Ava Labs, the company behind the layer-1 Avalanche blockchain, is leveraging its network to provide intellectual property management solutions to South Korean K-pop artists.
According to a report from Allied Research, the K-pop industry is projected to reach a $20 billion valuation by 2031—a figure that includes ticket sales, sponsorship deals, and merchandising.
Speaking to DL News, Justin Kim, the head of Ava Labs in South Korea, outlined the need for artist protections and how blockchain technology could offer unparalleled transparency and efficiency for artists who are often underpaid by recording companies.
This problem extends to live music and events, where venues and ticket processing companies can short artist revenues by underreporting ticket sales—an age-old problem for the gigging musician.
Digital rights management and artists in the 21st century
Protecting intellectual property rights has taken on new significance in the 21st century, as artists must now wrestle with protecting their creations from traditional copyright violations and unauthorized use, as well as artificially intelligent programs that scour the internet in search of content for training purposes.
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Platforms like Overlai tackle this problem for visual artists by embedding the metadata of images and videos with an invisible watermark. This watermark is then recorded to the blockchain, establishing an immutable and indisputable record of ownership. Additionally, the software solution allows visual content creators to opt out of AI scraping.
Earlier this year, Cointelegraph also interviewed Audius founders Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning to better understand how blockchain could revolutionize IP management for musicians.
The pair explained that Audius, a decentralized music streaming and intellectual property management platform, can help recording artists take command of their intellectual property with Audius’ Web3 tools, without exposing them to the technical onchain mechanics under the hood. Like Overlai, Audius also features tags to opt in or out of AI scraping.
Industry legends leverage blockchain
Earlier this year, Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan released original music featuring a Bitcoin Ordinals inscription. The ordinal mint included a Creative Commons license allowing holders of the inscriptions to sample the music or alter it as they see fit.
Legendary heavy metal group Megadeth likewise minted and distributed non-fungible tokens to provide holders with exclusive experiences like one-on-one meet and greets with the band members, showcasing a powerful use case for blockchain technology in the music industry.
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