More Info - Internet Music

Registration, release and licensing

To make sure that all royalties are paid to the correct owners of the copyright, three processes must be in place: registration, release and licensing.

Copyright registration places on record a verifiable account of the date and content of the work in question, so that in the event of a legal claim, or case of infringement or plagiarism, the copyright owner can produce an indisputable copy of the work from a reliable source.

With the registration of copyright, a unique CopyrightID is created with an initial number of shares and an immutable date and time stamp. Each share is allocated to a shareholder that are part of the creative effort and entitled to royalty payments accordingly.

Releasing the content is simply making it available for licensing by DSPs. The CopyrightID is the unique identifier any DSP (Spotify, Netflix, Financial Times etc.) relates to. CopyrightID is always used in any licensing request from a DSP upon which a royalty payment in CopyrightCoins are divided among registered CopyrightShare holders according to the copyright smart contract.
.

The value of music

The value of a copyright ownership is reflected in the popularity of the song. If the song is part of a back catalogue (i.e. older than 18 months) there is a fairly good backdrop for estimation of that particular song’s royalties and that value can be expressed in a formula coded into smart contracts. The longer the music has been around, the easier it is to estimate a value based upon historical payments of royalties. If it’s a fairly new release (< 3 years) its first year’s royalties payments and reduced with 15% each year thereafter.

The escrow promise

There is a “pot” of 700 million CopyrightCoins (CCIM) dedicated to paying advances to content owners in our ecosystem. The advances are paid on a simple basis under exclusive administration agreements.

If a musical work generated an average of €100,000 in royalties over the last 10 years. At registration of the copyright within the CopyrightChains ecosystem, a copyright administration agreement is signed with New Internet Media. And sign-off, an advance of 100,000 CCIM (equivalent of €100.000 if €1.00 = 1.00 CCIM) is paid per year the exclusive administration agreement is running.

During a period of transition between collecting royalties via public rights organizations and DSP the royalties coming in the “old” way is then placed in escrow with the Internet Media Copyright Association (IMCA) as guarantee for the CCIM value.

If the value of CCIM raised above €1.00 per CCIM the profit goes to the holder of the CCIM and the equivalent in EUR is released from the escrow into the EUR account of Internet Media Copyright Association (IMCA). If the value falls below 1.00 CCIM = €1.00 the escrow account guarantees the payment of the 1.00 CCIM = €1.00 (must wait until funds are available due to old ways of receiving).

When the exclusive rights are transferred to the New Internet Media and by extension the partner handling the copyrights, the DSPs will buy CopyrightCoins (to pay for the licensing of music) from IMCA and as such EUR will be the basis for the value of CCIM for all owners of copyright.