Revelator wants to distribute royalties faster using blockchain. Revelator raised $2.5 million this week by promising to efficiently track music rights and distribute royalties to rights owners. To do that, the startup is using blockchain — best known as the technology behind Bitcoin — to get money to musicians and managers more quickly. A blockchain is a shared ledger that can record almost any kind of transaction. For Bitcoin, the blockchain keeps a public record of financial transactions made using the digital currency. The key innovation is that blockchain doesn’t require any central control. Revelator is harnessing that technology for the music industry. The immediacy of blockchain’s record-keeping allows Revelator to track uses of digital assets and get royalties of any size to those owed as fast as possible. Normally, artists and others who own rights to music wait months to receive royalties. It’s even more complicated when multiple people split the rights to the same song. Revelator says almost half of royalty payments aren’t getting to the correct owner because of outdated systems. "If you have data every day, why can’t we make payments every day?" Revelator founder and CEO Bruno Guez told Mashable . "If you had 1,000 downloads, I can pay you $700 tomorrow." That speed is thanks to blockchain, Guez said. Revelator is targeted toward rights holders, who can use the technology to license and distribute their music or other content. It’ll track downloads, streams on Spotify and other services, and more. "The blockchain technology does provide a truly disruptive technology for the music industry," he said. "It’s not the only thing that matters and it won’t solve all the problems in the industry, but I do believe our current offering introduces new features for music." The way Revelator is using blockchain can be applied […]
