Quick take:
- The company uses blockchain technology to support digital twins of songs that can only be owned by one person at a time.
- Artists can auction their music NFTs (SONAs) to collectors for 24 hours.
- Holders of SONAs receive 70% of the streaming revenue while artists get 30%.
SONA Stream has launched from stealth with a $6.9 million seed round from Polychain Capital, Haun Ventures and Rogue Capital. The company offers a Web3 music streaming marketplace that allows artists to sell “digital twins” of their songs as SONAs (Music NFTs) to collectors.
Artists set the minimum price they would take and then auction the SONAs to the highest bidder over 24 hours. The platform also offers a reward model that rewards holders of the SONAs with 70% of the streaming revenue on a pro-rata basis. The remaining 30% goes to the artists, while the company takes a 7% fee.
Explaining how the entire system works to TechCrunch, Laura Jaramillo, co-founder of SONA said: “It’s pooled every two weeks and then redistributed to every artist and collector, proportional to how much [the specific song] is streamed. 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.”
Music NFTs allow fans to invest in their favourite artists and promote their work while getting a reward for their efforts. SONA owners can promote the songs by sharing them on social media to direct their followers to the SONA Stream.
According to SONA Stream, SONAs are different from other types of Music NFTs because they are not integrated with other streaming platforms like Spotify, with all rewards coming from the SONA ecosystem. However, collectors are allowed to sell their SONAs on both SONA and third-party marketplaces.
Co-founder Jennifer Lee also known as DJ TOKiMONSTA added: “The artist and rightsholders retain 100% ownership of the original song — so that’s a bit different and why we don’t really see ourselves as a music NFT platform. We’re focused on the relationships between artists and fans.”
SONA is available to US residents aged at least 18 years old and currently features music tracks from the likes of Rochelle Jordan, CRi, Adam Oh, Cakes da Killa, Gavin Turek, Dakytl, Aquiles Navarro and Sara Hartman, among others. The platform is already home to five million tracks and targets to raise that number to over 16 million tracks by 2024.
****
Stay up to date:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
