Source: www.dubset.com
In the current era of social media and mass content-sharing platforms, there is significantly more user-generated content and derivative media (remixes, covers and game mods inspired by other songs/videos) than there is original media. On top of that, there are hundreds of platforms onto which people post and share such content. Fingerprinting technology exists to try and trace back who covered whom or who remixed whom, but given the sheer volume of such content, and the number of disparate platforms, a lot of these derivative works are still untraceable. Original creators lose potential revenue streams, and the chance to see how people sample, modify or get inspired by their work.
Enter Campfire
Campfire provides a singular, decentralized database that integrates all the disparate databases for such derivative works into one place. Instead of using a backwards approach, where one would use fingerprint technology or scanning technology to identify what works a song/video/game derives from, it uses a forward approach by enabling artists to post original work onto our website, enabling people to create derivative works, and tracking who’s adding what as they do it starting from the source.
How does this work?
Imagine a hypothetical rock legend Bob Diquote gets a creative spark and uploads a project file for his guitar track onto Campfire. Producer Lori gets inspired by this, downloads Diquote’s project file, and creates a complete rock song off of it. She uploads this as a node to Diquote’s work. Reggae singer Piscille uses Lori’s song, makes a vocal track and attaches it to her node. Game Designer Poche gets inspired by Diquote’s original track and creates an interactive game based on samples from the track. He uploads this as a node to Diquote’s work. Eventually, thousands of people add derivative works to whatever nodes they like, adding creative fuel onto Diquote’s original spark of an idea, evolving it into a fire.
Each user has their own profile with a unique metadata ID linked to it. As people add their own nodes, their metadata ID is tagged into the node. Each node also has the metadata tags of the work it derived from. If at any point someone really likes the node they created, they can publish it onto their preferred platform (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and since all the metadata tags from Campfire are on the file, everyone who worked on it gets credited and paid royalties based on views. This way, there is a singular database that keeps track of who worked on what, but one that is interactive and feels like a creative tool for artists. Artists can upload ideas and come back a week later to see shirts, remixes, fan art and subcultures evolve off of it. Fans get to meet other artists and work on their craft iteratively. Publishers and labels get to study genres and subcultures by tracing how they evolved; they have all the metadata in one place if they want to sign artists or acquire rights to their songs. On the whole, Campfire brings people together.
So what’s next?
With all the relationships that could emerge between various nodes, there is the potential to create a social media aspect to Campfire where people can chat with each other and discuss each other’s works. There is also the potential to have an a la carte type feature where people can pick a track, a song and a video/game from the many nodes of a spark, and combine them into one finished music video or video game.