IBM has been building momentum behind blockchain by championing the Linux Foundation’s Hyperleder Project and creating its own Open Blockchain (OBC) among other things.
IBM’s vice president of blockchain Jerry Cuomo, who recently gave testimony before US Congress about the uses of the technology, likes the idea of a revolutionary IoT, blockchain-enabled insurance paradigm for driverless cars. Or perhaps it’s the more day-to-day business of migrating supply chains to blockchain.
Source: IBT
Leading Blockchain currency payment service provider, Coinify ApS and Hong Kong based payment service provider, iPayDNA International Ltd. are proud to announce a new partnership that will bring advanced Blockchain payments to a vast amount of merchants residing in the Asia Pacific region.
Partnering with iPayDNA is another step of Coinify’s recently announced push into the Asian market. The new PSP agreement will allow Coinify to extend their Blockchain merchant processing solution distribution channel throughout the Asia Pacific region where iPayDNA holds a dominant position.
Source: Blockchain News
On February 22 2016, Sony Global Education, a division of the Japanese electronics giant Sony Corporation, announced a new blockchain technology to share educational data with third parties.
Sony teamed up with Holberton School, an alternative software engineering school, and Bitproof, a blockchain notary in issuing blockchain based academic certificates to its graduates.
MIT Media Lab has also begun issuing digital certificates, and in July 2015, they began issuing ‘coins’, that serve as physical versions of their digital certificates, to members of their community.
Source: Coin Telegraph
Blockchain — the “B”-word — is in vogue among bankers.The Blockchain BugUBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said this month the technology could disrupt the current financial system. JPMorgan and Citigroup were among several banks to pour over $50 million into Blythe Masters’ blockchain startup, Digital Asset Holdings, in January. A group of 40 banks is trialing the use of distributed ledger in the commercial paper market.
Source: Bloomberg Gadfly
An increasing number of businesses and consumers are now considering bitcoin, a new type of currency that offers a potential global-encompassing digital payment method. With this growing acceptance, it’s important to learn the essential components of this platform designed to change how we buy and sell products and services. My own company — a time tracking and invoicing platform — is using it, and I’d like to share what we’ve learned.
Personally, I find this technology beneficial, and hope that others will join the growing community.Bitcoin is one of the pioneers of the peer-to-peer electronic cash system, introducing what is known as blockchain protocol to oversee the system. Here’s essentially how it works.
Normally
, it is Simon Taylor’s job to persuade sceptical colleagues at Barclays that rapid technological change will disrupt the bank’s business. So it comes as something of a surprise to have to dampen the excitement about the blockchain. “It’s quite silly. I get ten invitations to speak at a conference every day,” he says. “The technology will have real impact, but it will take time.”
The blockchain is the technology underpinning bitcoin, a digital currency with a chequered history. It is an example of a “distributed ledger”: in essence, a database that is maintained not by a single actor, such as a bank, but collaboratively by a number of participants.
Their respective computers regularly agree on how to update the database using a “consensus mechanism”, after which the modifications they have settled on are rendered unchangeable with the help of complex cryptography. Once information has been immortalised in this way, it can be used as proof of ownership. The blockchain can also serve as the underpinning for “smart contracts”—programs that automatically execute the promises embedded in a bond, for instance.
Source: The Economist
While the label control ove
r the paid tier is a play to rights-holders, perhaps more crucially, the user-generated remixes help preserve SoundCloud’s status as a music community. “The audience that is buying electronic albums and festival tickets is hanging out on SoundCloud,” says James Collinson, head of Ninja Tune North America. “It’s an artist tool and an artist community.”
Still, the question remains: “Does the world need another streaming service?” as Russ Crupnick, managing partner of the MusicWatch consultancy, puts it. “It’s going to be hard.”
And despite SoundCloud’s enviable reach, how much of its generally young and tech-savvy audience will pay for music they mostly have been enjoying for free? “Looking at conversion rates, it’s likely they’ll end up with low single digits,” says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research, based on comparisons with other free services. But even a 5 percent conversion rate from SoundCloud’s 175 million users — 8.7 million — would make it a serious player.
Source: Billboard
In the trench war between TV networks and streaming services over series stacking rights, ABC has broken through enemy lines.
On March 18, the network announced a deal with Warner Bros. Television that will make all in-season episodes of any future series from the studio available on ABC digital platforms. Networks tend to stack five rolling episodes for most shows.
The ABC-Warner Bros. deal acknowledges the continued shift toward time-shifted viewing and binge watching.It also gives ABC a victory over the digital competition — in particular Netflix. The streaming service has asserted often that it will not pay top dollar for shows that don’t come with exclusivity, making it difficult for networks to secure stacking rights.
Source: Variety
Mine Labs, a New York-based blockchain startup has announced the development of Mediachain, a Bitcoin blockchain-based decentralized metadata protocol which relies on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to protect and ensure the rights to creative digital works.
Since early 2015, emerging blockchain startups have begun to focus on the development of blockchain-based identity and authentication systems to assist artists, freelancers and digital content providers to protect their work from being plagiarised.
To encrypt and store digital rights on the Bitcoin blockchain, most of these blockchain startups have either encoded an ID into the Bitcoin blockchain using OP_RETURN or CoinSpark to reference centrally hosted data or used a custom-built blockchain to attach metadata directly to transactions.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine
Music Rep
orts has launched an unnamed rights administration platform aimed at clearing up publishing information for the millions of songs, largely from independent artists, that are digitally distributed through platforms like CD Baby and TuneCore.
Music Reports estimates 500,000-750,000 new recordings are released on streaming services every month; the company hopes to ensure that the publishing data on these songs is registered, up-to-date, and can be matched against commercially released master recordings.
Since most digital distributors don’t provide publishing information when placing music on streaming services, when the publishers and songwriters are not known those works are directed to a rights administration system, where songwriters or their publishers can claim those songs, allowing for publishing payments to be made.
Source: Billboard