Here’s a brief progress report on various initiatives we’ve been engaged with the last few months:
- researching record label, publishers, managers and artists’ metadata creation and management processes
- blockchain systems analysis
- metadata schemas
Our on-going structured interviews with our independent label, publishers and manager partners has been continuing at a steady pace and is unearthing a number of interesting gems. We’ve found that no two organisations manage metadata in quite the same way, varying from managing locally or cloud-base spreadsheets to some highly unique database tools that a few people have developed on their own.
With our blockchain systems review, we’re exploring the potentials for different chains, as they all come with a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. While most of the world’s developer community is based on Ethereum, this Layer One blockchain still suffers from scalability issues, which has led to the creation of a number of interesting workarounds. Ethereum also depends on Proof of Work which is highly secure, but also requires much more energy (through the mining process) to process transaction. While newer blockchains already employ Proof of Stake for processing transactions, these communities are not as highly developed, which means significantly less developer activity. We’re also exploring the Cosmos ecosystem for their unique approach to data sovereignty, which includes the ability to run your own independent chain. (A very interesting option for ensuring data security when privacy is needed for certain data subsets.)
On the metadata front, our collaboration with Kendraio shifted away from focusing directly on the importer to dealing with the complexity of different datasets. As we’re also still in the process of determining our long-term database format (i.e. which blockchain) it makes sense to work more precisely on the data interoperability at the schema level.
Looking forward to sharing further updates as things evolve!