Almost one year ago, Ujo Music released the ‘Tiny Human’ prototype in an effort to explore what was possible at the intersection of music and blockchain technology. In our demo, we sought to demonstrate what direct fan-to-artist payments might look like in a digital setting. At the time, we were so excited to share the awesomeness of the blockchain that we took an admittedly simplified approach to solving the payments problem in the music industry. This blank slate approach, looking back, ended up holding us back from making meaningful progress towards solving some of the deeper issues surrounding royalties in music. We decided to take a few steps back and re-evaluate where we actually were, what it is we set out to do, and where we could most effectively play in the music sphere.



We spent a large chunk of the last year doing a proper dive into the machinations of music in the Western world, learning more about the ins-and-outs of copyright monitoring and enforcement, music metadata, distribution, promotion and marketing, and artist development. We cast as wide of a net as possible, taking care to observe and understand the perspectives of each stakeholder in the music industry, from PRO to publisher to label, all the way down to artists. From our conversations, it seems that the industry heavyweights would really like someone to clean up the global metadata problem. More importantly, we heard many recurring themes when speaking with artists: the situation is dire, and it’s becoming harder and harder to be heard in an increasingly crowded marketplace.



We want to solve all of your problems. We really do. But we are but a few bright-eyed technologists with a special hammer, looking for the right nail.