XRPL Labs’ Wietse Wind unveils Web Monetization-enabled music player on Coil

XRPL Labs’ lead developer Wietse Wind gave new meaning to Digital Rights Management [DRM] in a Twitter thread, calling it “Donations Right to the Musician.” The lead developer was impressed by the idea of enabling donations for artists and has built a means for artists to monetize their content on Coil. Wind wrote,

This morning I stumbled upon a great idea by @CryptoCwby and @alloynetworks and I couldn't resist ?

A #webmonetization @Coil enabled music player, donating to artists straight from the MP3 ID3 tag ?

Proof of concept: https://t.co/3NAC7eE6rL

— Wietse Wind { ???????: ???? } (@WietseWind) October 14, 2019

Coil enables content creators from everywhere to share their content online, while getting paid in micropayments for every second through the subscription fees paid by subscribers. Thus, the choice of platform was clear as he wanted to showcase “How existing tech (ID3 tags in MP3s, and the equivalents in any other file format) can contain payment pointers,” Wind told AMBCrypto.

Wind added that he wanted to manifest “how a site/platform can use these tags to dynamically send donations to another payment pointer,” especially with the ease with which this can be built. Wind informed,

All you need is a few lines of Javascript code in your web player, and a "payment pointer" per artist (can even be a Twitter account using the @XRPTipBot). The payment pointer can be in the songs (ID3) or from your own database.
Happy to implement this with/for you (for free).
?

— Wietse Wind { ???????: ???? } (@WietseWind) October 16, 2019

Wind cited Ripple’s Director of Products, Craig DeWitt for this idea. DeWitt informed the company on 13 October of an XRPL side project that would allow mp4 downloads for direct XRP donations to the artists. DeWitt provided the community with an update on 16 October, saying that he was working on a beta and had been looking for beta testers.

DeWitt appreciated Wind’s efforts towards building this ‘Web Monetization’ product and sought the developer’s permission to embed this into his personal project. According to DeWitt, “a combination of streaming payments and direct music purchases is a powerful idea and a great user experience.”

Despite the fact that DeWitt’s idea inspired Wind to create his product, they differ in essence. Wind ,when asked about what distinguishes his product from DeWitt’s, told AMBCrypto,

“It’s different from what Craig is doing, he’s building something to actually sell the MP3 files for XRP, not using ILP but the XRP ledger. Also a great development.”

Apart from the Web Monetization product, Wind’s XUMM signing platform will see integration with XRP Toolkit by Towo Labs.