How Blockchain Could Have Prevented Taylor Swift’s Song Ownership Battle

The music industry has been broken for years and years, reliant on an ever-growing list of middlemen – record labels, managers, streaming platforms, etc. – who take most of the cut from an artist's success. A perfect example: Taylor Swift recently re-recorded two of her early albums in order to finally own the copyright of some of her biggest hits. Comedians, writers, and TikTok stars have joined the fight for more ownership over their intellectual property, especially on today’s internet of copy, paste, and download. But crypto enthusiasts have championed the blockchain as a solve for the problem. Professor George Howard from the Berkeley School of Music explains how this could apply in the music industry. He says technology making it easier for artists to record and distribute their music themselves has already started to shift power back to creators, but blockchain could be the last frontier toward financial autonomy.