A Beginner’s Guide to “Music NFTs” and Royal’s Limited Digital Assets
NFTs have taken the world by storm, growing to a $41 billion market in 2021. While many of the most well-known NFT projects are visual (images and art), we believe many of the most compelling opportunities for digital assets have yet to be explored.
Today we’re here to talk about how NFTs are being utilized in the music industry and how Royal is capitalizing on the underlying technology to unlock new opportunities for artists and fans. Royal is redefining music ownership by enabling anyone to invest in music as an asset class and own rights in songs. At the same time, we are empowering artists to maintain control over their rights while sharing ownership with their fans.
Key Takeaways
- NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are digital certificates of authenticity
- Music NFTs typically manifest as digital collectibles to support artists through patronage
- Royal’s Limited Digital Assets (LDAs) are NFTs that give fans real ownership in music rights
- Historically the general public hasn’t had access to invest in music rights
- When fans and artists own music together, both benefit as the music’s popularity grows
A Quick Intro — what are NFTs?
In simple terms, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are certificates of authenticity that can be used to prove “ownership” over a variety of assets — most commonly for digital media, such as art, online trading cards, music, avatars, and domain names. What’s unique about NFTs is that they live on the blockchain, which means they cannot be changed.
Non-fungible means each token is one of a kind and its uniqueness manifests through code and metadata, and no two are the same.
So what are music NFTs?
Music NFTs have been growing in popularity and are still experimental by nature. Currently, music NFTs are typically released by artists with a form of visual media, since music is invisible. Artists will tokenize audio + album art and release that on the blockchain as a digital collectible. They create a limited number of tokens, so that they are rare and more valuable. Sometimes the tokens come with exclusive benefits such as merch, concert tickets, and other perks.
While there is no one “standard” use case for music NFTs, they typically don’t signify real ownership in music. By real ownership, we mean owning rights associated with a song, making you a partner in the intellectual property of the song.
Imagine being able to truly own your favorite songs alongside the artists you love.
What is Royal and how is it different?
Royal is redefining music ownership. We use blockchain technology and NFTs to enable anyone to own rights in songs.
Historically, music ownership has been limited to record labels, publishers, private equity firms, and hedge funds, with artists often retaining only a small percentage of ownership, if any. Royal broadens access to real ownership in music by issuing Limited Digital Assets (LDAs), making it so that anyone can own rights in songs. Limited Digital Assets are Royal’s version of an NFT — what’s unique about them is they are embedded with music rights and additional benefits. (Our engineers are so fire.)
Royal’s model empowers artists to maintain control over their work and fuel their career by sharing a piece of their music rights with fans. This not only provides artists with a new revenue stream, but more importantly, it creates a deeper connection with people who are invested in their music’s success.
How to buy and sell Limited Digital Assets on Royal
At Royal, we make it easy. All you need is a debit/credit card and you can participate in one of our drops. The checkout process is like any e-commerce site and as easy as buying a pair of shoes from nike.com.
If you’re curious to dive deeper and take full advantage of your ownership (e.g. resell your LDA on a secondary marketplace), you’ll need to set up a crypto wallet. Royal currently supports MetaMask with plans to support other wallets in the future.
Limited Digital Assets are first distributed during a drop — this is the initial sale that takes place on royal.io. When you buy an LDA during a drop, you directly support the artist and gain instant ownership of the music.
If you miss out on the drop, you can also buy Royal LDAs on a secondary marketplace like OpenSea. You’ll need to have MetaMask to participate.
If you’re looking for more detail on how to buy Royal LDA’s, check out our help center. Below is a guide that covers common lingo as you dive deeper.
In the meantime, keep an eye on our blog and social accounts to stay up to date on our drops.
Common lingo:
Drop — The initial sale of a new NFT project. When you participate in a drop, you are buying directly from the artist or creator.
Mint — The process of turning an asset into an NFT on the blockchain. When you buy an NFT during a drop, you are minting the NFT.
Floor — The lowest current market price for an NFT of a particular project.
Airdrop — This is when projects or artists send free tokens in masses to people’s public addresses. If you are part of an airdrop, you will receive free tokens in your wallet.
Gas — Fees paid to conduct transactions on a blockchain, denominated in a network’s native currency.
Wallet — Digital wallets for interacting with web3 to buy, access and send/swap tokens on a blockchain.
