Title: Towards a blockchain-based music royalty system

Authors: Yichen Jiang; Stephanos Matsumoto; Thitipong Bischof

Addresses: Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA ' Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA, USA ' Mastercard/University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland

Abstract: Despite great technological advances in the music industry at large, royalty payment systems for licensing musical works have been slow to keep up. The complexity of modern music royalties and the slow progress of innovation have resulted in reduced or missing royalties paid to songwriters and artists, and existing attempts to improve this state of affairs have been piecemeal and difficult to deploy. In this paper, we present TARP, an exploratory music royalty distribution system that considers each layer of functionality, including the management of identities, musical works, rightsholder information, licensing, and royalty payments. The design of TARP also allows for interfacing with external information, providing a path for incremental deployment. Through a prototype implementation in Ethereum and Intel SGX, we show that while TARP is not a complete solution to the problems plaguing music royalties, it provides concrete improvements at a modest deployment and operational cost.

Keywords: blockchain; smart contract; Ethereum; copyright; music; SGX.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPR.2024.142533

International Journal of Student Project Reporting, 2024 Vol.2 No.2, pp.174 - 201

Received: 16 Dec 2023
Accepted: 18 Mar 2024
Published online: 06 Nov 2024 *

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