Alibaba copyrights blockchain system that detects music copycats

Granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on April 21, the method as described by the Chinese e-commerce giant addresses one among the recording industry’s major issues – ensuring the protection of copyright of soundtracks – by organizing and examining that content on a blockchain.

.@AlibabaGroup has patented a method of spotting if songs were plagiarized by comparing the melodies, beats and lyrics on a blockchain system.@realDannyNelson reports https://t.co/tOV8JUnRxp

— CoinDesk (@CoinDesk) April 30, 2020

One verification node and a number of music library nodes consist of the blockchain. The validation node conducts an “originality analysis” on a music track to gauge how alike its tune, tempo, and other elements like lyrics and beat are to other tracks within the library.

This data is published to the blockchain and summarized during a second vetting report that also includes a similarity ratio. Ultimately, the method yields a recommendation on the track’s originality from a plurality of nodes.

According to Alibaba, this technique of song vetting could help impede copycats who are meddling with the files skirts current copyright protection, including hash coding music files to manifest their legitimacy, by thieving the sound itself.

Alibaba stated, “Currently, there’s still no platform which will be wont to perform a similarity analysis on musical works to spot plagiarized or imitated songs.” That hole is broad enough for copycats to imaginably make use of.

Blockchain-based originality analysis can “alleviate” the matter, Alibaba said. It also universalizes the answer, as music libraries from around the world can all act as distributed nodes.

Alibaba visualizes smart contracts performing the originality reports in one repetition.

“The smart contract is executed with less human intervention and advantageous decentralized authority, and fairness of the music originality analysis behavior is further improved,” it said.