By: Staff Writer
July 13, 2021
Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the world of data storage and finance, but very few people know that blockchain technology can help aspiring artists put their music out over the blockchain and be assured to be paid for their work.
John Francis, owner/operator of DanceBeat records, spoke to Caribbean Magazine Plus and he explained to us how this can happen and said that he started a music streaming platform over eight years ago called Caribbean Downloads and considers this a new avenue for aspiring musicians to get paid music they upload for the internet.
Mr Francis also said: “I remember going to present my concept to venture capitalists and they asked me how my work is, and I told them I’m at downloading music now because downloads are where people don’t pay for the tracks, instead they buy access to the tracks.”
Convinced eight plus years ago that streaming was the wave of the future, Mr Francis persisted and Caribbean downloads is still operating and helping musicians to upload their content.
The St Kitts born Francis also said: “I continued with my streaming platform, Caribbean downloads, and tried to develop a Caribbean based platform to get the stuff out, but in the Caribbean we don’t have the numbers. The music industry is completely on the underdeveloped.
“With the advent now of Afro-beats which another long story, because the Afro-beat is now a prime genre and will lead the way in Afro-Caribbean music for the next 10 years, that’s for sure.”
He explained that he has been involved with the Afro-beat for three years now and is pushing Caribbean downloads towards the African market. “Where we are now is streaming a lot of African music on Caribbean downloads, you can find a lot of African music on there now.”
He added: “What I do now is to develop distribution of music through blockchain, blockchain is where it’s going to go.”
Blockchain technology, while in use for the past five plus years prominently in the financial services industry backing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, has not been effectively used in the media industry as a way to preserve content, something Mr Francis wants to change.
“What I’m pushing now is to develop a new form of distribution, which would be the distribution of music with using the blockchain concept that when an artist has music played, he gets paid through the blockchain and the blockchain will take care of everybody,” said Mr Francis and added: “All the relationships between all parties within the chain, whether they be studios or writers, the labels and publishers, record stores, the streaming platforms, radio stations, everybody will be involved, and then they’ll get paid directly through blockchain. They’ll see that money in their pockets, which hopefully they can get in cryptocurrency.”
Mr Francis has all of the experience in the music industry that a Caribbean national could have, having started out his music careers in the United Kingdom before moving back to St Kitts where he was born. He was instrumental in bringing to the public well known recording artists like Aswad as well as working with major labels like Sony.
He has been involved in the media and entertainment business at all levels, from advertising and publishing to being an accomplished musician himself.