Gareth Emery recently announced his Blockchain project called “Choon“, which is described as “a music streaming service and digital payments ecosystem powered by the Ethereum blockchain, designed to solve some of the music industry’s most fundamental problems.” The self-proclaimed Bitcoin enthusiast has spent the past four years dabbling in various cryptocurrencies before finding Choon. The project was co-founded by longtime nightlife and tech industry participant Bjorn Niclas.
Choon’s streaming service is set to launch in early 2018 and is designed to assist young artists make a living in the music industry by promising to return 80% of their streaming revenue. The service has its own payment token called “NOTES” as well as other features like “Smart Record Contracts”, which are designed to replace most of the music industry’s procedures for licensing and contracting.
Emery said, “When it comes to getting paid fairly, artists get a worse deal today than ever. Contrary to popular belief, there is money there, but it’s going to the wrong people. We want to radically change the game; finally giving new and emerging artists a chance to be fairly paid for their music, and making it far easier to create contracts for collaborations, management, samples, and licensing. This isn’t about artists like me, who make a great living playing live, and clearly have nothing to complain about. It’s for those who rely purely on music for their income, and who don’t have touring to fall back on. It’s brutal when I talk to young artists who are getting tens of millions of streams yet still need to do a 9-5 job to put food on the table. It’s no surprise so many of them give up.”
