How Blockchain Is Changing Music Copyright Registration

The Rights Infrastructure Is Broken

According to Hypebot, the music industry's metadata systems are "fragmented and inconsistent," causing royalty payments to get lost or delayed for months. There is no unified global ownership database. Each PRO, each publisher, and each streaming platform maintains its own version of who owns what — and they often don't match.

The result: according to the MLC (Mechanical Licensing Collective) in the US, there are $561 million in unmatched mechanical royalties, with roughly $9 million added every month. Money that belongs to songwriters and producers but that nobody can collect because the metadata doesn't line up.

What Blockchain Brings

Blockchain technology offers three properties that fit this problem perfectly:

Immutable timestamp. Registering a work on blockchain generates a cryptographic timestamp that serves as irrefutable proof of authorship and creation date. Nobody can alter it afterward.

Smart contracts for royalties. Smart contracts can automatically distribute payments when a work is consumed, reducing the payment cycle from months to seconds, according to Chainlink.

Verifiable transparency. Anyone can verify the ownership of a work by consulting the public record on the blockchain, without relying on intermediaries.

Who's Already Doing It

Adoption isn't theoretical. Real projects are leading the way:

Audius has over 330,000 rights holders and partnered with Music Reports to manage publisher licenses.

Royal allowed rapper Nas to sell shares in his song royalties directly to fans.

Opulous enabled Lil Pump and Tyga to tokenize future royalties through Music Copyright NFTs.

Ditto/Bluebox executed the first fractionalized copyright sale via NFT: 125 buyers acquired 1% shares in recordings at $100 each.

Sony Soneium — Sony launched its own blockchain to protect creator rights.

JAAK/KORD piloted a global rights database with Warner Music, BMG, and other labels.

It Doesn't Replace PROs, It Complements Them

As Music Business Worldwide cautions, "blockchain might revolutionize music royalties, but mass adoption won't happen overnight." The technology doesn't aim to replace SGAE, ASCAP, or BMI. What it does is add a layer of verifiability and transparency that these organizations still don't offer.

How We Use It at SPLEET

At SPLEET we use NEAR Protocol to seal every agreement on blockchain:

When all collaborators sign a split sheet, the document is cryptographically hashed

The hash is registered on NEAR with all rights holders' data

Each participant receives a verifiable certificate with the transaction ID

Anyone can verify the agreement's authenticity on the public blockchain

This seal doesn't replace registration with your PRO, but it adds immutable proof that the agreement existed on a specific date with specific terms. If there's ever a dispute, you have evidence that nobody can tamper with.

Seal your next split on blockchain with SPLEET