David Gerard, who previously wrote about
why you can’t put the music industry on a blockchain, takes a very critical look at music blockchain startup
Ujo Music‘s new project with artist
RAC:
“Ujo Music are asking a lot of the right questions. But they don’t have answers, only promises that they might come up with answers in the future. Fundamentally, they are still starting from “blockchain!” and trying to find a problem it can be applied to, rather than starting with a problem and trying to solve it.”
I’m not close enough to
Ujo to argue this, but the above is a common problem in the blockchain space in general (music startup
Stem is a good example of a startup that took good concepts from blockchain, but decided not to use blockchain).
Furthermore, I think the usability issues highlighted in the article underscore the fact that many entrepreneurs in music underestimate the difficulty of building good user-facing music services. Adding a technology like blockchain to the mix makes things way more challenging.