Musicoin is an independent system not based on existing cryptocurrency. It's not just a currency, but a blockchain with full potential to run smart contracts and micropayment across systems. Since it's based on music economy(aka Musiconomy), it's designed specifically for music consumptions.
All coins will come from mining. However, since we do not expect casual users to setup mining on their own, Musicoin.org will subsidize listening for early adopters. Therefore, early adopters will listen for free, but artists will be paid in full from day 1. The coins used by Musicoin will be mined by our servers.
Eventually, coins will be available for purchase on an exchange, or other 3rd party services may offer a alternative model. However, in all cases, regardless of the model used to give access to listeners, each play will result in a payment.
Our goal is to allow musicians themselves to control everything. They can follow the template to set a standard price (which is one coin per play), or they can set a higher or lower prices based on their personal will. Additionally, musicians can customize how how each payment is distributed.
We believe that users, in general, would be happy to support their favorite musicians and that piracy is driven by two factors:
(1) convenience
(2) a disconnect between the listener and the artist
By building a simple, low-cost system that provides a direct connection between listeners and artists, we believe there will be little incentive to obtain music illegally.