Where All is Blockchain Technology Used? Now in a Music Festival

A music festival will for the first time run on blockchain, tapping the fast-growing technology as an innovative way to address longstanding issues such as ticket scalping and fan engagement. Called the OUR Music Festival, or OMF, the inaugural edition will take place on October 20 in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza with a lineup to include electronic artist Zedd.

Organizers said that the festival would be the first to operate on blockchain, the system that moves chunks of data securely through an online ledger. Blockchain has been put to growing uses from medical records to banking and most prominently as the tool behind cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

For the festival, fans will use a mobile app and see all ticket purchases on an open ledger, which the promoters hope will completely eliminate the resale market that artists and venues have struggled to tame.

"The way ticketing works now, it is just sort of accepted by everyone and there are obvious problems from scalping to counterfeiting to fraud to insane fees," said Justin Blau, a financier turned DJ with the stage-name 3LAU who conceptualized the festival. "The reason why these systems haven't been changed is that up until now there really hasn't been a better way," he said. "You won't have Craigslist selling paper tickets to Coachella anymore once ticketing is on the blockchain," he further added