Excerpted from WEB3 . Reprinted here with permission from Harper Business, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
An American-born graduate of Canada’s McGill University, Jesse Walden — cofounder of Variant Fund, a leading Web3 venture capital firm — started his career in Montreal as a manager for emerging indie musicians like Solange Knowles and Blood Orange — the “types of artists you read about in Pitchfork,” he quipped. “Music is one of the most Luddite industries, when it comes to new technologies,” he told me. Walden saw an opportunity to help the artists he managed leverage technology platforms, “to reach their fans directly and monetize, independent of any major label third party.”
Applying what he knew from his time in the music industry as an agent, Walden founded Mediachain, a blockchain data solution to help creators get paid for their work online. “Bitcoin was the best-known thing going in the crypto space in 2014. We were interested in what blockchains could do for different kinds of digital assets. We did all media assets like images, videos, songs,” Walden explained. Mediachain was a good idea, and many of its core concepts are now commonplace in the NFT market. In 2014, Mediachain’s time had not yet come, partly due to the lack of a good technology platform to make it work. “This was pre-Ethereum launch,” he said. “So, a little bit too early, frankly.”
Still, Walden’s time as artist manager and media entrepreneur helped sharpen his thesis for Variant, which he started in 2018 after a stint at Andreessen Horowitz, where he helped launch its first Web3 fund. He said, “We’re all creators online of one kind or another. It doesn’t have to be music. It could be code or could be content on social media. Web3 has this potential to make all of the creators online, all of the users of these products and services, into owners.”
If Variant’s thesis is correct, and if all five billion Internet users worldwide become owners of the services they consume, with all the rights and responsibilities that ownership entails, then we must try to answer the many pressing questions about what this means for businesses and how today’s leaders should respond. Let’s start with what to call these new user-owners. Commonplace in corporate circles is “stakeholder capitalism,” the notion that companies should act not only in their shareholders’ interest, but also in the interests of their customers, supply chain partners, employees, and the communities in which they operate — and that includes the environment and the companies’ impact on climate and social inequality. While stakeholder capitalism has its flaws — after all, does society want corporate leaders deciding what’s best for society rather than the citizens themselves through their elected representatives? — by and large, stakeholder capitalism has made better corporate citizens of many a capitalist enterprise. But for user-owned networks, let’s coin a new term, stakehodler. It combines hodler — derived from the typo HODLING, meaning hanging on to one’s tokens for the long-run and expecting future value worth the pain of riding out market volatility — with the word stake, to mean an Internet user with ownership of a digital self and digital assets, who earns a fair share from whatever the user creates online. A stakehodler has both a voice and a vote, an economic interest in how each network stewards important global resources. Like hodlers, stakehodlers own tokens, not solely as long-term investments but as day-to-day experiences as Internet users. What should we call these global, decentralized, and Internet-native organizations, built on a model of token ownership, where users get a slice of the pie? Decentralized autonomous organization (or DAO) is the common term used today, suggesting something alien and technically complex. While DAOs are novel, they share a common economic thread with Silicon Valley startups, which are rooted in the human response to incentives. “If you want to get the best talent in the world to come and work on your moonshot project, you’ve got to compensate them with ownership in it,” Walden said, articulating a key Silicon Valley maxim. Owners care more. They take pride in what they do and work hard to make it succeed, because they have a stake in its future. Web3 applies the concept of ownership, normally reserved for founders, VCs, and key early employees, to entire networks. A “stakehodler” has both a voice and a vote, an economic interest in how each network stewards important global resources. “Going all the way back to Bitcoin, where the earliest developers and technologists who built and operated the Bitcoin network were rewarded with ownership for their contributions,” said Walden. So, as an investor, Variant views itself very much as a partner not only of the teams it backs, but of the user-owners of these platforms. “What really struck me and captured my attention early in my journey into crypto was, the earliest networks in the crypto world were not built in Silicon Valley. Yet, they were using the same model of ownership to attract the talent to build and operate the networks.”
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales raised the hypothetical of a peer-produced film, suggesting that, through a DAO, people in dozens of countries could participate and earn an interest in some undertaking on equal terms. Such an initiative would be nearly impossible in a Web2 world, said Wales, because “doing contracts that are legal in all those countries and then paying people is super complicated,” indeed prohibitively complicated. Instead, said Wales, “We’re going to do it as a DAO.” Sure, these kinds of early-stage ventures are risky, Wales acknowledged, but the experience of Silicon Valley tells us that plenty of knowledgeable people will accept risk in the short term for a long-term reward. This model departs from the past. In the same way that the Hollywood studio model demands creative control of IP, traditionally VCs want control over their investments or, at least, a big say in how entrepreneurs run their operations. After all, backing early-stage ventures can be risky and comes with opportunity costs. In Web3 networks, VCs (and founders, for that matter) often make up a small minority of token holders, with users owning the rest. The emergence of token-based Internet-native organizations (DAOs) represents the biggest disruption to business and the firm since the invention of the limited liability company two hundred years ago. New technologies and innovations compel business leaders into tough choices about how they move forward. At the early stages, where we are today, there are often more questions than answers, and leaders reveal themselves by the quality of their questions. Tags

Meet the Web3 “stakehodlers” revolutionizing capitalism

Los Angeles, United State, September 12, 2019,- The global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market is carefully researched in the report while largely concentrating on top players and their business tactics, geographical expansion, market segments, competitive landscape, manufacturing, and pricing and cost structures. Each section of the research study is specially prepared to explore key aspects of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. For instance, the market dynamics section digs deep into the drivers, restraints, trends, and opportunities of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM Market. With qualitative and quantitative analysis, we help you with thorough and comprehensive research on the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. We have also focused on SWOT, PESTLE, and Porter’s Five Forces analyses of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. Leading players of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market are analyzed taking into account their market share, recent developments, new product launches, partnerships, mergers or acquisitions, and markets served. We also provide an exhaustive analysis of their product portfolios to explore the products and applications they concentrate on when operating in the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. Furthermore, the report offers two separate market forecasts – one for the production side and another for the consumption side of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. It also provides useful recommendations for new as well as established players of the global Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM market. Get PDF template of this report: https://www.qyresearch.com/sample-form/form/1162716/global-blockchain-in-digital-rights-management-drm-market
Blockchain in Digital Rights Management DRM Market Leading Players
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Blockchain in Digital Rights Management Market Size, Share Industry Trend Report 2019| Mediachain , Custos Media Technologies , Scenarex

Audio Of The Week: Chris, Joel, Jesse, and Denis on Crypto
One of our first crypto investments maybe five years ago was Mediachain, founded by Denis Nazarov (@ Iiterature ), and Jesse Walden (@ jessewldn ). They sold that company to Spotify and eventually landed at A16Z crypto. One of the USV analysts who worked on our Mediachain investment was Joel Monegro (@ jmonegro ) who later teamed up with Chris Burniske (@ cburniske ) to start Placeholder , a crypto VC fund. So we know these four people very well and all of them are now deeply involved in funding early stage crypto projects. This podcast is a great conversation among the four of them on how to design cryptonetworks so that they function well over the long term. Full disclosure: USV is an investor in Placeholder and my wife and I are individual investors in A16Z crypto.

Audio Of The Week: Chris, Joel, Jesse, and Denis on Crypto

| Main
Spotify, Blockchain And Music's Future [Thomas Euler]
In this piece Thomas Euler defends his optimistic projections (sparked by Spotify's purchase of Mediachain labs) of how blockchain technology could be beneficial to the music industry, while acknowledging that there are plenty of concerns and complications involved as well. ________________________________
Guest post by Thomas Euler on Attention Econo.me
Life is funny, at least sometimes. I recently wrote about Spotify’s acquisition of the blockchain company Mediachain Labs. Just after I had published the piece, I came across David “Rocknerd” Gerard’s take on music blockchains . It’s not a very optimistic take. I decided to write a follow-up piece with a little pushback to David’s point. Then the funny part happened. A few hours later I opened the day’s Redef Music newsletter ( which you can read here if you aren’t a subscriber - which, to be sure, you definitely should be). In there, Matty Karas pitted exactly those two pieces against each other. He wrote:
Is SPOTIFY’s acquisition of blockchain company MEDIACHAIN LABS a sign of a radical new business model to come, a chance to add some solid data tools for the existing business model, both or neither? The pro-futurist argument , from THOMAS EULER at ATTENTIONECONO.ME : It’s time to find a way around the middlemen who control rights to a variety of media (e.g. record companies) and stand between content creators and content users, and blockchain technology the way. The naysayer take , from DAVID “ROCKNERD” GERARD: The business problem the industry faces isn’t how to distribute and account for content-rights data, it’s the data itself, along with the “contradictory interests” of the various parties who use it. And the last thing those parties want to create, he argues, is “a new central octopus.” This, I suspect, is the basic pro/con of all blockchain arguments in music and other media. Data vs. database. Complicated humans vs. complicated robots. Finding our pieces juxtaposed in this way, just a couple hours after I decided to respond to David’s piece, was certainly amusing. At the same time, Matty’s summary also hints at the reason why I wanted to address the piece in the first place: the difference isn’t a simple black-and-white he’s wrong, I’m right. Actually, I regard many of his points as valid issues. They highlight why the future is such a complicated thing: it’s rather easy to imagine, but actually getting there is hard. We can’t simply dismiss the status-quo. Our current reality needs to be taken into account when thinking about the future. When Matty describes my argument as pro-futurist, he isn’t wrong. I indeed think it’s generally safe to assume that the future will differ from what is today. But for every possible future, there is resilience by forces which would rather conserve the present. Those forces might not be as sexy as the next thing, but they are real. When you concern yourself with the future, it’s easy to forget that the nitty-gritty details of reality matter. As Bill Gates once famously stated:
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”
The music blockchain case is a perfect illustration of the above. The different takes David and I presented are presumably caused by different time frames at the foundation of our respective analysis. And by a diverging valuation of the power that derives from “owning the user”. Let me briefly recap both of our Spotify/Blockchain takes. In my piece , I explained that music labels are what blockchain-lingo calls a “trusted third party”. The blockchain’s appeal (to the community and investors) largely derives from its potential to replace those trusted third parties with algorithms. Labels fall into that category because rights handling — one of their essential services for artists — is a TTP function. Since their business model is largely based on owning those rights, any technology that enables an alternative approach is potentially a threat to them. I then looked at the acquisition from Spotify’s perspective. I wrote (emphasize added):
As I’ve written before , the streaming service’s best long-term scenario would be to own the music. The second best option is not having to deal with the labels, albeit not owning the music. This way, the company at least wouldn’t have to pay fortunes to the labels without turning a profit itself. The second scenario is a world where entrepreneurial artists release and manage their work in DIY fashion. But for this model to become a mainstay among creators, it must develop into a profitable alternative to the label system. …
One important component of such a future: a system that allows artists to earn royalty dollars from their music. This requires rights handling, particularly when music is accessed, not purchased . …
Trying to replace them [the labels] is playing the long game. But we can be confident that many will try to challenge the status-quo. I assume that Spotify just joined them. David, meanwhile, first explains many (valid!) concerns on the technology & data-side of things. Those details aren’t to be glossed over. They are the reason why we overestimate the change that will occur in the near future. The challenges David describes are real. Yes, I tend to believe that most of them will eventually be solved. But it will certainly take time. And likely more time than many blockchain optimists would hope. The standard comparison I use to classify blockchain technology is the internet of the early 90’s: Still way to go, with many failures to be expected on the road ahead. But the core idea is simply too promising (in many respects); people will continue to work on it. Think back to the web’s early days. Then, too, we had many skeptics as well as a bunch of optimists. As we have witnessed, the impact turned out (and still is!) profound but it also took time. And not every possible scenario materialized. However, the key part of David’s argument, the part where I think he’s overlooking an important detail, is here (emphasize mine):
The proponents’ business goal is to become the organisation controlling the newly cleaned-up data, with a monopoly maintained by network effect. The barrier that such efforts founder on, over and over, is that no industry’s players want to create a new central octopus. One problem nobody seems to mention: incumbents will treat technological change as a threat and resist it as bitterly as they have every other technology. …
And the other problem: the record companies are still way too interested in keeping their actual deals secret . Because, as IBM was actually surprised to find out with their Hyperledger blockchain project, real-life businesses of all sorts don’t want to share data even with all participants in their blockchain, but only with the people each specific deal is actually with. Funnily enough. The first highlighted point is mostly true but there is an exception: If your business model is being a platform — that is you aim to be the central place where all transactions between users and suppliers happen — you yourself need to become the “central octopus”. It’s the very definition of being a platform/aggregator. And it’s Spotify’s business model. His points regarding the incumbents opposition to change aren’t wrong. To the contrary. These objections admittedly present an obstacle; but not an insurmountable one. A little thought experiment will explain why. Let’s find out how a plausible path to a future with a broadly accepted music blockchain would have to look like. As you will see, the industry incumbents — the major labels — likely wouldn’t play a big role in it. And Spotify is particularly well positioned to pull it of (compared to anybody else).¹
A word of warning: I don’t claim that the following is going to happen. But I do regard it as feasible:
Create a digital music distribution system that establishes a direct relationship with users
Grow it to the point that artists can reliably use your system to reach a sizable audience and establish a working business model
Once the platform scaled on the user side, start offering services that present a different solution to managing rights & royalties. Target it at new artists. Don’t try to own the rights. Simply create the infrastructure that gets the job done. Iterate on that system until it works flawlessly and grow it over time
Once it has proven to be a workable solution, start to target established artists
A few remarks. I’m well aware of the delicate balancing act streaming services and labels are performing in their struggle for power. I’ve written about it at length . But the appeal of the approach above is that you might be able to pull it off without creeping on the label’s turf too obviously. You don’t set out to take artists they already signed away from them. It’s basically the Soundcloud approach — yet with an established distribution platform and a business model in place. A critical component would be to not even try to own the rights. Currently, any large-scale attempt to do so by a streaming platform would certainly result in displeased labels. As any streaming service relies on the access to their catalogues, that’s not an option. But you might get away with trying to build a rights-management infrastructure, especially when targeted at newcomers. It doesn’t necessarily take blockchain technology to build such a system, but it certainly has some useful things built-in. If you could pull that of, time would work in your favor. At least if your system is profitable. Than, more and more young artists might end up using it. At that point, having a large-scale distribution platform and a business model in place matters. Young artists love Soundcloud. But once they become famous, Soundcloud no longer is a good option because it doesn’t make you money. Spotify is in a different position though. While the company is still fighting to become profitable (its new deals certainly are an important step in the right direction), it is continuously growing its base of paying users. A few months ago, it has crossed the 50 million subscriber milestone. That’s great because Spotify’s revenue depends on scale. But profitability is also contingent on the cost of content Spotify has to bear. Lowering these costs by being less reliant upon the labels’ catalogues might go a long way in that regard. That doesn’t take a full-blown attempt to turn into a label . Creating an alternative rights-handling system as infrastructure for artists might do. It’s not a quick fix because it takes time to come to fruition. But it might be feasible, whereas the former isn’t (at least right now). The prerequisite, of course, is having a large user base that makes it attractive for artists to join. Spotify fulfills that criteria. It isn’t just another obscure blockchain startup. It is the biggest platform of paying music fans. If anybody is in a good position to try and build such a system, it’s Spotify. Particularly if it can do so without offending the labels in the early stages. To that end, their established relations with the labels (including their minority stake in Spotify) and the sizable revenue it creates for them are assets. This, in brief, is what David’s analysis, in my opinion, undervalues: Spotify “owns” music users. Hence, it is better-suited to experiment with alternative rights-management models than almost anybody else. In the long-run, such a system comes with upside: the potential to grow into an alternative to labels. Yet, the money Spotify makes them, might just convince the labels to resist not quite as bitterly as they do with every other technology. Making a desired future happen takes time, the resources to survive the meantime and a good strategic position. Twice so in the face of powerful incumbents. Right now, we don’t even know whether Spotify even wants to go in the direction I laid out. Even if they do, success remains uncertain. But pursuing that path would be aligned with the company’s best interest. And as of right now, they are in a pretty solid position to try. ¹ Apple, while not having the same user base, has a way bigger warchest. Yet, Apple Music isn’t central to the company’s business. In theory they could go down that route as well. But I’m not convinced they are focused on doing so. Thomas Euler: Analyst, writer. At the intersection of tech, media and the digital economy. Founder of www.attentionecono.me . For more info check: www.thomaseuler.de | Munich
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Spotify, Blockchain And Music's Future [Thomas Euler]

Spotify, the $8 billion music streaming service provider, which is projected to reach 100 million users and a $53 billion valuation by 2020, acquired Mediachain, a startup backed by leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, to simplify royalties utilizing bitcoin’s underpinning technology. In March, Spotify found itself amidst legal troubles with its partnered musicians, record labels and producers over unpaid royalties. According to the announcement of the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), Spotify settled a $25 million deal and a $5 million penalty over unpaid and unmatched songs. Upon the settlement of the $30 million deal, Spotify’s Global Head of Communications and Public Policy Jonathan Prince admitted that while the company has been committed in compensating its musicians and publishers since its launch in October of 2008, tracking all of its registered songs streamed by tens of millions of users and distributing royalties accurately and proportionally has been difficult. “As we have said many times, we have always been committed to paying songwriters and publishers every penny. We appreciate the hard work of everyone at the NMPA to secure this agreement and we look forward to further collaboration with them as we build a comprehensive publishing administration system,” Prince stated. At the time, NMPA President and CEO David Israelite emphasized that through the multimillion-dollar deal, music streaming service providers including Spotify will allocate more resources into compensating musicians and publishers transparently and properly. He further noted that NMPA and Spotify found the appropriate method of distributing royalties to music creators. “I am thrilled that through this agreement both independent and major publishers and songwriters will be able to get what is owed to them. We must continue to push digital services to properly pay for the musical works that fuel their businesses and after much work together, we have found a way for Spotify to quickly get royalties to the right people. I look forward to all NMPA members being paid what they are owed, and I am excited about the creation of a better process moving forward,” Israelite said. Spotify’s recent acquisition of Mediachain represents a large part of the vision established with NMPA. By utilizing blockchain technology, which is transparent, immutable and irrefutable, Spotify aims to develop and integrate a more fair platform for musicians and publishers. For this reason, Spotify acquired media-and-information-sharing-focused blockchain infrastructure provider Mediachain. The Spotify development team explained that the engineers and developers of Mediachain will join Spotify in its New York offices to help co-build an efficient royalty-tracking platform specialized for Spotify. In an official statement, Spotify announced:
“Brooklyn-based Mediachain Labs has been the driving force behind the Mediachain project, a world-class blockchain research agenda and open source protocol to better manage data that is critical to the health of the music industry. The Mediachain team will join our New York City offices and help further Spotify’s journey towards a more fair, transparent and rewarding music industry for creators and rights owners.”
Next year, in 2018, Spotify will officially launch an initial public offering (IPO) and take the company public. The acquisition of Mediachain and the Spotify team’s dedication to solve issues in regard to royalties and creator compensation, which could potentially emerge as a major financial setback in the future, demonstrate the company’s eagerness to justify its valuation to its investors and its presence in the music industry. Trending Now

Spotify Acquires Blockchain-Based Startup to Tackle Fair Royalty Issues

Banking is only the beginning: 65 big industries blockchain could transform

Companies in this collection build, apply, and analyze blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies for business or consumer use cases. Categories include blockchain infrastructure and development, crypto & DeFi, Web3, NFTs, gaming, supply chain, enterprise blockchain, and more.

Blockchain

The Digital Content collection includes companies that use technology to create, manage, and distribute digital content under all forms, including images, videos, audio, and text, among others.

Digital Content & Synthetic Media

Acq - Talent

Seed VC

Mediachain provides blockchain data technology. It automatically connects media to its creator and information about it. It automatically connects media to its creator and information, empowering developers, creators, and more. It was founded in 2016 and is based in New York, New York.

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Yusef Napora	Founder	Current
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MediaChain

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MediaChain Management Team

4 Team Members