{"id":47,"date":"2017-04-22T15:08:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T15:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2017-11-18T16:45:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T16:45:53","slug":"imogen-heap-tiny-human-total-sales-133-20","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/imogen-heap-tiny-human-total-sales-133-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Imogen Heap: \u201cTiny Human\u201d. Total sales: $133.20"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from chapter 12<\/a> of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain<\/a> by David Gerard<\/i><\/p>\n

Others had already been thinking along blockchain lines. Imogen Heap has been recording through major labels for a couple of decades now, first with the duo Frou Frou and then as a solo singer, songwriter and producer. In the course of a string of chart hits and Grammy nominations, she\u2019s experienced quite her share of duplicitous incompetence at the hands of the music industry, and wants something better.<\/p>\n

In late 2015, Heap found herself free of previous deals, and so released her new song \u201cTiny Human\u201d as the test case for Mycelia,1<\/sup><\/a> running on the Ethereum blockchain. Her motivation was to cut through the tangle of bad deals and obscure rights the record industry offered. \u201cIts success will come from the adoption of millions of music lovers.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a> Mycelia worked with Ujo Music, an attempt to automate the back-room disbursement side put together by Ethereum development company ConsenSys, whose Vinay Gupta had first told Heap about smart contracts.<\/p>\n

Heap\u2019s explicit goal is to have all music you\u2019ve \u201cbought\u201d (not just hers) behave as marketing spyware that collects data on the user, in the manner of advertising trackers on web pages:3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

We know less about what our songs get up to once they\u2019ve left \u2018home\u2019. What would I like to read on these postcards from our songs? Well, how many times it was played, by who and where would be a great start.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The last Imogen Heap release with spyware was the 2005 Speak For Yourself<\/i> CD with Sony’s rootkit malware\u00a0\u2013 an initiative that didn’t go down so well then either.<\/p>\n

The press coverage of Heap\u2019s new initiative was vast, and her name is still routinely brought up whenever blockchaining the music industry is mentioned. What I\u2019ve yet to see anyone mention is how well it did in practice. Total sales of \u201cTiny Human\u201d through Ujo Music on the Ethereum blockchain were \u2026 $133.20. Not $133,200 \u2013 but one hundred and thirty-three dollars and twenty cents: 222 sales at 60 cents each.4<\/sup><\/a> It literally got more press articles than sales. It was taken off sale some time in 2016.5<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t help that buying it was almost impossible even for a blockchain advocate,6<\/sup><\/a> let alone an ordinary human music fan. You went to the page, clicked \u201cDownload\u201d, followed the instructions to create an Ethereum wallet, and went off to a Bitcoin exchange to buy bitcoins then exchange those for ether, as ETH wasn\u2019t widely traded directly to dollars at the time. Getting hold of the bitcoins required you either to send your money and a pile of government identification to an unregulated exchange \u2013 the recommended exchange, ShapeShift, had literally left New York state to avoid anti-money-laundering regulations7<\/sup><\/a> \u2013 deal with crooks or both. Once you\u2019d done all this, you got a download key. The process was ridiculously glitchy and buggy. \u201cThe exact ether amount is a bit of a gamble.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Ujo Music later posted a rambling nonexcuse for the \u201cTiny Human\u201d disaster, in which they admitted that they\u2019d only researched what the hell they were doing after they\u2019d done it. \u201cWe are but a few bright-eyed technologists with a special hammer, looking for the right nail.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019d think that at that point Heap would be wishing she\u2019d just put it up on Bandcamp, but she\u2019s still pursuing the blockchain dream and selling others on it, particularly the Featured Artists Coalition, i.e.,<\/i> the stars who did quite well out of the old major label system and would like to keep something that works like that did. Never give up!<\/p>\n

A record shop must not<\/i> be harder to use than BitTorrent. The legal options, iTunes, Netflix and Spotify made it big by being more convenient than piracy<\/i>, and there is nothing<\/i> convenient about dealing with blockchains. For buying music online, Bandcamp has all comers beat for a convenient record shop experience that delights both buyers and sellers,10<\/sup><\/a> pays 85% to the artist and doesn\u2019t have any use for a blockchain.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

1<\/a> There\u2019s a famous saying concerning mushrooms and distributing information.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

2<\/a> George Howard. \u201cImogen Heap\u2019s Mycelia: An Artists\u2019 Approach for a Fair Trade Music Business, Inspired by Blockchain\u201d<\/a>. Forbes<\/i> (contributor blog), 17 July 2015.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

3<\/a> Imogen Heap. \u201cWhat Blockchain Can Do for the Music Industry\u201d<\/a>. Demos Quarterly #8, Spring 2016. I’ve also had reports of discussions with the people behind the \u201cTiny Human\u201d initiative, and a musical ecosystem pervaded with the functionality I describe as \u201cspyware\u201d is absolutely the intention. (Also, they dislike Bandcamp.)<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

4<\/a> Screenshot<\/a> of payouts as of August 2016, uploaded by me 6 November 2016.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

5<\/a> Screenshot<\/a> of the Ujo Music purchase page for \u201cTiny Human\u201d when I clicked \u201cDownload\u201d in August 2016.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

6<\/a> e.g.<\/i>, Hatching Amazing. \u201cPart 1: How we tried to buy Imogen Heap\u2019s song on Ethereum\u201d<\/a>. 24 January 2016.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

7<\/a> Everett Rosenfield. \u201cCompany leaves New York, protesting \u2018BitLicense\u2019\u201d<\/a>. CNBC, 11 June 2015.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

8<\/a> andrewkeys. \u201cPurchase Imogen Heap’s “Tiny Human” with Ether on ConsenSys project, Ujo, the decentralized peer-to-peer music platform!\u201d<\/a> Reddit \/r\/ethereum, 3 October 2015.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

9<\/a> \u201cEmerging from the Silence\u201d<\/a>. Ujo Music blog, 29 August 2016.<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

10<\/a> Ben Ratliff. \u201cIs Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?\u201d<\/a> New York Times, 19 August 2016. <\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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A hugely hyped music blockchain exercise that failed spectacularly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-47","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2368,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/47\/revisions\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}