Hey there, our cryptocosmonauts! As you probably know, today is the International Music Day and on this occasion, we at Changelly have interviewed Vasja Veber, the COO of Viberate — the decentralized music talent marketplace, to get to know how blockchain technology improves the music industry worldwide.

Vasja, tell us about your cool project in a nutshell. Why is it so unique? What is its mission?

We’re on a mission to standardize the global music ecosystem. Viberate is a music network that collects and analyzes information about musicians, venues, events, and other music industry stakeholders. We use big data analysis to calculate taste and define true popularity. This information is then used in a set of apps that help users discover new music and events and also offers professionals an efficient tool to engage in business and accept data-driven decisions. We’re doing for music what IMDB did for the movies.

How do you think decentralization may influence to improve the music industry in general?

From our point of view, we are decentralizing the process of music discovery and we are building our database of artists, venues and events in a very decentralized fashion, with the help of over 7,500 contributors from all around the world. We managed to grow our database from 30 thousand to 350 thousand artists in less than 10 months and that would be impossible if we only worked from the office. There is no way to know about garage bands from Peru or some indie venue from downtown New Delhi, but with the help of contributors, who earn VIB tokens by adding into our database, we can achieve that. Our motto is that everyone should have a chance to work in such an exciting industry as music and tokenizing our business made this possible. People are earning money by helping us grow and this is especially the case in Venezuela, where we are an important “employer”, helping people get through their horrible economic crisis. The majority of our 7,500 contributors come from that country.

Viberate.com provides quite a depressing statistics which says that booking agencies represent interests of only 20% of all musicians around the world. Turns out, that the remaining 80% of artists can not make themselves known to a wide audience. What results has the Viberate project already succeeded, while improving this unfair distribution, since the launch of the project?

The percentage is actually much lower than that, it’s more like 2%. The artist booking industry has a very long tail and artists who charge less than $500 per gig, aren’t a viable option for booking agencies. This is where e-markets come in and this is one of the features we intend to offer when the time comes. I’m saying that because right now it’s hardly the time, because of the downmarket. So currently we are focusing on further building the database and we gave way to other business models, where we believe we can start earning money faster. One of them includes our first mobile app Viberate Tonight, which is the only intelligent nightlife guide in the market and is currently in private beta.

What major musicians have you managed to become partners with since the launch date?

Aside from our co-founder UMEK, who is one of the biggest techno DJs in the world, we partnered up with a 2-time Grammy award winner Imogen Heap, who played a major role in getting the word out. We also got recognition from major names, who officially claimed their Viberate profiles. Among others we have Linkin Park, Robbie Williams, The Chainsmokers, RedFoo and just a few days ahead, the techno legend Richie Hawtin claimed his.

Recently, you released an in-depth look into what is the best European major festival — Sziget and how it has changed from the beginning. Can you name the top-3 music festivals to date?

There are thousands of amazing festivals around the world. Just now, we are making an extensive analysis of three biggest electronic festivals: Ultra Miami, Tomorrowland, and EDC Las Vegas and compared the artists, who got booked the most, how much festival goers are paying to see a top 100 DJs performing and so on. What we discovered is a huge diversity between the genres that are crowning the festival lineups. And while music taste of every single person is different, is important to know where would festival goer get the most out of the festival.

Tomorrowland, 2018

Have you thought about moving to Mainnet?

We have one of the side products that could eventually move to Mainnet, but we think it still needs some time to become suitable for mainstream adoption. Good things take time and we shouldn’t force it.

For the record: You can easily exchange your crypto asset for VIB token using Changelly instant swap platform in just a few minutes.

Can you share your prediction on when the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies will actually happen?

I think in 3 to 5 years. The focus needs to switch to the underlying tech because the last year’s explosive bull run only focused on “get rich quick” without anyone really caring about how the blockchain technology can solve real-life problems.

If you’d like, please share the VIB plans: just a bit of insider information for Changelly’s users would be awesome :)

Detailed plans are in our freshly updated timeline on www.viberate.io, but we are currently focusing on the next major update of viberate.com and at the same time we are finalizing Viberate Tonight app. We are also preparing a service for big music services and are working on a special app for music festivals.

Thanks a lot, Vasja! Changelly team and our crypto-community wish your rad project all the best! Happy International Music Day!