Blockchain technology is quickly disrupting many industries, and music is no exception. The blockchain is offering an opportunity for artists to take back control of their work from traditional intermediaries such as record labels and open up a more direct connection with fans.
Royal, a new platform co-founded last year by JD Ross and musician Justin “3LAU” Blau, is leveraging blockchain tech to do just that by allowing music fans to purchase limited digital assets that give them partial ownership of an artist’s work — and the royalties that come with it.
“My long-term vision is that digital collectibles will eventually grow into actual ownership in a song’s master revenue rights, enabling artists to disintermediate the music industry, capturing value alongside their fans,” wrote 3LAU in a blog post last year.
Today, Royal came one step closer to achieving that vision as it held its first official drop in partnership with rapper Nas. “For the first time ever, people will be able to own a part of Nas’ music by buying limited digital assets (LDAs), which are tokens with embedded streaming royalty rights,” wrote 3LAU in the announcement of the drop.
The songs dropping today on Royal, which were released by Nas’s independent label Mass Appeal, are “Ultra Black,” for which there will be 760 tokens made available for purchase, and “Rare,” for which there will be 1,110. Both songs include three tiers of tokens with varying percentages of streaming royalty ownership, ranging in cost from $50 to $9,999. Fans will be able to purchase the tokens through the Polygon network with a credit card or with crypto.
Royal previously raised $55 million in Series A funding in November to continue to grow its platform, and gig-name artists who have invested in the platform, other than Nas, include The Chainsmokers, Kygo, and Logic. The Nas drop is an exciting step for the company and for the industry as a whole. For now, we can expect more artist drops on Royal in the near future, and it’s only a matter of time until the competition picks up in this space as fans and artists continue to adopt this new technology.