At Blockshow Europe 2018, we had the chance to meet many interesting projects and the personalities behind them. Among them is Andrey Dahkovskyy, the founder of Younk—a community-based music label production endeavor that will announce a presale for July 1.
We were able to get Mr. Dahkovskyy aside and ask him a few questions about his team’s project.
CV: Tell us a little bit about your platform.
AD: I’ve been in the music industry for all of my life. I’ve been running a label and I know how it works from the inside, and I see certain limits of the classical model which can be overcome by blockchain technology. So, we are presenting a platform where everyone from the community can participate, can choose the music they like, and as a label, we see the community’s preferences and put them on what we call the “hit funding” stage. These are the songs preferred by the community.
So, at this stage, the community supports the songs [that they like] with their tokens and if we successfully collect the budget we need to release a song, the budget for shooting video, doing promo campaigns, or for hiring producers with big names, we release the song and everyone in the community who invested in the song gets ownership certificates, which gives them partial ownership in a song proportional to the amount they invested to make the song happen.
CV: On the artist’s end, how is this advantageous in comparison to other record labels?
AD: Well, I cannot say we are revolutionary disruptors who are changing everything. I cannot promise, like some other platforms do, 85% royalties to artists. In my mind, as a long-term record company executive... we cannot exclude label experts from the equation. The label is responsible for the commercial result, [it is] representing the whole community.
Artists [are] getting bigger royalties [than] in a classical label model, producers as well. Most of the income goes to the pockets of the community, of people who invested in the song. The platform gets a reasonable 5% commission for operational costs. And we also have a strong bounty support program, with support from the community that listens to music and [give songs “likes”]. This is work that will be rewarded. These are the pieces of the pie.
CV: What prevents people from gaming the system in their favor?
AD: This is why we have two stages. We are not just proposing songs for funding. Otherwise, somebody owning lots of tokens could push their own song which is not chosen by the community. We have free access for both artists and the community at the stage when songs are put on the platform and are liked and not liked by their community.
Only after going through this filter, we start to plan the production of a song. So, if we see that the song is liked by the community, only then do we pitch it for the hit funding stage.
CV: Can an artist invest in their own song?
AD: Absolutely! Artists can invest in their own song, experts can invest, everyone is a member of the community and whoever wants to invest in a song can invest.
CV: So I’m guessing this would provide them with a further financial incentive?
AD: Yes, of course. An artist can always increase his or her royalty by co-financing their own song. That’s logical.
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