the Fair Trade Music Distribution Group included streaming as part of its business plan, rather than only promoting NFTiPoDs, it would be seen as a competitor in the marketplace. Rather, FTMDG should be considered an ally by all streaming services, since it provides a mechanism by which to verify NFTiPoD ownership and a storefront, by which content creators, streaming services and music retailers can sell NFTiPoDs. Recovering the Play on Demand right for music industry professionals, to revitalize the independent music economy, is FTMDG’s primary goal. To be successful, the FTMDG must provide a seamless and transparent Play on Demand license ownership validation interface for music streaming services, the FTMDG must implement an NFT creation mechanism for placing Play on Demand licensing ownership and song royalty directives into an Ethereum derived blockchain technology and finally, the FTMDG must convince listeners that music is not actually free, so that financially supporting their favorite content creators becomes an important part of cultivating an economic environment in which musical creativity thrives.