Ripple’s xSongs lets artists sell music for XRP

By Nicholas Marinoff

Musicians looking to get in on the micropayments game now have a new option on the table.

A new platform called xSongs, designed by Ripple's head of product, allows content creators to upload their digital music and sell it for XRP cryptocurrency. Those interested in taking part in the program are required to open a digital wallet through Payburner, which is built atop the XRP Ledger.

Musicians who sell their content through xSongs receive 100 percent of the profits, according to a blog post from Craig DeWitt, Ripple’s product lead. Those profits are delivered in the form of XRP funds through peer-to-peer payments. “xSongs is in beta and we are still building the front end marketplace where you can sell your music,” DeWitt wrote in the blog post. DeWitt also said Payburner would be made available to developers soon.

Here’s how it all works: Once a musician creates an XRP Payburner wallet, they must open an account with xSongs and import their Payburner credentials to the account. From there, users can begin uploading their music. Every song or piece of audio content submitted is scanned by xSong to ensure it does not contain any malware or violate copyrights.

While users can upload copyrighted music, only original content can be sold for XRP. Once a song or piece of music passes this test, it becomes available for purchase.

The XRP twist makes this particular offering unique, but the market currently has no shortage of blockchain-based music services that offer similar features. One, for example, is Audius, which went live with its public beta earlier this year and claims to already have more than 20,000 unique users on its platform.

Others include the ConsenSys-backed Ujo and Tune.fm, the latter of which is built on the Hedera Hashgraph network. Tune.fm announced last month that it had added a portion of Beyonce’s catalogue to its crypto-based music service.

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