@juanlentino3Founder, Independent
Shipped: Provenance as Substrate: signed credit for music
Open-source architecture that signs credit into audio at the moment of creation, so who made what travels with the work instead of being reconstructed later from metadata. It sits beneath DDEX and the identifiers the industry already uses (ISRC, ISWC, ISNI), built on C2PA, W3C Verifiable Credentials and DIDs. The problem it targets: the $424M in unmatched royalties the MLC inherited in 2021, money that couldn’t find its owners. Papers are on SSRN, the second is under review at JAES, and builders are already developing on top of it.
AudioMusicOpen sourceProvenanceRights
Comments2
Who has to adopt this first for it to start shrinking that $424M in unmatched royalties: recording software makers, labels, or the MLC?
Recording software makers, and it’s not close. Provenance only works if it’s signed at the moment of creation, and that moment happens inside the DAW, or on a signing device in the room. Labels and the MLC can’t add it after the fact; they can only check it.
One honest correction to my own framing: this won’t shrink the $424M legacy pool. That money comes from works that were already lost before anyone signed anything. What it can shrink is the ongoing flow, the roughly $210M that keeps landing unmatched, because new works would arrive with credit already attached.
The order I’d expect: a DAW or plugin maker ships signing as a feature, distributors carry the signed record alongside the DDEX delivery, and the MLC accepts it as matching evidence. The MLC doesn’t have to lead. It just has to say yes when signed works start showing up.
2 comments
Who has to adopt this first for it to start shrinking that $424M in unmatched royalties: recording software makers, labels, or the MLC?
Recording software makers, and it’s not close. Provenance only works if it’s signed at the moment of creation, and that moment happens inside the DAW, or on a signing device in the room. Labels and the MLC can’t add it after the fact; they can only check it.
One honest correction to my own framing: this won’t shrink the $424M legacy pool. That money comes from works that were already lost before anyone signed anything. What it can shrink is the ongoing flow, the roughly $210M that keeps landing unmatched, because new works would arrive with credit already attached.
The order I’d expect: a DAW or plugin maker ships signing as a feature, distributors carry the signed record alongside the DDEX delivery, and the MLC accepts it as matching evidence. The MLC doesn’t have to lead. It just has to say yes when signed works start showing up.