Royal

Royal is a platform and marketplace that aims to provide artists with a way through which they can share ownership in their music with fans through issuing digital collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This technology allows fans to essentially invest in their favorite artists and earn royalties from the songs they have invested in. The company was founded in 2021, by co-founders JD Ross and Justin David Blau (3LAU), and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Royal co-founder, 3LAU, has a goal of creating a platform on which musicians can start their careers and finance their recordings and future albums through non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The company has raised venture capital to help build the requisite engineering as well as legal infrastructure. Including to help Royal in the platform's future plans on building a native exchange where users can trade artist assets without needing to set up a wallet, often considered a friction point for the purchase and exchange of NFTs.

This firm offer is illustrated in a recent drop by its founder, 3LAU, who released a collection of 333 unique art pieces, which represent 50% of ownership in the streaming rights of the song, "Worst Case." The company claims that more than 120,000 users have already signed up for access to the platform since August. To continue to promote the development and adoption of the platform, Royal brought on Grammy-winning recording artist Nas, who released a collection including the lead single "UItra Black," from Nas's 2021 album King's Disease, and the single "Rare," from the artist's 2022 album King's Disease II. Both tracks were previously released via Nas's label Mass Appeal.

In the case of "Ultra Black," there was a planned supply of 760 tokens with streaming royalty ownership separated into three tiers. Gold tier offered owners 0.0143 percent streaming royalty ownership of $50, Platinum tier offered 0.0857 percent streaming royalties for $250, and Diamond tier which offered 2.14 percent streaming royalties for $4,999.

Royal is a platform on which users can buy ownerships in songs directly from their favorite artists and earn royalties with them. Its functionality is split across three parts:

• Artists can sell ownership—Musicians can use Royal to sell ownership in their songs as well as fan experiences.
• Collectors can buy ownership—Collectors have the opportunity to purchase ownership in songs directly from their favorite artists that create on the platform.
• All of them can rise together—Collectors can receive royalties for the songs that they end up buying, and when the artists grow, everyone else wins as a result.

As part of the platform, artists are able to choose the percentage of the song's royalties they put up for sale, but are also able to bundle fan experiences, special tracks, and digital art with those sales. A user is then able to purchase the streaming royalties in the form of tokens, which can be resold on NFT exchanges. The payout time for the royalties depends on the song and the artist.

The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is the consensus method that classifies what is better understood as Limited Digital Assets (LDAs). An NFT is a certificate of authenticity that's stored on a blockchain network and originates, or is minted, from a smart contract. This minting contract assigns each token ID to a specific set of meta-data that points to images or creative content.

Royal LDAs are ERC-1155 tokens that have a suite of features that go beyond the simple functionality of hosting meta-data, which points to media content. The ERC-1155 standard utilizes a single contract to mint various NFTs and can also mint fungible tokens at a reduced carbon dioxide cost when compared to to the ERC-721 standard.