A new tool is changing the way music artists and creators remix their favorite songs to suit our increasingly virtual lifestyles.
KOR Protocol, a decentralized intellectual property (IP) platform designed to help creators protect and monetize their work, launched on September 26 to creators and developers around the world.
Backed by major web3 players including venture capital studio Animoca Brands, private investment platform Republic, and the Solana blockchain, KOR Protocol uses blockchain technology to provide a scalable and transparent IP management system.
Starting this week, developers around the world will be able to access the KOR Player software development kit (SDK) to install and use the protocol, and gone are the days of recording mixtapes from the radio onto cassettes.
With KOR Player, friends and creators can collaborate to turn music into game soundtracks, fan-made remixes, and more, and KOR Protocol is a sophisticated tool that can mix licensed music and other content into these virtual environments, all without — and this is the key — violating copyright rules.
Pixelynx, the company behind the protocol and its KOR Player, reported that more than 600,000 users participated in related projects, including the Pixelyn’x AI music platform KORUS and Netflix’s Black Mirror “Smile Club” experience, which sold out in less than three hours in February 2024, an event that resulted in the minting of approximately 285,000 NFTs and generated $1.5 million in revenue.
Entertainment industry veteran and CEO Inder Phull leads Pixelynx and its various activities alongside electronic musicians Joel “Deadmau5” Zimmerman and Richie “Plastikman” Hawtin.
To get a deeper understanding of how KOR Protocol is driving this development, we spoke with Phull to discuss how it works, its potential impact on digital rights, and his thoughts on the future of the entertainment industry.
Note: This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.
OpenSea: You’re calling from Dubai today. Last time we spoke, you were living in Los Angeles. What prompted you to move to the UAE?
Inder Phull: We just moved here a few weeks ago, we're entering the next phase of the company's development and we were hesitating between here and a few other places and finally decided to come here, it's a little closer to home, I'm from London.
OpenSea: A lot has happened in the two years since we spoke, are you ready for the September 26 release?
Inder Phull: Yes, the KOR protocol in a lot of ways really solidifies the entire ecosystem, we've been developing a lot of different IP-based applications and experiences, we have a product called KORUS, which is our remix platform, which is doing very well, and earlier this year we also launched a Black Mirror experience, and the goal of the protocol is to take all of the technology we've been building and unlock the next phase of growth through on-chain IP management and distribution.
OpenSea: It must be exciting to see your vision become a reality.
Inder Phull: It’s exciting, the market is changing all the time – it’s crazy, but it’s also exciting, a lot of the things that were in the original business plan four years ago are now starting to fall into place.
OpenSea: For those who are not familiar with Pixelynx, how would you explain what you do in one or two sentences?
Inder Phull: We are building an entertainment ecosystem that allows IP holders to bring their IPs to the chain and grow with their communities through different applications. We focus very much on the creator experience and we believe this can allow fans and creators to create with their favorite IPs.
OpenSea: You are optimistic about the Metaverse, and many of the experiential applications you describe will naturally happen in the Metaverse - in virtual environments such as games, sandbox worlds, etc. There are many different definitions of the Metaverse, some people call it a spatial network, while others believe it has less to do with real-time spatial computing and more to do with synchronous virtual experiences. Even something as simple as Zoom or asynchronous work falls into the category of "Metaverse". How do you define it?
Inder Phull: These are all elements of it, of course, the Metaverse is interesting because its definition is always fluid and changing, I've always seen it as the future of the internet and entertainment, it's the integration of technology - blockchain, identity tools, and applications like games - to make the internet more immersive, with new forms of ownership in web3, the Metaverse becomes a whole new business model, and if I had to sum it up, I would say it's about immersion and ownership.
OpenSea: So you think the metaverse needs to encompass digital ownership, not just immersive games and 3D graphics. When did you first agree that ownership is at the core of the open metaverse?
Inder Phull: My journey into blockchain started about 10 years ago when I read a research paper about how rights, specifically copyright and music rights, could be managed on a blockchain, which gave me a deeper understanding of the technology. About five years ago when Fortnite launched the Travis Scott experience, I started connecting the dots, people buy digital goods and content but don’t own them, and if they could own them, then new forms of value creation would be possible. About four years ago we launched the first NFTs, which are in-game items with a construct for ownership and licensing transparency.
OpenSea: Please tell us about your NFT project.
Inder Phull: We’ve done a couple of NFT releases, one was with Deadmau5 around his IP and some of his songs and digital artwork, we also did a project with Beatport in January 2022 for a collection called Synth Heads where we put about 100,000 songs on the blockchain and sold them as part of a new single release, we’ve done a lot of different projects, but the one with Deadmau5 was one of the first.
OpenSea: How did your long-term partnership with Deadmau5 come about? Did he approach you first, or did you convince him of the idea?
Inder Phull: The Deadmau5 story is part of our company’s journey. At 23, I won a competition called the International Music Summit Visionary Program, which was designed to identify future leaders in the music industry. My agent, Richie Hawtin, became my mentor and when I shared my vision for the future of music, he suggested we talk to Deadmau5 and his agent, Dean Wilson. I presented the vision for the company and they understood it immediately. They became my business partners and naturally, our first project was with the company’s founding artist.
OpenSea: That’s amazing, do you think musicians (especially electronic musicians) are ready for this kind of technology?
Inder Phull: Music is definitely a vertical that needs this kind of solution. Music earns much less than movies or games, and COVID exposed the fragility of the industry when touring stopped and artists struggled to make money. NFTs offer artists a new way to release content directly to fans and distribute value in creative ways, whether through rewards or other benefits for early supporters.
OpenSea: Yeah, one of the enduring stories I hear a lot is how streaming really kicked off our current era of music, and an argument I often hear is how Apple Music devalues songs by pricing them at 99 cents a piece, for example, but I often wonder: how would things change if we moved to a model where songs were also NFTs, whose value could fluctuate wildly? Could NFTs really improve or replace the streaming model?
Inder Phull: Music can sell everything except the music itself. It is the commodity, not the music, that makes money. NFTs provide a new paradigm that makes music valuable again. I don’t think NFTs will replace streaming, but they can complement it. Streaming will not disappear overnight, but NFTs can help artists sell items such as digital wearables, experiences or other content. Streaming has its own challenges, such as royalty models and transparency, which requires changes to the entire industry, not just NFTs.
OpenSea: You mentioned gamification earlier, can you talk about the Black Mirror experience and how it served as a proof of concept for the KOR Protocol?
Inder Phull: That was a really fun project, we worked with the franchise owner Banijay for about four years, and we created this piece based on Nosedive, where everyone has a social score and has to smile to be accepted, and we created Smile Club, which is a parallel universe where users have to smile every day to get on the allowed list, and over 200,000 people participated, and we sold 7,000 NFTs in two and a half hours, and people with Smile Passes can participate in missions and challenges, and the community drives the storyline, and we're now working on season two, where people can build characters in the Black Mirror: Smile Club universe.
OpenSea: How do people get these experiences?
Inder Phull: They are web-based experiences where, for example, one episode was shot entirely by the community using Unreal Engine, where fans vote on storylines and top creators turn those ideas into episode content, all enabled by the KOR Protocol, which enables collaboration and rewards fans for their contributions.
OpenSea: How does the KOR protocol achieve all this?
Inder Phull: The KOR Protocol is an on-chain IP infrastructure for the full lifecycle management of IP, where creators can register their IP, set rules and permissions, and enable collaboration. It is a transparent rights management system that can scale IP in any way the holder wants.
OpenSea: How many users in total benefit from it?
Inder Phull: So far, we have over 600,000 users in our ecosystem, including KORUS and the Black Mirror experience, each of which has brought in hundreds of thousands of users, we have minted over 285,000 NFTs so far, and we have partners like online music store Beatport and Japanese telecommunications company KDDI who are also onboarding users.
OpenSea: How do creator rewards work? Are they all paid in cryptocurrency? Are the licenses legally recognized?
Inder Phull: Copyright fees are paid in cryptocurrency through smart contracts, but can be converted into fiat currency. We will also launch copyright fee tokens as part of the core mechanism. The license is based on traditional licensing contracts and is legally recognized.
OpenSea: Do big companies find this attractive as well, or is it more suited to independent artists and creators?
Inder Phull: It’s a bit of both, the big companies have more constraints but they are very interested in what this new model can offer, and the independent creators benefit from the decentralization and distribution tools we’ve built, which works for everyone, although the big organizations tend to move slower.
OpenSea: To wrap up, what advice do you have for creators who are just getting started with web3?
Inder Phull: Find your community, Web3 is built on communities, and communities are generally welcoming spaces to get involved, try out products, and collect your first NFT, and once you find your niche, the opportunities are endless.
OpenSea: Inder, thank you for taking the time today, it’s been a pleasure to share and learn about the KOR protocol with you all.
Inder Phull: Thank you as well and have a great afternoon.
Pixelynx and KOR Protocol will soon launch a Founder’s Pass NFT to commemorate the launch of the protocol, and Phull encouraged those who are passionate about on-chain IP and the future of entertainment to join the KOR Protocol Discord:
discord.com/invite/korprotocol
#KORProtocol #AnimocaBrands #solana生态 #NFT
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