To understand the history of the internet one must, at some point, look into the vital role that music has played in its growth. It has been a love-hate relationship with low points like Napster’s disruption to the industry via online peer-to-peer file sharing, and high points like the lowered publication barriers experienced by smaller artists on SoundCloud that has helped electronic music flourish. Throughout this dance there has been a recurring conflict between the ease of access to musical works and artists’ ability to receive compensation for users’ enjoyment of those works. Out of the chaos, the blockchain community has produced a team looking to bridge this gap… and they are calling themselves Emanate.

Led by DSound creator and developer Pedro Reis Colaço, the team appears to boast a healthy mix of music industry and coding experience… both of which they will need an abundance in order to accomplish even a portion of their stated development plan:

Emanate development plan, from project white paper

At its core the Emanate team is aiming to provide a stable of applications (online, mobile, and desktop) to give artists the ability to produce, collaborate, publish, and monetize their works while also allowing users to easily discover and consume music that they enjoy. Considering that STEEM-based DSound is openly referenced as the project’s Proof-of-Concept, it is no big surprise that they have chosen EOS as the host platform for their decentralized application (dApp). With an upcoming launch, no user fees, quick processing, and plans for decentralized cloud storage, EOS is arguably the most popular choice for dApps looking to launch in the coming months.

Proposed MN8 token distribution

The project is hoping to be integrated into nearly every step of the music production process from an artist’s discovery of sounds, stems, and samples, all of the way to monetization and playback by users. At the center of this platform to facilitate the process will be Emanate’s own token: MN8. For example a stereotypical track’s production process could look something like the following:

An artist creates an Emanate account and deposits an amount of MN8 tokens into their wallet. The artist discovers basic sounds, stems, and samples to use in conjunction with any self-produced sounds. The artist uses Emanate’s Audio Exchange Protocol to enter into an agreement about the eventual split of royalties to occur after official release, ensuring that the producers of the external audio tracks used will be appropriately compensated. Some artists may make their “compositional” audio files available for a flat fee of MN8 rather than royalties, assuming that option will be offered by the platform. The artist releases the track on Emanate’s platform, an action that will cost the artist a small amount of tokens and which will allow for playback on Emanate’s eventual web and mobile applications (much like Spotify, Pandora, or SoundCloud). Users who listen to music on the MN8 platform will be paying small amounts of MN8 during their hours of listening and those tokens will be distributed, as asserted by the Audio Exchange Protocol’s smart contracts, between the releasing artist, the producers of the compositional audio files, and the Emanate team themselves.

The Tech That Will Make This Happen

In addition to the aforementioned technologies, the project will be leveraging some of the following non-blockchain technologies in order to produce a platform that can satisfy both music producers and users:

Much like other similar blockchain-related projects the audio files themselves will be hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to help ensure censorship-resistance, and Emanate plans on using encryption to ensure that only users with appropriate permissions can download or play the files.

The Emanate project will initially leverage the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for file storage, and will be launched on the EOS blockchain.

For the upcoming ICO launch MN8 tokens will be distributed on the EOS blockchain, making it one of the first token sales on the platform.

The web application will be built with Javascript, much like most web apps, and the mobile app will also be Javascript-heavy (React Native, perhaps?)

The platform will also use a combination of algorithms, user-reporting, and economic incentives to help prevent music producers from profiting off of other artists’ content.

Strengths

When considering the potential of this proposed audio publishing platform we must consider some of the reasons why this project could be successful:

dApps have seen a moderate amount of success on the STEEM blockchain, a previous project of EOS founder Dan Larimer

The online music and spoken-word eco-space is long overdue for a new architecture. SoundCloud still remains unprofitable and its artists are constantly complaining about the platform’s pricing, hosting, and takedown policy. Meanwhile YouTube has been frequently in the news for its policy of demonetization and restrictive rules against videos that it finds disagreeable. In fact content producers on YouTube have been in a near uproar over the threat that YouTube’s constantly-changing policies pose to their income stream. Spotify, which is less controversial than the other two platforms, lacks the collaboration and catalogue that many users and smaller artists seek. Pedro Colaco’s DSound application has already had a measure of success. In fact the STEEM platform has proven that blockchain-based content publishing can also be done successfully in written form, video, and live streaming. The non-blockchain technologies to be used in the platform have already proven themselves in other industries. A scalable cryptocurrency could fill the role of payment both for users looking to enjoy ad-free music (which many already pay for), and artists who are looking to minimize the cut typically taken by the middle man, a role typically played by the publishing platform. The game theory-focused theme within Dan Larimer’s previous projects can add more economic incentives to the platform where traditional incentives (views / plays, likes, shares, etc) don’t get the job done. As a platform, rather than just one tool in the content production and publication process, Emanate could theoretically immerse itself into said process by being integrated into third-party applications. For example, music production software could use Emanate’s Audio Exchange Protocol as a plug-in to allow artists to browse and purchase audio content from within the external application. Likewise, a music streaming service could path into Emanate’s music catalogue without listeners even knowing the source of the music they are listening to. By making their platform accessible to third parties they give users more choice in how they may interact with it.

Challenges

Aside from being a bold projects in regards to scope, Emanate will have several challenges that it will need to overcome if it’s to accomplish even a portion of its stated plans:

Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) advocates argue that their governance system leads to improved decentralization, while some EOS opponents argue that the blockchain’s 21 block producer limit makes it too centralized

EOS is an untested platform: although previous Dan Larimer blockchain projects have been deemed successful EOS appears to be the first 3rd generation blockchain to launch, and many experts have reservations about its consensus mechanism, Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS). Limited user data: previous attempts to create successful blockchain-based content publishing applications have been hampered by underwhelming content-discovery mechanisms which can give users a poor experience. Since these projects tend not to have much server capacity and crypto users can be privacy-centric, this means that tracking users to improve the app experience can be an uphill battle. One of STEEM’s biggest weaknesses is that it has, at times, become an echo chamber rather than a place for discovery. Intellectual property law: rather than taking Napster or BitTorrent’s stance of completely disregarding property rights, Emanate will attempt to walk the very fine line of decentralized file-sharing while still enforcing proper financial accreditation. Although safeguards are in place to prevent intellectual property rights violations, other platforms have had to devote significant resources to Digital Millennium Copyright Act compliance and it’s unlikely that Emanate will want to devote human capital toward this compliance. When other platforms have started using bots in place of human enforcement, it has resulted in many accounts being suspended for false positives. Blockchain user experience: the number one knock on most dApps is that they are not easy for users to navigate… that they are confusing and take too many steps to do anything significant. Considering Emanate will need network effect to grow the user base and catalogue, and therefore improve the user experience, and one can realize that any hurdle that the average user has to jump through will greatly impede the success of the platform. Although your average music producer is technically skilled they will often be unfamiliar with cryptocurrency, and the average music consumer will be even less likely to be able to perform even the most basic of cryptocurrency steps like buying the currency or filling the wallet. Many users may get a bad taste in their mouth the first time they watch the currency decrease in price (even if it is a typical price fluctuation), and this experience is worsened when their funds are locked for a set time period. The developers may want to look for opportunities in the app to let users sacrifice customizability for ease-of-use.

The Verdict

There is little doubt that the online music publishing space is as ripe as ever for a major disruption. In today’s landscape just about nobody is happy except for artists at the very top and the labels that represent them, but forging a new future for the industry is a task that will require proper execution on several fronts. The Emanate project appears to understand this, and is proposing not just one dApp but an entire suite of software, and this broad scope will likely be its biggest challenge. Still, with a team filled with both developers and music professionals, the Emanate project has enough expertise to understand what needs to be executed in each area of their platform. I believe that there is a major cataclysm that will occur in the online music industry, and if Emanate is not the actual project to get it done then they will, at the very least, be the ones who get the ball rolling.