# Abstract The music industry generates $43 billion in revenue but only 12% goes to content artists. Furthermore, artists have minimal control over how their music is distributed and little visibility into who is streaming it. To address these and other problems faced by artists, we introduce SoundProtocol, a fully decentralized music streaming protocol built with public blockchain infrastructure and other decentralized technologies. SoundProtocol allows artists to distribute to and get paid directly from their fans, and is comprised of the following components: 1. An efficient token economy powered by the SoundProtocol platform token ($SOP), 3rd-party stablecoins, and artist tokens 2. A decentralized storage solution and ledger for sharing audio and metadata 3. A unique track encryption scheme paired with a programmable mechanism to unlock user-specific proxy re-encryption keys for content 4. A discovery protocol for users to efficiently query metadata 5. A decentralized governance protocol, whereby artists, node operators, and fans are individually and collectively enfranchised in decision making about protocol changes and --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://soundprotocol.gitbook.io/soundprotocol/abstract.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.