Tune.fm Enables Hedera Crypto Payments For Music

Tune.fm has become the first music streaming platform with an integrated cryptocurrency to run on Hedera Hashgraph‘s public distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Musicians have often struggled to get paid what they are owed for their work. This system will use a Hedera-based crypto token called Jam that enables fast micropayments for every second of music streamed between fans and artists. Tune.fm allows its listeners to use Jam to pay for songs from Music World Entertainment’s (MWE) music catalog, which was founded by Mathew Knowles, father of Beyonce Knowles. He also is a Tune.fm advisory board member.

“I see cryptocurrency and streaming paired together as the wave of the future,” said Mathew Knowles in a press release. “Tune.fm has put together an incredible platform with a unique user experience, and Music World Entertainment Corp. is excited to share its content on the Tune.fm platform.”

“The existing industry business model is not profitable and squeezes artists. Streaming platforms pay the vast majority of their revenue to publishing companies, and they leave artists with only about 10 percent of that,” Tune.fm Co-founder Andrew Antar told VentureBeat. “Our unique business model is only now possible with the fastest and most secure distributed ledger technology available today from Hedera Hashgraph, which powers the Jam token. Jam is the cryptocurrency for the global music economy on our platform. When the music gets played, the artist gets paid.”

In addition to purchasing tokens, users can also earn JAM tokens for streaming new music they’ve never heard, while artists can promote their music by purchasing verifiable first-time streams with their own JAM tokens. There are plans to showcase additional JAM products and services on the tune.fm decentralized marketplace.

“Tune.fm is revolutionizing the way that artists interact with their fans and get fairly compensated for their creations,” said Jordan Fried, senior vice president of global business development for Hedera Hashgraph. “We are delighted that they have chosen to build such an important offering on top of the Hedera network, which will allow Tune.fm to provide cryptocurrency payments at a fraction of the cost of delivering them on other public platforms.”