Chinese multinational company – Alibaba Group has filed for patent of a blockchain-based system that verifies the originality of songs.
According to the patent published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the system looks to retrieve music files published on a blockchain network comprising of a music library node and a music analyzer node, which perform originality analysis on songs filed on a local music library.
The nodes evaluate how similar a song is with respect to tune, tempo, lyrics, beat and other metrics.
Alibaba Group notes that lots of musical works are created with the intent if entertainment. However, the music industry still has no platform to identify plagairized or imitated content.
“Currently, there is still no platform that can be used to perform a similarity analysis on musical works to identify plagiarized or imitated works, and various and complex forms (including pure music, mono-track music, multi-track music, and singing) of musical works make it harder for protecting musical works’ copyrights,” the filing states.
The tech giant says the use of its blockchain system will curb the activities of copycats, whose tactics currently escape the existing copyright protocols; adding that the current practice of hash coding on music files does not guarantee the originality of musical works with similar tunes or tempo.
Alibaba says a blockchain-based verifier offers a universal solution, as music libraries from around the world can all act as distributed nodes.
At this time, Alibaba Group and its subsidiary Ali Pay have filed for over 1505 blockchain patents. The company also recently launched a blockchain consortuium named “OpenChain” to aid SMEs in China with development of blockchain projects.
