25/03/2022 Diplo Joins Nas With NFT Drop on Tokenized Royalties Platform Royal

The Grammy-winning DJ will be releasing his new single on the Polygon-powered site.

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Diplo (Dave Benett/Getty Images for Ned's Club)

Crypto music startup Royal has nabbed Diplo as its latest star, saying Thursday the DJ and electronic musician will be releasing one of his new songs on the tokenized royalties platform.

The single, “Don’t Forget My Love,” will have its royalty rights embedded in what the platform calls “Limited Digital Assets (LDA),” which are essentially Polygon-based non-fungible tokens (NFT).

The platform is one of the many crypto-based projects looking to shake up the music industry, turning to blockchain and NFTs as a way to loosen the grip of major record labels.

“Diplo is a cultural leader and innovator who always pushes boundaries. We’re incredibly stoked that his fans will have the opportunity to own a piece of his music,” Royal founder and fellow DJ Justin Blau told CoinDesk in a statement. “This drop shows there’s a real, mainstream application for blockchain technology, and the use cases extend beyond independent and enthusiast communities.”

Royal will sell the collection of 2,110 Diplo LDA tokens on March 29. The token’s three tiers correspond to different percentages of ownership, with the cheapest, $99 token giving its owner 0.004% of the song’s streaming royalties and the most expensive, $9,999 tier giving 0.7%.

Royal’s first major artist collaboration was with the famed rapper Nasback in January, who tokenized two songs on the platform after investing in the firm’s$55 million Series Alast year.

Royal has since collaborated with artists Ollie and Verite, with all three collections selling out, so far totaling 413 ether (around $1.2 million) of trade volume on secondary marketplaceOpenSea.

Of the three collections, Nas’s remains the most popular, with the lowest tier holding onto a 0.182 ETH (roughly $546) floor price at the time of writing. The tokens were initially sold for $99.

Other platforms in the crypto music streaming genre includeMODA DAO, a token governance and royalty payments mashup, andAudius, a more traditional-looking streaming site.

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/24/diplo-joins-nas-with-nft-drop-on-tokenized-royalties-platform-royal/