Veritas and Subba team up to build better experiences for music fans

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Customer feedback service Veritas is set to help musicians and event organizers engage better with their fans, using blockchain-verified reviews and a tokenized reward system. Recently, the company announced a deal with music reviews site Subba, a music/live event review platform that also works with ticketing providers.

Veritas is an API service that forms part of the Britevue Group. Britevue itself uses the BSV blockchain to create a microtransaction economy around consumer reviews. It both verifies genuine reviews and rewards the people who write them via others’ interactions.

Britevue Founder and CEO Connor Murray spoke to CoinGeek about the Veritas/Subba arrangement, as well as some of the company’s plans to expand into point-of-sale (PoS) systems that remember a customer’s real-life commercial interactions with a business and reward them later if they publish a review.

Veritas words in the background for Subba by issuing a token at the same time a ticket to a live music event, be it a concert or a festival—that connects to a fan’s online identity. That way, any review the ticket purchaser might publish in the future can automatically be verified as a genuine attendee.

Further reassuring fans

Subba Founder and CEO Mark Jennings called it “a big milestone” for the company, saying it would help musicians and promoters alike identify their biggest fans through honest reviews.

“We are sometimes asked about the validation or authenticity of the user generated reviews featuring on Subba, Veritas’ technology not only answers these questions but it does so much more. It will enable Subba (and our ticketing partners) with the ability to further reassure fans that their purchase decisions are the right ones, along with rewarding them for their purchases,” said Jennings.

“This is a game changer for the wider industry,” he added.

The system also gathers and connects data on music lovers’ tastes and purchasing habits, saving on future marketing/promotion costs by targeting those most likely to attend future events. Artists themselves will have an enhanced connection with their fanbases. Although music fans have always been vocal in giving their opinions on concerts and new releases, Veritas provides an extra layer of authenticity to their voices.

Artists will be able to tell the difference between “true fans” who actually spend money on their recordings and performances and those with loud voices who don’t.

Murray said he’s a “frequent concert-goer and music fanatic” himself, and was enthusiastic about bringing his BSV blockchain-based services to the industry.

He noted that Subba is just one possible implementation of Veritas’ API set, and potentially any business could use the system in a similar way.

“Our partnership with Subba is the first step to do so. Veritas will just be the plumbing to utilize the blockchain to validate the authenticity of reviews. Our goal is to use Britevue as a review platform for brick-and-mortar businesses, but Veritas will be able to power reviews for other industries. Anyone can get more information about Veritas at veritas.britevue.com and can implement it with two simple API calls.”

Unlocking rewards for reviews

In a similar vein, Veritas plans to move into Point of Sale services to verify reviews made on physical purchases in brick-and-mortar businesses. One aspect of the system Murray hopes to bring to the market before the end of the year is tokenized rewards that incentivize purchasers to leave reviews.

At the time of purchase (which could be a retail store, restaurant, or any other business in the physical world), the PoS system issues a locked reward token. To unlock it and claim a potential reward, the customer should leave a review on Britevue.

Business will be able to “claim” their name on Britevue and define their own set of rewards that reviewing customers can unlock—for example, a discount, gift card/coupon, or a monetary reward in the form of BSV. Given the flexibility of BSV tokens, the possibilities for rewards are limited only to what may be tokenized.

Murray said the locked-reward tokens would be a good demonstration of what Veritas and Britevue can do and hopefully provide an incentive for large PoS companies to adopt it.

Initially launched as TrueReviews, Britevue aims to combat the problem of fraudulent and often trollish reviews left on existing (non-blockchain) review sites. Both businesses and other review readers usually have no idea if reviews are genuine. And a lack of rewards for reviews, in general, leads to a bias towards negative feedback rather than giving a clear overview.

The BSV blockchain adds authenticity to this process with its ability to handle micropayments in large volumes, also rewards reviewers with small payments when someone upvotes or interacts with the review they published.

Read also: Learn more about Bitcoin investments with this new ebook, Investing in Blockchain: Better data for a better world