DMS: An Architecture of a Decentralized-based Music Streaming Platform using Blockchain

Abstract

Managing royalty fees in the music business is the task that is done by record labels, music retailers, and performance-right organization firms. Royalty fees are mostly distributed in a centralized manner. A centralized-based approach may be straightforward for managing a music business. However, a centralized-based approach prevents artists to be able to set their revenue model for their music and getting paid promptly. To allow an artist to have freedom in setting their revenue model, a decentralized-based approach may need to be proposed. In this work, we propose to apply Blockchain and Smart Contract in the music business to propose a decentralized-based music streaming service that allows artists can independently design their royalty fee model and get paid promptly. Our proposal is based on an extension of ERC20 and ERC721 standards on writing a smart contract. Our proposal is deployed and tested in a private Ethereum-based blockchain in a laboratory-controlled environment to determine the feasibility and gas fee required. The result suggests that the business logic required in our contract does not consume a high amount of gas fee. Hence, it can be deemed that our contract design is suitable for deploying in an actual decentralized-based music streaming service.