Arena Music Begins Offering Bitcoin Payouts for Artist Royalties
The music platform, Arena Music, has been experimenting with payouts in the popular cryptocurrency over the past six months. It unveiled its plan to offer a payout program to all artists on the platform in Bitcoin.
Beginning this month, Arena Music will begin offering royalty payouts in Bitcoin for music streamed through its Arena Platform after tests went smoothly.
Arena offers an on-demand merchandising storefront featuring a free streaming service designed to help artists monetize their content by using music as a loss leader. Arena uses music as a loss leader so as to help artists and labels redirect consumer attention to exclusive merchandise offerings.
Arena has opted to adopt Bitcoin payments to underscore the company’s forward-thinking approach to solving problems the music industry faces today. The Phoenix-based company will issue its first bitcoin payout to an independent punk band called Red Tank!.
The band’s third full-length album, “BIO/FEEDBACK”, was released in collaboration with Arena Music last August. “The band is known for their DIY ethos, energetic shows, and apocalyptic, dystopian, and existential lyricism,” Arena writes in a press release.
Frontman Clipper Arnold commented: “I think it’s an interesting, forward-thinking approach and it’s something we’re excited to be a part of. I think we share in the idea of pushing the imaginary of ways in which art can be created and can flourish outside of conventional approaches and infrastructure. I think this is a prime example of that paradigm in action.”
The company believes Bitcoin can help create a new way to monetize music. “Phoenix is seeing the impact of Arena Music payouts in Bitcoin,” Arena Music founder and CEO, Damon Evans said. “We’re watching our local music scene build the foundation for an entirely new way of releasing single tracks and full albums that pay each writer, producer and featured artist their shares of the $0.01 per stream Arena offers in Bitcoin. Now that we understand how essential this basic detail is in today’s music economy, we’re starting think that this level of transparency should accompany all royalty payment methods.”
Arena Music’s on-demand merchandise storefront, and patent-pending streaming service, is designed to encourage musicians to promote merchandise sales while listeners stream exclusive content from established artists and well qualified independent acts sans advertisements or a monthly subscription.
Several startups have investigated the way in which blockchain technology can impact the music industry, including Peer Tracks, MUSE and Ujo, which partnered with well known artist Imogen Heap to sell a track for Bitcoin.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
