New era of fan-financed music investing on Algorand

In a new era for music on Web 3.0, Opulous has teamed up with Lil Pump and KSHMR to launch a fan-financed decentralised music investment platform on Algorand that will enable artists and fans to share in tokenised royalties.

The platform has been built by the creators of Ditto Music and will connect with the innovative investment platform Republic to facilitate fan-financing.

Music lovers will be able to directly invest into their favourite artist’s new song or album, which will earn them a share in the royalties earned from plays on streaming services proportional to their investment in the music.

Opulous has the mission of re-defining the artist/fan relationship, with the DeFi platform handing musicians an avenue to unlock funding for projects and giving dedicated fans willing to finance the music they love a chance to get a return.

Revolutionising the music space

In an exclusive interview with Coin Rivet, the founder of Opulous – Lee Parsons – explained how the new DeFi platform launching on Algorand would revolutionise the music space and create an increasingly democratic art scene for global communities.

“One of the only things that major labels can offer musicians any more is money,” explained Lee.

“This leads artists into signing bad deals and their whole career is in the hands of a few people who may or not care if their music ever gets released.

“Opulous gives artists the chance to raise money from thousands of fans who truly care about their career and who are incentivised to not only listen to that music but to promote it, knowing that they will make more money the better that song does.”

With the platform enabling any and everyone the opportunity to access the financing they need to pursue their musical dreams, Opulous offers the potential to ignite a new era of quality music from every corner of the globe – even musicians in the developing world can unlock music financing with a click.

“Our true passion is new artists – we have a huge community of NFT buyers and investors,” Lee highlighted.

“The bigger returns will be in finding acts while they are still small and holding that music asset as their career develops. So there is a huge market for new musicians to tap into.”

It seems the democratisation and decentralisation of the music industry is going to be a revolutionary benefit of web 3.0, but there is also concern that it will inevitably drive an increased commodification of music and art – something already alleged against the booming NFT market.

But the founder was quick to explain how this is a bigger problem related to the centralised music industry – something that Opulous will seek to balance with the Algorand-based platform.

“Art has to be sold or the creator will not have a way to live,” he argued.

“The problem we have in the music industry is that musicians sell their music to a record label and it is then owned by one or two people who have complete control over that person’s career.

“Selling it directly to your fans – the people who truly care about your art – is true decentralisation.

“If you look at companies like AngelList, this model has already successfully disrupted the VC community, and Opulous will do the same to the music industry. We are also partnering with Binance to offer fan experience NFTs and this will allow even greater engagement and a brand new source of revenue.”

Web 3.0 will re-define artist-fan relationships

Web 3.0 may soon see music investment as an emergent cottage asset, with musical experts investing in promising musicians utilising decentralised platforms such as Opulous.

These music royalty tokens will be the key to more than just royalties with plans to connect them to exclusive tickets, merchandise, events, and NFT drops.

As part of the first wave of releases on Opulous, Lil Pump is offering fans and investors the opportunity to be part of his forthcoming single ‘Mona Lisa’, the track has been produced by Jimmy Duval and features Soulja Boy – a keen crypto evangelist himself, known for his prophetic hit ‘Bitcoin’.

Investors will also be able to get in on a forthcoming single from KSHMR and, in the coming weeks, there will be more star artists offering their music copyright for investment via Republic.

Tokenisation of royalties is just the latest use case in a series of successes for Algorand which is, remarkably, also fighting the mafia’s grip on the Italian olive oil trade and being chosen to deliver the blockchain infrastructure for El Salvador’s new decentralised finance system.