Sacem’s Subsidiary URights Launch MusicStart, A Simple Way To Establish Copyright

The Music Copyright Landscape

Music and songs are a special type of intellectual property that by nature are protected by European copyright law.

This protection is a right that comes automatically as soon as the music is created. This means that you are not required to register your musical creation with an intellectual property institution. 

Sounds great, but the challenge is to be able to prove you are the creator. The most common way to provide this proof, is to provide proof of anteriority.

This basically means you need to somehow attach a timestamp to a (digital) version of your creation to prove when exactly you officially released your work to the public.

Your actual proof of “hey this is me and this is my creation, signed by me at 09:16 hrs April 20th 2022“. 

If someone else publishes your song at a later date, and you provide your proof of anteriority, it is legally assumed that you are the creator and not the person that published at a later date and time. When it comes to copyrights, the proof is in the proof.

MusicStart

Proof of anteriority is traditionally provided through intervention of a Bailif, which is costly both in time and money, or through digital timestamps.

The problem with a digital timestamp, is that you need to trust the database that creates and stores the proof. 

If only there was something like a trustless database…. Which is exactly what blockchain is. (If decentralized). A transaction on a decentralized blockchain is the perfect, undeniable, rocksolid, trustless timestamp. 

MusicStart utilizes the Tezos blockchain to provide proof of anteriority.

MusicStart allows all creators to protect their works in two minutes, and to obtain proof of anteriority, unfalsifiable and eternal, thanks to the blockchain.

With MusicStart, it only takes 2 minutes and a few clicks. All you have to do is upload your scores, lyrics or music, in the form of jpeg, pdf or audio files.

A certificate of authenticity on the blockchain is then issued. It takes the form of a hash , a single, eternal, and irrefutable string of characters. 

Sacem

MusicStart is created by URights, a subsidiary of Sacem.  Sacem is The Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers.

Sacem has one mission: to authorize the use of its members’ repertoire against payment.

Founded in 1851, Sacem currently has over 170,000 members, 620,000 customers and a collection of rights worth 1,066.5 million Euros.

Sacem signed contracts with iTunes in 2004, with Deezer in 2007, with Spotify in 2008, Netflix in 2014, Apple Music and Amazon Prime in 2015, SoundCloudin 2016 then Facebook in 2018.  

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