The music industry is broken, but if you’ve worked within the confines of the creative community even briefly, you’ve probably heard that a hundred times over. While this is primarily true, what is the point of complaining about a problem if you don’t come prepared to discuss solutions? It all starts with the basic understanding and belief, if you subscribe to it, that the creatives should be at the top of the proverbial entertainment totem pole.

Although artists may take the limelight at concerts, award ceremonies, and other public-facing events, beneath the surface dwells something nefarious and far less appropriately structured. On paper, creatives are all but completely at the bottom of the totem pole. The standard holds that their work and identities are completely owned by the wolves and wares they bring into their camp.

 

We talked with Ujo co-founder Jesse Grushack about how Ujo’s digital rights management platform is enabling fairness and transparency in the process of artistic expression, and how musicians can eventually make the living they deserve from their work.

Earlier this year, Ujo teamed up with Capitol Records to organize their first LA-based, music-focused Capitol360 Hackathon alongside the newly minted Capitol Innovation Center (CIC). The goal is to bring innovation, creativity, autonomy, and fairness back to the creative, solving once and for all the issue of lopsided artist compensation and monetization systems.

 

Hey Jesse! Can you talk about the ethos of Ujo and what your goals are for the music industry as a whole?

Jesse: We started this project with the goal of getting artists paid more and getting paid fairly. That’s obviously a lofty goal and also slightly undefined. We never defined what fair is. As we continued the journey we realized that it’s not up to us to necessarily define fair but it’s up to us to build a system where artists are no longer at the bottom of the system. It’s their content and creativity, they should have the ultimate say over how it’s exploited. Since Ujo’s inception, our goals have shifted to empower musicians with the tools they need to run their own ecosystem, to create an industry owned by artists.

How are you achieving these goals?

Utilizing Ethereum, we’re able to automate a lot of the business administration out of the industry. Think accounting, contracts, licensing. All of that is automatable or at least more so than what it currently is. That way we can focus more on artists and creating more art than on the mundane tasks that we currently do.

What can the platform do to improve the streaming and royalty issues plaguing current streaming platforms?

Legally speaking, enabling downloads was the easiest path forward. If you look at the industry, Bandcamp is also one of the only profitable music companies. We do plan to make a move into streaming but will not be utilizing the broken models currently employed by most streaming services. Ideally, someone could build a streaming service on top of the Ujo architecture.