SMARTLABEL IS BUILDING THE MUSIC EXPERIENCE OF THE FUTURE
The technology is ready to tackle the industry’s biggest problems and make it a fairer place for artists
SmartLabel is building the streaming and royalty app TraXs, which uses web3 technology and aims to make the music industry fairer. A streaming service that puts artists over profit, TraXs allows artists to maintain control over their careers and remain independent from labels if they choose to do so. By allowing artists to influence what it costs to stream their music and providing them with more opportunities to earn from their work, SmartLabel envisions an industry where artists have full control over their music.
Besides a streaming platform, TraXs also offers the possibility for fans to directly invest in artists. By splitting the royalties from an album into smaller pieces, TraXs gives fans the option to buy the royalties for some time. This way, an artist doesn't forfeit their music rights to earn directly from royalties. It also completely changes how fans experience music as they are uniquely involved in the success of an artist.
As an artist, TraXs also allows you to know who streams your music on the platform, giving you the ability to reach out to them directly. This way, artists can reward their fans with bonuses like exclusive tracks, special offers on music or merchandise, tickets, or other content that enriches the fan experience.
While SmartLabel aims to give artists full control over their music, the company recognizes the nature of how investors and profit can influence even the clearest of missions and core values within startups.
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To combat this, they anchor their core values on chain with Open Source Software at the heart of their operation, which is publicly accessible to anyone. This ensures transparency and, as a result, the core values remain incorruptible, regardless of external influences.
To accomplish this, the core is stored on the Arweave blockchain, and because it is immutable, the core values themselves cannot be changed by external influences. This prevents, for example, the organization from deprioritising the artist because of influence or pressure from investors, as can happen in the industry today.
On this Open Core, SmartLabel and other organisations can build their new products. For instance, with help of the SmartLabel team, others can build a music promotion service or a marketplace for algorithms. This stimulates the whole industry as it creates a basis for third parties to realise their musical ambitions.
Of course, a lot of things go wrong in the music industry, Jonathan, co-founder and CEO of SmartLabel, explains, but the biggest problem is that it's incredibly difficult to extract value from what you've created as a musician. On top of that, artists don't have direct access to their fans.
Jonathan Oudekerk, founder & CEO of SmartLabel
Jonathan Oudekerk is the son of reggae artist Johnny Baby, who, among others, played with UB40. Jonathan’s father lost the rights to his album and its earnings after signing a dense contract with Virgin Records that was not in his native language.
Informed by his father's experience, not an uncommon one in the music industry, Oudekerk founded SmartLabel alongside Joost Rohde, who has a background in IT and music production. Together, they are ideally positioned at the intersection of music, entrepreneurship, and technology to understand and solve the problems of the music industry.
TraXs, SmartLabel's streaming and royalty app, will be launched as a beta during ADE later this year.
