Imogen Heap partners with Viberate

Two of the earliest adopters of the blockchain in music, Grammy-winning artist Imogen Heap and live music marketplace Viberate, have announced their collaboration.

Heap will serve in an advisory role at Viberate – whose platform is powered by a cryptocurrency, Viberate token (VIB) – to help “guide us towards a second-to-none service for the live music segment that truly works for the music-maker”, reads a statement from the Ljubljana-based company.

Viberate’s mission is to use blockchain technology to “map the global live music ecosystem by building a database of profiles for musicians, venues, agencies and event organisers”. It closed its initial coin offering (ICO) of 120 million VIB tokens, announced last August, in under five minutes, raising more than US$10m.

|Imogen is not only … an inspiration to many of today’s superstars, she is also widely known for getting on the blockchain train before it was cool”

Heap, whose Mycelia Creative Passports project aims to create an industry standard digital identity for creators, says: “Blockchain has become the long overdue catalyst for the music industry to update its policy and business models toward music-makers and to provide quicker and seamless experiences for anyone involved in creating or interacting with music.”

Commenting on her partnership with Viberate, she adds: “Anything that involves music-makers being independent and having space where they can reach out to anybody who wants to make business directly with them is a really positive thing.”

“Imogen is not only one of the best artists out there and an inspiration to many of today’s superstars, she is also widely known for getting on the blockchain train before it was cool,” comments Vasja Veber, Viberate co-founder and COO. “We respect that and that is why we are so excited to have her on board.”

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