Bjork accepts cryptocurrency in her online store

• by admin
• |
• March 5, 2019
• |
• Cryptocurrency News

Björk, a well-known Icelandic singer and an actress, was the first major musical artist to encourage fans to use cryptocurrency. In her online store, fans can buy her latest albums, vinyl records, CDs, digital downloads, and music scores.

Bjork is known for being innovative, often producing experimental music and in 2011, releasing her album Biophilia in the form of an interactive app.

In 2017, she gave rewards to those who bought her new album, Utopia, with digital currencies. Pre-ordering the album from Björk’s or her record label’s website entitled each buyer to 100 “Audiocoins,” which could be converted to other cryptocurrencies. At the time, this translated to only $0.25, but let’s remember it was the first attempt in the industry back then.

The blockchain presents the solution to many of the issues in the music industry. As in other industries, current streaming services do not provide artists with fair royalties. Decentralized currency rewards artists and their fans without paying intermediaries. By cutting out the middleman, artists potentially can get all revenue from album sales. But today, they reality is quite different. Cryptocurrency constitutes only a fraction of the artist’s income.

The singer teamed up with a London-based B2B blockchain framework called Blockpool to start accepting four types of digital currencies. These include Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dashcoin, and Audiocoin. Fans with traditional currency can still pay using credit cards or PayPal.

The rewards received by the fan were deposited into their Blockpool wallet. Fans could also get more Audiocoins by sharing links to Björk’s music and merchandise on social media.

However small, Björk’s move was quite important for the cryptocurrency community. Her example has been followed by more musicians and companies.

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts see cryptocurrency as one of the roads that can help lead our world to utopia (pun intended), in a good sense of the word. Let’s hope for that!

Image source: Björk’s blog