3LAU established the NFT music platform Royal in May this year. The seed round in August raised US$16 million. Top institutions such as a16z and Coinbase participated.
Now it has completed a new round of financing. Many top European and American musicians (such as rap singer Nas and DJ Smoke Ghost group, etc.) also participated. And the scale is 55 million U.S. dollars.
Royal’s business logic is very clear. It is for musicians to make and sell NFT works. At the same time, fans can get royalties on future works after purchase.
This is not unrelated to the founder of Royal, DJ producer 3LAU.
3LAU released the world’s first NFT music album in March, earning more than $11.68 million in 24 hours.
Earlier, 3LAU also NFTized a single and made $250,000. “This is much more than the upfront payment a record company pays for a single.”
The release of the album has brought tens of millions of dollars in revenue. The wealth effect of NFT stimulated 3LAU. So he and his university roommate JD Ross co-founded Royal in May.
“Worst Case” released 333 NFTs
Royal received 16 million US dollars in financing after its establishment. Then Royal conducted an experiment at the end of October.
Then Royal conducted an experiment at the end of October. Royal released 333 NFTs for 3LAU’s new single “Worst Case”, which accounted for 50% of the streaming’s ownership of the single.
It is worth mentioning that this song is now more than 3 million plays per month. These 333 NFTs were airdropped to community users for free, and are now worth more than $6 million.
Royal plans to open it to more artists. 1000 songs were launched this year to allow fans to choose to invest, and it has indeed been supported by many musicians.
“The value of music ownership is now seriously underestimated. This situation will not last long. Because more and more musicians embrace the Web3 ecology.”
These musicians can sell their works through Royal. At the same time, their fans can also buy music ownership directly from their favorite idols and receive royalties in the future.
Royal NFT still has many problems
If the popularity of musicians and their singing works continue to expand, fans will undoubtedly benefit a lot. If the musician becomes unknown later, then the fans have indeed consumed the music.
Of course, the digital world has zero cost. How NFT protects music copyright is still a technical and legal problem, and it will take a long time.
Although Royal is a Web3 concept project, Royal is very pragmatic. They are not necessarily Tokens in terms of payment tools. It is still in the beta stage, and USDC is supported, and the US dollar will be directly supported in the future.
In addition, Royal is still on the Ethereum mainnet now, but it will move towards multi-chain in the future.
In summary, Royal is obviously a not-so-Crypto project, and it is not proud of it in the Crypto field. Instead, it takes a development path that attracts musicians and then faces the majority of fans.