A DJ has launched a new streaming service with the aim of challenging Spotify and benefitting artists.

Gareth Emery has founded Choon, a “disruptive blockchain-based music streaming service” that promises to give 80 percent of revenue to those who upload their music to the system.

The platform will allow artists to be immediately paid 80 percent of the proceeds from the streaming of their material, while offering “smart record contracts” that claim to offer “transparent” royalty splits.


Choon will only accept applications to share music directly from the artists themselves, rather than record labels. Founders say “established, independent artists with millions of followers” have already joined up to the service.

In a press release, Emery said: “In the current music streaming model, listeners can access music easily and conveniently, but artists are severely disadvantaged. The original ethos behind the likes of Spotify was to disrupt the major label monopoly and allow artists to succeed independently. Instead, Spotify is now liaising with labels under restrictive deals where both it and the labels benefit whilst artists lose out on most of the streaming revenue.”

He continued to say that while his music is streamed “millions of times each month”, he gets “less than one percent of my income from streaming and that revenue can take up to a year to actually arrive.”

“The whole thing is cloaked in secrecy,” he said. “Nobody knows what they’re going to get paid or when. I couldn’t rely on it for income and loads of people in the music industry are in the same boat without the ability to fall back to live performing. It’s time to change all that.”

A demo of Choon can be seen on the official website.


Earlier this year, Spotify announced new “visual elements” were to be added to the app. The Spotlight multimedia format will add new visual elements to podcasts, audiobooks, news, and other content. Spotify have already partnered with the likes of Buzzfeed News, Cheddar, and Lenny Letter for the project.