British singer and songwriter Imogen Heap is building what she calls a “fair trade” music industry that aims to sidestep middlemen like iTunes and Spotify and give musicians more ownership over the money and data produced by their work. Heap’s latest song, “Tiny Human,” a ballad to her newborn daughter, debuted last year on a site called Ujo Music where users can buy the song, as well as the track’s key, tempo, and stems, using

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British art-pop singer-songwriter Imogen Heap has signed a worldwide agreement with Downtown Music Publishing, as both parties to the deal explore new ways of administering royalties for all songwriters and artists. Heap, a Grammy- and Ivor Novello-winning solo artist who was a co-writer and producer on Taylor Swift's 1989, released a new track, "Tiny Human," on Oct. 2 using blockchain technology. She's also at work on a "fair trade" music distribution and payment system that Read More
We started the second Future of Work event with an introduction to Mycelia from Imogen Heap.  If you haven’t read it yet, the two-part interview she did on Forbes is a great starting point.  In a nutshell, she calls it “Fairtrade for musicians”  it’s intended to be a way of using smart contracts on the blockchain to manage metadata about an artist’s works (including that important metadata about price and how money gets distributed after each Read More
Music was once scarce. Before the days of MP3 and P2P file sharing, you didn’t have the ability to hear songs whenever you wished unless you bought them. Today one does not even need to download songs, as platforms such as VEVO and YouTube host many of the most popular songs of yesterday and today. The industry was faced with a definitive problem in an age of liberal copy and distribution technology: finding new ways Read More
[vc_custom_heading text="This is custom heading element with Google Fonts" font_container="tag:h2|text_align:left" google_fonts="font_family:Montserrat%3Aregular%2C700|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"] This is another Bitcoin and the Arts podcast with John Stuart! This month’s show is all about an idea that is still developing in the mind of singer-songwriter Imogen Heap. She calls it Mycelia, and it’s a way for artists to store every bit of information about their music (everyone that helped create it, who’s reusing it, etc.) in a decentralized manner. Combined with cryptocurrency and smart contracts, Read More
Following on from the launch of AudioCoin (ADC) at MIDEM in June, Aurovine were invited to participate in the release of Imogen’s Tiny Human single using blockchain technology. Don’t be put off by the tech speak surrounding this new new technology. Essentially it simply aims to bring transparency and fair trade into the music industry. This is achieved by allowing for instant transactions (clearly recorded on an open public ledger that cannot be altered), and Read More
I’ve been in the music industry for 20 years. Officially I got signed when I was 17, and I’ve seen it change quite a lot over the years.  To the point where I’m now out of a record label, out of management, out of a publishing company, and for the first time in my life I’m actually free, completely.  So I’m in a way in the place where a new artist might be if they were Read More
Musician and technologist Imogen Heap has demonstrated how a song can be released as a digital contract and then shared transparently and completely fairly on a blockchain without the need for intermediaries of any kind. Heap released her new single and video, Tiny Human, on Friday 2 October at a special Guardian Live event, giving a group of hackers and developers from the likes of Ethereum exactly 24 hours to show how the future via Read More
When was the last time you bought a CD or a record? Chances are, you’re listening to more music than ever, but buying less of it. In 2012, for the first time, digital sales of songs – such as iTunes – surpassed physical sales. More likely still is that you were on YouTube or Spotify, which host hundreds of thousands of songs, played billions of times. It’s a golden age for music. Except plenty of Read More
Imogen Heap and I recently had a free-wheeling discussion on the future of the music business, crypto currency, and her most recent innovation: an idea she refers to as Mycelia. In Part One of our Interview, Ms. Heap discussed the problems endemic to the music business that have led her to muse upon Mycelia. Here, in Part Two of our conversation, Ms. Heap presents an expansive view on the challenges and opportunities facing the music industry Read More