Croatian entrepreneur Michela Magaš presented the innovative music platform #MTFLabs in Zagreb
The global music industry has been on the rise for two consecutive years now. Some of the major innovators in this sector, people who are literally shifting paradigms on which the business is based, attended the latest conference on corporate innovations CORP2IN 2017 that took place in Zagreb last Thursday, November 9, 2017.
While Sofie Lindblom, the former head of innovations at Spotify, spoke about streaming as the innovation that saved the music industry, another professional provided a glimpse into the future of the business. Michela Magaš, a Croatian entrepreneur who was born in Zagreb and is currently living in Sweden, created and launched a platform named #MTFLabs, securing the title of the EU innovator of 2017.
The purpose of her invention is to come up with a technology-based solution to a significant problem in the music industry: in cases where multiple artists are collaborating on a project, it can prove difficult to establish who holds the right to claim ownership of individual ideas once the work is finished.
“People quarrel over that everywhere. Not only in Croatia. They quarrel in Sweden too. Not only in music, but in other industries as well. While something is being created, everyone believes in a common goal, but once the profit starts flowing in, tensions arise and it usually happens that those with the best lawyers and the most money win in the end. Such rules of the game present a major obstacle to creative development”, said Magaš for Poslovni dnevnik. She added this phenomenon sets a certain limit to possible growth in the music industry, just as in other creative industries.
According to the European Commission, creative industries generate annual profit amounting to 503 billion euro (5.3% of GDP in the EU) and employ 12 million citizens (7.5% of the entire work force in the EU).
“At the end of November, at the world’s biggest start-up conference Slush in Helsinki, we’ll organise the first real-time event where we’ll map intellectual property throughout the entire creative process”, said Magaš. She explained they will apply blockchain and smart contracts they agreed on at the latest #MTFLabs event in Berlin.
Magaš described #MTFLabs as ‘Linux of the music industry’, comparing her company and herself to members of the non-profit Linux Foundation. She went on to state one of the goals of #MTFLabs is to create a technology that will increase the level of protection of intellectual property of musicians, whether they are independent or not, directly linking their ideas to a share of the profit they would later generate on the market. This will affect music publishing companies, as well as entice further innovation in the industry. “Major players don’t want to take on projects which present a risk, but this way, they will be stimulated to do it indirectly, through collaboration with minor players, as they will automatically become present at certain new markets and reap a part of the benefits, doing it all transparently through blockchain”, she concluded.
Translated from Poslovni dnevnik.
