NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global blockchain company The Bitfury Group, recently valued at $ 1 billion, has announced the launch of a music and entertainment division that will create an open source music platform protected by bitcoin blockchain.
Delegates are walking near an exhibition stand at Bitfury, a full-service blockchain technology company, at the Malta Blockchain Summit in St Julian's, Malta, November 1, 2018. REUTERS / Darrin Zammit Lupi
The open source platform, called SurroundTM, will encourage collaboration and foster innovation in the industry, the company said.
Blockchain, which emerged for the first time as the system that powers the bitcoin cryptocurrency, is a shared database managed by a network of computers connected to the Internet.
This is not the first adventure of a technological society in the music industry, but it is one of the first of an important actor in the blockchain world that aims to decentralize the notoriously opaque music industry.
The SurroundTM platform, said Bitfury, will simplify the secure transfer of copyright assets, including the best monitoring and management systems.
To do so, the platform will create a digital system for the sharing and monetization of intellectual property and will provide transparent management functions and reliable data, said the blockhain firm.
"There is a strong push for an open blockchain related to entertainment in which the market participants themselves will participate in the market, not only from the standpoint of transactional value", Stefan Schultz, Bitfury CEO Surround and 20-veteran music and entertainment industry, he told Reuters.
"The current platform is put together and developed as we speak, several parts have already been installed," said Schultz, although it will not be complete for some time.
The Bitfury Surround business division will be based in Europe, with offices in Amsterdam and Berlin. Other offices are planned for Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul and Moscow.
At the end of last year, the Bitfury group raised $ 80 million from investors including the merchant bank founded by billionaire Mike Novogratz, a former macro hedge fund manager at Fortress Investment Group. That funding pushed Bitfury's value to $ 1 billion.
Bitfury, founded in 2011 and now based in London, sells used equipment to extract cryptocurrencies and develops blockchain technology for customers including the Ukrainian government.
Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
