Sona adds musician-friendly streaming, marketplace with $6.8M funding

Sona has launched a new web3-based, no-subscription, ad-free streaming music platform and a marketplace where artists can auction off SONA, the “digital twins” of songs.

The startup was co-founded by DJ/producer TOKiMONSTA, who also announced that Sona had raised $6.9 million in seed funding from Polychain Capital, Haun Ventures, and Rogue Capital.

How Artists Make Money

Artists earn in two ways on Sona. The first is per stream based on the song’s pro-rata share of total streams, and the second is by auctioning off SONA, which are one-of-a-kind digital twins of specific songs that split streaming rewards with their owners.

Artists aren’t selling ownership or existing royalties. They are only selling rewards generated within the Sona ecosystem. The artist triggers any auction which lasts 24 hours

The new SONA owners receive 70% of the Sona streaming rewards of that song. The artist gets 30% of streams, and Sona takes 7% off the top.

“It’s pooled every two weeks and then redistributed to every artist and collector, proportional to how much [the specific song] is streamed,” co-founder Laura Jaramillo told TechCrunch. “So, you’re paying artists for their work quickly, incentivizing the creation of that work, and then also rewarding the people that are actually supporting those artists.”

Learn more here.

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.