Why Artists Lose Billions; And How Blockchain Changes Everything

In this episode of SoundBreaker, we meet JC Barat, co-founder of Allfeat, a blockchain infrastructure designed specifically for the music industry. Drawing from a background in wealth management and HR, JC explains how a personal encounter with his daughter’s musical journey exposed a deeper structural issue: the global music rights system is fundamentally broken.Today, more than $2.5 billion in royalties go unpaid every year — not because the money doesn’t exist, but because rights data is fragmented across disconnected systems. Six separate identifiers (IPI, ISNI, ISRC, ISWC, UPC/EAN, and more) live in isolated databases that do not communicate, making it nearly impossible to reliably connect creators to their earnings.JC walks us through how this fragmentation creates “black box” revenue losses, especially when compositions and recordings are not properly linked. He explains how even one missing connection can permanently erase royalty flows for artists.Allfeat proposes a new foundation for music rights: an open-source, blockchain-based certification layer governed by a Swiss non-profit. Through the Allfeat Timestamp Service, creators can instantly register proof of authorship, while the MIDDS (Music Industry Decentralized Data Structure) connects rights metadata across the entire lifecycle of a work.The conversation also explores three major revenue breakthroughs enabled by this infrastructure:Sync licensing, where verified rights drastically reduce clearance frictionAI training rights, where artists can define usage consent at the protocol levelLicensing automation, where machine-readable rights replace static contractsUltimately, this episode raises a bigger question: will blockchain redistribute power in the music industry — or simply reinforce existing structures in a new format? JC argues that only a neutral, open infrastructure can ensure that artists, not intermediaries, benefit from the next wave of digital transformation.JC Barat: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcbarat/Allfeat: https://allfeat.org/