Mastercard seems to be launching a “Mastercard Artist Accelerator” which will enable artists to leverage tools to build, market and potentially sell their music in the digital economy.
Leveraging the Indian blockchain poster child Polygon Technology, Mastercard will allow artists to build for the digital economy.
A wise person once said that all companies will become tech companies, and probably now, all tech companies will have to become #web3 companies to survive and thrive in the digital world.
This seems like a classic case of attempting to control the ecosystem, which eventually will give Mastercard some control over supply and demand, keeping them relevant.
Interesting that Mastercard is not trying to be the best “card network” company anymore, at-least based on all the new fronts that they have opened with account based payments, digital currencies / crypto and now web3, I wonder what it will look like in 10 years.
It is not unheard of “pure” technology firms to enter into the lucrative industry of arts, Apple did this a long time ago, that changed the music industry for ever. Apple went from a computer company to being one of the largest platform for artists, and the network effect led to huge adoption.
Distribution of content, music included has seen tremendous disruption over the last few years, moving from physical ownership to electronic ownership, and now ownership in the form of NFT’s, things are looking interesting.
I believe this is one big circle to eventually to stay relevant in the payments economy and extend into industries where they can build and maintain a monopoly, at least for some years.