This week, JAAK, the start-up business working to transform the music and media industries through applying Blockchain technology, announces its first enterprise pilot with Viacom International Media Networks, UK.
“Thanks to guidance and mentorship from Viacom’s Senior Strategy Director, Oli Thomas, and the team at Viacom over the past 10 months, we’ve built a comprehensive understanding of the challenges of managing digital rights at scale. With the pilot, we’re now one step closer to our first public alpha release,” commented JAAK co-founder and CEO Vaughn McKenzie.
The EY Startup Challenge’s ‘Most Innovative Pilot’ winners and Techstars Music first class (2017) alumni, have had an undeniably productive first half of the year. The team crossed the Atlantic for the Techstars program in Los Angeles shortly after revealing their first product, META (the metadata network built on the Blockchain platform Ethereum and its counterpart Swarm, which provides decentralised content storage) in February.
After months of diligence, exploring how to reduce friction and improve the understanding of digital rights, JAAK are now ready to begin announcing their official pilot partners.
The first to be publicly confirmed is the American multinational media conglomerate, Viacom, home to MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Channel 5 and more, who will be working with JAAK to explore micro-licensing and content syndication.
JAAK are currently in discussions with organisations across the music and media industry about The META Initiative pilots, due to start later this year.