BAND Royalty: NFTs that will Change the Music Industry Forever
After the previous year we all experienced, no one can ever say that art is not essential. Without art (music, movies, shows, paintings, etc.), the human race would have gone insane. While the pandemic raged, our favorite art and artist distracted us, entertained us, and saved us.
During that time, the crypto market found its footing as well and entered a new bull cycle. With this renewed interest, the masses were introduced to Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). Unlike a currency, NFTs are tokens that represent the ownership of a unique asset of some kind. For more on NFTs, check out this link from Ethereum.org.
The practical application of NFTs (copyrights, certificates of authenticity, intellectual property, institutional integration) is one of the most exciting emergences of this bull market. It represents the potential convergence that may take place between the physical world and the crypto world.
However, so far we have seen NFT tech be mainly used for what some would consider “the fun stuff.” Art has dominated the NFT space, climaxing with the artist Beeple selling his “Everydays — The First 5000 Days” piece for a record $69 million. For some, this sale validated the legitimacy of NFTs. For others, it was another example of wasteful, imaginary internet money in a bubble.
BAND Royalty
Enter a revolutionary new project that utilizes NFT and smart contract technology to bridge the world of crypto and the real-world music industry. BAND Royalty aims to allow NFT holders to benefit from the royalties of music from Justin Timberlake, Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Beyonce, will.i.am, Timbaland, Rihanna, and many more.
BAND Royalty was founded by the dynamic duo of Noble Drakoln and Barnaby Andersun. Together they host the newly launched CryptoTenX podcast, currently found on Youtube.
Andersun is the founder of BlockAlchemy, a highly successful crypto accelerator that has launched a number of key blockchain projects. Having been involved in web development and innovation since the 1990s, Andersun is a frequent speaker at blockchain events worldwide.
Drakoln is the CEO of WarePlay Games, Inc. that features several mobile games on the Apple and Google App stores as well as AR/XR game development. He has an eclectic background, from being a futures and commodity broker at a young age to a best-selling author.
With two decades of investment experience in the niche market of music royalty rights, the BAND team is looking to marry those real-world assets to the world of crypto.
That fascination with owning the royalty rights of mainstream musicians’ work presented a unique opportunity, via smart contracts and NFTs, for the BAND Royalty team to open the general public and musicians themselves up to a segment of the music industry few have previously had access to.
How It Works
BAND Royalty has spent the time accumulating the royalty rights for some of the music industry’s biggest stars. So what does that mean?
Whenever a song or album is released, a number of individuals and labels hold rights to the royalties that a particular song or album earns. If a Justin Timberlake song is used in a commercial during the Super Bowl, everyone who holds rights to that song will split the royalties earned.
The rights that BAND owns are the songwriter’s ‘writer rights.’ This is very important because it opens the BAND catalog to royalties whenever the song is played or performed, even if it is not performed by the specific artist who made the song famous.
Example: Whitney Houston is world-famous in part for the song, “I Will Always Love You.” But did you know that Dolly Parton wrote that song and holds the writer’s rights to it? Parton made $10 million in royalties in the 1990s alone from Houston’s version and joked that she built Dollywood from all the money she made.
BAND is focused on acquiring an even wider breadth of rights in the future, including publisher rights, performer rights, mechanical rights, and producer rights. This will open up all BAND Royalty NFT and token holders to even more royalty income over the coming months and years.
Steps to Royalty Gains
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “That’s great, but how does it actually happen?” So let’s break down the process from A to Z to flush out any confusion.
Right now, early investors can buy specialty NFTs from the BAND team, starting at 1 ETH each, all the way up to 25 ETH for the №1 Double Diamond Album NFT. However, as of this writing, the top three, most exclusive Diamond NFTs have been presold.
BAND is releasing 3,000 album NFTs, the first set of four sets, totaling 12,000 albums. There will never be more than 12,000 BAND Royalty NFTs to be bought, sold, or staked to earn royalties. But we’ll get to the staking portion in a minute.
These first 3,000 NFTs are set on a bonding curve, with the most plentiful level at the lowest price, rising as supply grows more exclusive. Finishing with the three single Diamond level NFTs, numbered 1 through 3.
Any NFTs that aren’t sold in private presale through the team in their telegram community by May 5th will be released on the OpenSea marketplace for purchase by the public. Alright, you’ve purchased your BAND Royalty NFT, now what?
In July, the staking smart contract will launch for the BAND platform. Due to BAND’s structure, the royalties are pooled into three major categories. These are real-world royalties paid out for the use of songs within the BAND portfolio of music rights.
The three primary royalty sectors, or pools, are Publishing, Mechanical & Public Performance, and Music Synchronization.
Publishing is whenever sheet music for a particular song is sold at retail. Mechanical & Public Performance are when the song is performed in public or when the song is reproduced through recording, manufacturing, and distributing the song, even if it is not being performed by the original artist who made the song famous. Music Synchronization is when a song is used as background music or in a musical score of a movie, TV show, or commercial.
Depending on which NFT you bought, you now get to choose which pool you want to stake your NFT in. Staking is a fancy word for ‘committing.’ By committing your investment to a pool, you will begin earning a portion of that pool’s royalties in relation to the percent held of the pool (i.e., if a pool has 10 1 ETH NFT holders staking, each holder would earn 10% of the current royalties in the pool).
Staking periods range from 90 days to 5 years. A point of caution: if you cancel your stake period before it expires, the earned royalties are lost and are reallocated to the remaining stakers. Given BAND Royalties' real-world application and the quarterly structure of music royalty payouts, this is a symbiotic relationship that requires a commitment from both parties.
But Wait, There’s More
NFTs aren’t the only thing that BAND Royalty will have for you to invest in. In June 2021, the team will be launching their native governance token, $BAND. This token will be used within the project's platform as well as traded alongside the NFTs to be stored, utilized, or staked.
There will be a fourth pool developed by the team that the tokens will be able to be committed to earning even more royalties. This will allow the project's overall value to grow, establish a top-tier market capitalization for the project, and continue to grow the rights portfolio within the company.
Speaking of company, BAND Royalty shares some good company.
BAND is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). Both organizations are must-have memberships if you are to be taken seriously in the music industry, both in the United States and around the world.
BAND Royalty is also signed with Sony Music / The Orchid as the distributor of its own new music label, BAND Music Chain Records.
This will become fundamentally important when the next phase of the platform launches. Individual musicians will be able to publish their own music, mint their own rights into NFTs, and directly sell those rights to the public. The game will officially be changed when musicians can take control of their metaphorical destinies and buy and sell their own rights peer-to-peer.
Along with these important developments, BAND Royalty has aligned itself with absolute juggernauts in the crypto-sphere. BAD Crypto Podcast, owned and operated by long-time crypto stalwarts Joel Comm and Travis Wright, has taken on Advisor roles with BAND as a show of strength in the long-term prospects of the project’s potential success.
The most recent BAD Crypto Podcast episode features a deep dive into the BAND Royalty project with co-founder Noble Drakoln. Joel and Travis also host The Nifty Show, a live podcast dedicated to the growing NFT space, featuring a fascinating conversation with co-founder Barnaby Andersun.
BAND Royalty has also acquired the services of the massively successful press agency Investor Brand Network (IBN), to manage their worldwide media campaigns. Their previous client list includes hundreds of publicly traded corporations and emerging tech giants who need a global reach like IBN can offer.
Melodic Evolution
Cryptophiles talk a lot about mass adoption. Most envision that manifesting itself in this great singularity where fiat currency institutions and crypto merge, where we all use our phones to use Bitcoin to buy anything; like how we use the dollar today. But mass adoption is slow, clunky, and usually happening on the fringes before becoming more mainstream.
BAND Royalty represents another small step toward mass adoption. It merges an incredibly lucrative industry (music) with the emerging technology of crypto, smart contracts, and NFTs. No longer can we shrug off the trendiness or flash-in-the-pan popularity of blockchain.
In 20 years, when every corporation uses blockchain to track its supply lines, every bank uses smart contracts to manage its money flows, and Justin Beiber is using NFTs to divide up and monetize his entire discography directly with his fans; we will look back on small moments like these and remember where it all started…
For more information about BAND Royalty:
Website — http://bandroyalty.com/
Twitter — https://twitter.com/band_royalty
Youtube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLAV9bhKz9WC2OhWrllP7Ew
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/bandroyalty
Facebook — http://facebook.com/BANDroyaltyNFTs
Telegram — https://t.me/bandroyalty
Transparency Disclaimer: I am invested in the BAND Royalty project. The project did not commission this article. I wrote this piece on my own time, without compensation from the BAND Royalty team.
