How Blockchain Tech Could Get Kanye West Out Of Debt, Solve Facebook’s Video Problem
In the wake of an allegedly impoverished Kanye West's recent tweetstorm demanding a cash infusion from Mark Zuckerberg, George Howard has some ideas for both parties wherein the use of music in Facebook's videos could be monetized using Blockchain tech, creating a win-win situation for both the rapper and social network.
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Guest Post by George Howard on Forbes
In a series of tweets, Kanye West called on Mark Zuckerberg (and, in a seeming afterthought, Larry Page) to “help [him]” by investing “ 1 billion dollars into Kanye West.”
One on hand, this request seems to come from financial imperative: “I write this to you my brothers while still 53 million dollars in personal debt… ”
On the other, a sense that Mr. Zuckerberg, et al., should generally be doing more to support artists:
“All you dudes in San Fran play rap music in your homes but never help the real artists…"
Hard to know exactly what’s going on here – according to MarketWatch, Mr. West is worth an estimated $100 million.
Far be it from me, however, to question someone’s personal balance sheet or motives.
I do, however, have a suggestion that could speak to both of Mr. West’s issues by using Blockchain Technology to increase his revenue from Mr. Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
Kanye West believes Facebook should be doing more for him. George Howard provides a Blockchain Tech solution that could help Mr. West and other artists. Vantage News/IPx (AP Photo/Bruce Barton)
As most of us have encountered, uploading video to Facebook can be problematic if that video has copyrighted music in it.
There are a host of rights issues related to combining copyrighted music with video and then reproducing, distributing, and broadcasting (i.e. publicly performing) that video.
Absent the appropriate licenses between the rights holders of the music and the parties using the music, there is potentially copyright infringement. The risk of this infringement is what forces Facebook (and others) to put systems in place to attempt to block the posting of infringing material on their site.
The downside of this approach, however, is that not only are those attempting to post their videos frustrated/confused/disappointed, and, of course, the viewers of these music-less videos have a suboptimal experience, but so too are artists – like Mr. West - potentially harmed by this approach.
For instance, currently, if you shoot a video of your cat doing something adorable while Mr. West’s music is playing in the background, and you then try to upload this video to Facebook, for the reasons iterated above, you will likely not be able to.
However, what if you were presented with the option to pay some small fee to post this cat/Kanye West video to Facebook? Would you pay a dollar for this right? A penny?
Certainly, many people would refuse to pay anything, but others would pay.
How many would pay? How much? Who knows.
Currently, there’s no possible way to know if a market exists for people to pay for music used in this way. Just as before Facebook and Zynga created a market for people to pay for things like virtual livestock in Farmville, few people conceived of such a transaction.
Of course, rights and transactions around music are far more complex than those around virtual livestock (I suppose), and that’s where emergent technology, such as Blockchain could provide a solution.
Here’s how:
Utilizing Blockchain Technology, Mr. West would create a record of his work on the Bitcoin Blockchain, and ascribe that work with data and rights that would delineate what uses and at what price he would approve.
By utilizing so-called “Smart Contracts” – that are a key element of Blockchain Technology – whenever someone attempted to use Mr. West’s work in a way he delineated, the “contract” would execute, and the money would flow directly to Mr. West (or his designees), and the user would have the ability to use his work in the limited manner stipulated by the Smart Contract.
Put simply: Mr. West creates a set of rules – such as, “[Song X] may be synchronized to a video created by any individual (i.e. non-business), and posted to their personal Facebook page in consideration for [some amount of currency].”
Of course, the video would have to adhere to Facebook’s general terms of service, which would reduce the risk of the song being synchronized with video that a reasonable person would find offensive.
Additional rules – via the Smart Contract – could be added as well: perhaps once the video is viewed, shared, Liked, etc. over a certain number of times, an additional payment would have to be made or the video would be removed.
Even with very small individual transaction amounts, such a solution could lead to material revenue – imagine the number of people who are currently frustrated by not being able to utilize Mr. West’s and other’s music in their Facebook videos.
Some artists, of course, will desire not to participate in such a system, and they should absolutely not be forced to do so. Other artists will embrace this with gusto, and perhaps encourage their fans (by offering their music at a lower rate) to utilize their music in their homemade videos.
Of course, an additional benefit is promotion. In this scenario, the artists’ music would potentially be exposed to a host of people who could become fans…people who – absent such a Blockchain Technology solution – would potentially never hear the music.
Are there issues/problems/flaws/details to be worked through with this? Of course. Are they surmountable? Impossible to know, but – as a rule – when market demand meets technological innovation, solutions emerge. I would argue we have the market demand, and we’re perilously close (if not already there) to having the sufficient technology.
An issue is that a UGC video that gets 1 billion views would give the same income as the one with 10 views if the user pays prior to upload. And it can easy be a mess since audio is so easy to rip and remove any kind metadata connected to audio (the analogue loophole).