Last summer, you were very vocal about your affinity for Soundcloud when the press was covering the turmoil going on at the company. We, along with thousands of music fans were alarmed by the news last year that Soundcloud was having financial troubles, laying off staff and potentially shutting down. We’ve found some of our favorite artists on Soundcloud. It’s an easy-to-use platform, so anyone can access or upload their music without the need of a label, publisher, manager — anyone. A musician is able to gain a massive global following and rise to fame solely based on their pure talent, there is nothing else like it.
The world witnessed Soundcloud’s struggle, so in order to avoid another scare, Soundcloud realizes it needs to reduce costs and properly monetise the service, which has over 40 million users. However, this will question a user’s relationship with music. Is a user’s musical autonomy at risk of business interests? Although the platform is revolutionary, at Ujo we try not to do that.
Soundcloud, founded in 2007, came well before the recent conversation on user data control erupted and systems like blockchain could provide a solution for these concerns. By taking a look at music through the lens of Ethereum, we were interested in exploring fan-to-artist relationships on the internet. Specifically, could we create operating models without relying on a single provider to maintain these relationships?
Our vision is to usher in an operating system for music consumption. We have designed a portal for artists to register themselves and their music releases onto a shared and open database. The music is openly accessible to all music applications that want to build on it, only requiring that the music is paid to the original creator through the Ethereum smart contract that was deployed upon their upload.
Taking inspiration from Soundcloud, we firmly believe that artists should have complete control over their interaction with fans. If every Soundcloud user had an identity on blockchain, the data of artist and fan relationships; followings, songs liked, songs purchased, amount of time listening to artists music, then none of this information would go away if SoundCloud went down. In this future music operating system, another application can use what’s stored on the blockchain so artists don’t lose any data valuable to them. Ujo’s Creator Portal enables the on-ramp into this operating system.
As an artist who embodies the value of building a successful career based on pure talent, you are an example of the future we want to help create. You’re an artist who understands why a platform like Soundcloud is needed, and validated why so many more should exist. Most of all, thank you for proving that fans do in fact want a future where music is accessible but also, just music, not another company’s commodity.
Keep being awesome,
The Ujo Team
