Dequency is building first-of-its-kind decentralised music licensing marketplace for music and visual creators to connect, collaborate and transact. Built with web3 technology and ethos, Dequency seeks to connect visual creators with recording artists and other music rights holders and provide a simple, transparent, and fun licensing experience. They turned to DEPT® to help bring this vision to life and build the marketplace.
Building a decentralised music licensing platform
Dequency aims to build a platform that eliminates third parties from music licensing transactions to increase the speed of payment, reduce fees, and give control of the system to market participants. The Dequency platform will enable music and visual creators to connect and collaborate on NFT art and metaverse content more easily.
Initially catering to on-chain content such as motion graphic NFT projects, video games and metaverse productions, Dequency wants to showcase recording artists offering their music to license and facilitate communication between the parties to foster community. With the ultimate goal of creating a fully-decentralised, trustless music licensing marketplace, Dequency will also provide creators income-generating opportunities with minimum fees and instant payment.
The power of blockchain technology to help streamline music licensing
All visual productions that use music require a synchronisation licence (AKA “sync licence”) negotiated between the copyright owner of a piece of music and the party seeking to use the music. The license permits the synchronisation of copyrighted music to any other type of content.
Dequency believes that blockchain technology has the power to revolutionise the market for music licensing and create more opportunities for artists. The company wanted to build on Algorand, a blockchain that is known for its environmentally friendly “pure proof of stake” consensus mechanism. Algorand offers quick, efficient and secure transactions on its blockchain.
Licensing of music into film,TV or other applications in 2022 is currently akin to booking travel in 1975; inefficient, rife with unnecessary intermediaries and rent-seekers, and closed off to those unable to get through the corporate gatekeepers.
George Howard, Dequency Co-Founder
DEPT® is very familiar with building on Algorand, as we built the first white-label, open source platform for launching an NFT marketplace on the Algorand blockchain. And we’ve worked with a number of companies who are looking to launch NFTs or build platforms on Algorand.
Through a series of design and architecture sprints, we helped the Dequency team flesh out their idea. Over the course of five months, we then designed and built an MVP of the product, focusing first on offering up ready-to-sync music for visual projects that are legally licensed directly from the music rights owner, and recorded on-chain.
Making history
Shortly after the MVP was created, Dequency made history by executing the first-ever sync licence on a public blockchain. “Late Night People” by Goldfish ft. Soweto Kinch was licenced through Dequency’s SmartSync contract for use in Algorand’s Decipher conference, held in late 2021.
In early 2022, Dequency was also able to raise $4.5 million through an investment round led by Borderless Capital to further build out the marketplace. The funding will go toward building out Dequency’s peer-to-peer function, enabling music creators to upload their work to the platform and directly license for use in visual art projects.
DEPT® is currently working with Dequency on phase two of the project, focused on enabling music creators and rights owners to host their catalog on Dequency and work directly with visual creators looking to purchase the rights to use music in their projects.
When Dequency fully launches, the marketplace will be the only option to license music on-chain for blockchain-native content such as motion-visual NFT projects, games, and metaverse productions.
The Dequency platform built by DEPT® facilitates communication and direct transaction between music and visual creators, giving them the opportunity to benefit from this explosion of artists entering the space.
Keatly Haldeman, Dequency Co-founder & CEO
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Global SVP, Engineering & Technology
Jesse Streb
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