RockStock™ is creating a system that allows artists to tokenize and sell future rights to revenue from their performances, production events, albums and catalog. Initially, this platform will allow artists to showcase their songs and perform to a global audience. This will serve as a launch event for the artist’s career and allow them to generate song revenues via NFT’s and engage fan partnership through Equity Crowdfunding via STO’s.

As the artist performs, the event can be recorded in front of a live audience. The recordings are then timestamped and held in storage and even as the artist is on-stage, editors will work to cut together the best version of the performance. Sometime after the performance is finished, an ‘ideal’ version will be written to the ledger in a single transaction as an NFT.

Using Metanet technology, the data can be contained within a front end that allows users to find access and pay for it simply and quickly using Crypto or fiat currency. Fiat currency would be paid in through the legacy money network and managed by a smart contract. Once possible, the system will provide a seamless interface to any national currencies issued on the Platform.

The front end app can give the user options to buy access to a video or a collection of videos for a single watch, a day, a week, a year or for life. The recording’s ownership rights are managed by a RockStock™ smart contract. The contract is paid up-front by the consumer and can be renewed simply and easily if it expires. This would allow a dedicated fan to pay once for a lifetime of access to that copy, or allow someone who prefers a rolling playlist to purchase rights for a week or a day, or even just a number of times, (once, ten times…). You can even go so far as to measure and bill access per second. A full spectrum is possible.

The contract that manages the revenue distribution and rights ownership for each piece of content is also a RockStock™ smart contract. This contract pays out a dividend into the creators’ trust.

A creators’ trust is set up such that the artist or artists, producers and workers receive credit tokens. These tokens are static and without value, but give receiving parties an immutable credit in the creation of any content. This trust is an easy way to touch everyone involved with the financial and critical success of the project, and provides a very simple and easy way for workers in the industry to track their achievement.

All credited contributors would also be paid for their work on the edit and the artist and anyone who is contracted to receive revenue shares would receive them at the time when Creator’s trust smart contract is created. Depending on the contract rules, ownership rights would typically then be able to be freely traded on the open market. The platform then uses an exchange-like marketplace where executives, fund managers and collectors could purchase the rights to content revenue.

One aspect of this marketplace would be an ability to create rights holding trusts which themselves can purchase NFT ownership of multiple different pieces of content. These can be from a particular artist, year, genre or simply represent the interest of the owner. These contracts can also collect revenues into a trust which can be distributed to members, or used to buy further rights. Through this system, a multi-tiered architecture can form, allowing a dynamic and vibrant marketplace to emerge very quickly.

Each contract has costs for which it charges contract action fees. These are very cost effective with most exchange events priced at a fraction of a cent. The cost of storing high definition media on the ledger will drop by at least one order of magnitude within 2 years.

This means that every single person who consumes that content will be paying directly into the Creators’ trust. The full revenue generated by a single piece of content becomes instantly visible, and successful artists with huge revenue income can use this to build their reputation.

It now also becomes possible to create multiple different versions of a performance with different viewpoints and overlays, allowing users to skip between different perspectives in a time locked replay of parallel tracks. Video can be sourced from any file captured with the correct timestamp information. This allows for a model where anyone who records an event on a device can offer their recording for others to use and be credited and/or paid every time someone watches their version of the edit.

The use of RockStock™ NFT’s allows RockStock™ to achieve things heretofore impossible with music distribution, which provide artists, and fans an unprecedented means to connect and a fairer and more transparent way of paying for revenue from performance art.

THE ROCKSTOCK™ TIMECHAIN

The first breakthrough is the use of the ledger’s capacity to act as a ‘timechain’ whereby complete events can be encapsulated in unique transactions and written to the ledger, stamped with a time and wrapped in a playback contract. Once an event is captured on the ledger in a static, unchangeable way, every single playback event can be tied to that one copy. This gives listeners and viewers unprecedented certainty that the content they are being presented is genuine and that the artist is being fairly paid.

PAYMENT CHANNELS AND MICROTRANSACTIONS

The second breakthrough is the use of payment channels and the ledger’s capacity to accommodate vast numbers of microtransactions which allows the service to operate without subscriptions, and with a huge degree of transparency. Songs can be billed per second, per listen or the rights purchased outright. These transactions can each represent fractions of a cent, however can be cost-effectively billed using the upcoming ROCKSTOCK™ ledger and advanced network infrastructure.

TOKENIZATION OF OWNERSHIP RIGHTS

The third and most critical breakthrough is the ability to tokenize the rights to the distribution of revenues taken via the platform and paid in microtransactions. Individual performances can be divided into shares and sold to fans as NFT’s, companies or more. Artists can choose to sell part of a performance for an up-front payment, or may keep the full rights for themself, retaining 100% of the revenues. Importantly, when an artist retains some or all of the rights to their own music, a fan who consumes their content would end up making payments directly to that artist. This is a fundamental change to the fan-artist relationship and removes several layers of middlemen and organizational cruft which whittles down the returns to the artist. In this way, access to music can become cheaper, more equitable and far more enjoyable.