Dance producer Guy J sells token representing new track's royalties for 40 ETH

Crypto-powered music streaming platform Rocki has sold its first royalty income right NFT — which grants 50% of a song’s streaming royalties to its owner.
Crypto-powered music streaming platform Rocki has sold its first royalty income right NFT — which grants 50% of a song’s streaming royalties to its owner.

The crypto-powered music streaming platform Rocki has sold its first “royalty income right NFT” — a token granting its owner a 50% share in all royalties generated by a specific track's streams on the site.

The token corresponds to a track titled “Cotton Eyes” that has been exclusively released on Rocki by Malta-based progressive house producer Guy J.

The ERC-721 royalty income right token was auctioned alongside an ERC-1155 “listening right” token, allowing the winning bidder to stream the song for free.

The tokens were sold on decentralized auction protocol Bounce.finance for 40 Ether — worth $25,600 as of this writing as ETH hits new heights for 2020. Guy J said he was intrigued by the concept:

“I've always been interested in new music technologies and services that provide artists with new revenue streams and heighten fan engagement.”

Rocki CEO and co-founder Bjorn Niclas described its royalty tokens as opening up new revenue streams for artists and driving unique forms of engagement with fans, stating:

“Regardless of the initial size of their audience, artists can capitalize on their existing fan base with the introduction of Music NFTs.”

Since exiting stealth mode last month, the Rocki platform has seen more than 30,000 tracks uploaded by “several thousand” independent artists. However, the platform is still yet to launch public Beta access, with Rocki claiming the functionality will launch “soon.”

The dance music industry is increasingly experimenting with non-fungible tokens, with electronic artist deadmau5 collaborating on two token launches in the past week.

On Dec. 16, deadmau5 launched collectible tokens hosted on the WAX Blockchain, with packs of 10 NFTs priced at $9.99 and packs of 30 tokens selling for $28.40. The tokens were released the day after a 30-second audio-reactive artwork created by reality artist Sutu accompanied by a sonic loop from deadmau5’s track SATRN was launched on the SuperRare NFT marketplace.