# Decentralized Music Platform with Automated Royalty Payments via Smart Contracts

> The distribution of royalties in the music industry is opaque due to globally asynchronous rights metadata management. Ujo Music uses the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts to enable direct sales and automatic payouts for musicians. The project was founded alongside ConsenSys and includes Joseph Lubin, co-creator of the Ethereum blockchain, as a team member.

**Sector:** Tertiary sector · **Industry:** Publishing · **Organisation:** Audius (aktiv); Ujo Music/ConsenSys und Spotify/Mediachain (historisch) · **Maturity level:** Concept

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/audius-musiklizenzen-automatisch-abrechnen

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Concept
- **Evidence:** Evidence high
- **Editorial review:** Ufuk Avci, 15 April 2026

## Description

Ujo Music was developed in 2016 in Brooklyn by ConsenSys as a blockchain-based music platform for automatic licence billing. The historical starting point: in October 2015, artist Imogen Heap released the song Tiny Human on the Ethereum blockchain — the world’s first officially blockchain-licensed music piece.

Ujo solved a fundamental problem in the music industry: who holds which rights to a music piece, and how revenues are shared. Today, this information is spread across inconsistent registries; labels and publishers take 50-80% of revenues; artists wait months for statements. Ujo’s approach: artists register music pieces with a complete rights graph (who holds what share of composition, performance, mastering) as a smart contract on Ethereum; every stream, download or sample licence triggers a micro-payment that is immediately distributed according to the rights graph. This eliminates: (1) labels as cash flow intermediaries, (2) publishing collecting societies, (3) quarterly billing cycles. Technical.ly Brooklyn reported extensively on Ujo in 2016. Ujo was later discontinued; the concept lived on in Audius (7 million users, Solana blockchain, 90% artist share) — a direct successor to this vision.

## Benefits

- Companies can significantly reduce their administrative costs for rights management while improving compliance.
- Fans benefit from more direct relationships with artists and the certainty that their payments are fairly distributed.
- Smart contracts automate royalty distribution and greatly reduce manual billing processes.
- Blockchain transparency builds trust among all parties and reduces disputes over payments.
- Intermediaries are eliminated, allowing musicians to achieve higher margins.
- Staff are relieved from repetitive billing tasks and can focus on more strategic and creative activities.

## Challenges

- Companies must invest in new technology expertise and integrate existing systems with blockchain solutions.
- Acceptance by the traditional music industry is a major challenge, as established business models are threatened.
- User-friendliness for non-technical users must be improved to achieve mass adoption.
- Staff require training in blockchain technology and must adapt to new digital workflows.

## Technology foundation

The system is based on the public Ethereum blockchain, which is suitable for complex royalty distribution rules due to its smart contract capabilities. Ethereum enables transparent storage of copyright information and automatic payments without intermediaries.

## Sources

- [Ujo blockchain music](https://technical.ly/brooklyn/2016/11/15/ujo-blockchain-music/)
- [Audius Whitepaper: A Decentralized, Community-Owned Music Sharing Protocol – AUDIO-Token, Smart Contracts für Vergütung](https://medium.com/audius/the-audius-white-paper-a-decentralized-community-owned-music-sharing-protocol-52fa8d1818c1)
- [TechCrunch: Spotify acquires blockchain startup Mediachain to solve music's attribution problem (April 2017) – Team zieht zu Spotify, Technologie geht in Spotify auf](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/spotify-acquires-blockchain-startup-mediachain-to-solve-musics-attribution-problem/)
- [Yahoo Finance: Blockchain music streaming platform Audius – dezentrales Streaming mit Token-Vergütung für Künstler](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blockchain-music-streaming-audius-gears-151628457.html)