The Open Music Initiative (OMI) this week unveiled a new partnership with Intel to make the chip giant’s Sawtooth Lake blockchain technology as a reference platform for the open-source rights data architecture.
Under the arrangement, Sawtooth is expected to become a foundational platform for reference implementations of OMI’s protocols and APIs.
“We need to move from the phase of talking about things to the phase of doing something, OMI’s co-founder and director of Berklee College of Music’s Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship Panos Panay told RightsTech. “This [deal with Intel] is an important step in moving into that new phase.
According to Panay, Intel will work with OMI companies to create a “virtual sandbox” on the Sawtooth platform where developers can begin prototyping elements of OMI’s planned “minimum viable interoperability” framework.
“We have over 130 companies in OMI and it can get pretty unwieldy,” Panay said. “That’s why it was important for us to put a flag in the sand to say, we’re actually doing something.
“If this is going to work,” he added, “we have to start showing some results within the next six months or so.”
Panay said OMI had looked at a number of major technology companies as potential partners, but settled in Intel in part due to its “perceived neutrality” as a brand.
Intel is “a major technology player and a leader in the blockchain space and they bring instant credibility to what we’re trying to do,” Panay said.
Added Jerry Bautista, VP of Intel’s New Technology Group and GM of its New Business Group, “Blockchain technology offers the potential to address the rights management challenges that many industries, including music, face today. By using Sawtooth Lake as their foundational reference platform blockchain technology, OMI will be able to accelerate plans to deliver a music rights open source platform.”