Music NFT marketplace Royal raises $55M
Music NFT marketplace startup Royal has raised $55 million in Series A funding after having raised $16 million in August.
The new round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Crypto fund with participation from The Chainsmokers, Nas, Logic and Kygo, CAA, NEA’s Connect Ventures, Crush Music, Coinbase Ventures, Founders Fund and Paradigm.
On Royal, fans can purchase and sell shares of songs and then earn royalties.
The startup is led by Justin Blau, an EDM artist who performs under the name 3LAU, and JD Ross, a co-founder of home-buying startup Opendoor.
Last month, Blau gave away hundreds of NFTs via Royal that represents 50% of the streaming rights to his latest song. Those tokens have already been resold for $600,000, giving the new single an implied $6 million valuation.
“The value of music ownership is vastly misrepresented and undervalued today, but it won’t be for too much longer, as more musicians embrace the web3 ecosystem,” Blau said in a recent blog post.
MORE: How NFTs could revolutionize the music industry
Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.
Thank you for sharing this! i was wondering how this works. Hip Hip Music
I like him.Justin Blau was hanging out with the Winklevoss twins in Mexico in 2014, as one does when one is a world-famous DJ and producer who turned down a career on Wall Street to pursue music. That’s when he got hooked on bitcoin.Really good guy.
What is the incentive to invest in a band who has no commercial appeal?