How to make money on your music: A guide to your first drop

Let your fans invest in you.

For the first time ever, your listeners can fund your career and earn alongside you as your music grows in popularity. This is a new and innovative way to monetize your music, powered by emerging blockchain technology.

You’ll earn upfront revenue and put a face and name to your top fans. Your collectors will get a % of your streaming royalties over time as the music plays on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal.

Apply for a drop today and use our platform to:

• Sell streaming royalties to fans

• Create a unique marketing moment

• Reward your collector community

• Keep control and gain access to capital

We’ve helped raise over $2.6 million for artists during drops and delivered over $156,000 in streaming royalties to collectors who’ve purchased music on Royal. Read on to discover how to fuel your growth by sharing ownership of music rights on our marketplace.

1. Sell streaming royalties to fans

Through Royal, you can sell a percentage of a song's or album’s streaming rights to your supporters and unlock a new level of fandom. Payday is today, plus you’ll get a group of collectors who are invested in you.

What you get: 10+ years of streaming revenue upfront. You decide how much of a song or album’s net streaming royalties you want to sell. Plus, keep ownership of other royalty streams like digital downloads, synchs, and physical sales.

What your fans get: A percentage of the net royalties generated from your music for as long as they hold your token in their portfolio. Additionally, you can decide to include extra perks with your token, such as exclusive content or merch.

Whether you’re looking to fund a new tour, album, or promotional campaign, how you use the raised capital is all up to you.

Pricing your drop:

At Royal, we want to empower our artists to make informed decisions about pricing their music. When you’re ready to price your drop, we recommend starting with this song valuation calculator to give you an idea of the gross fair market value of the master streaming royalties you’re selling.

This tool will provide you with an estimate of the fair market value of the streaming royalties for your master recordings. It’s worth noting that the calculator only works for music that has been released for at least three months. If you plan on dropping a new release, you can consider pricing comparable songs from your existing collection to obtain a rough estimate.

While we encourage starting with the streaming valuation estimate, we understand that there might be other factors you wish to take into consideration when pricing your release. For instance, you may want to factor in the emotional value of your music or any special incentives you offer to collectors.

Ultimately, you know your fan base best, so we leave the pricing up to you. You can read more about pricing, including considerations around token quantity, in our Help Center.

How royalty payouts work:

During onboarding, you’ll connect us to your distributor and add us as a split. This automates payouts to your collectors after the drop—no ongoing bookkeeping is required.

• Each time a royalty disbursement happens, we receive a % of the streaming revenue directly from your label or distributor.

• The royalties then become available to claim straight from your collector’s dashboards. They can use the funds to buy more of your music or transfer the funds as they see fit.

2. Create a unique marketing moment

Another perk of dropping on Royal is that you get to create a unique marketing moment around your music. Here are just some of the ways you can use our platform to generate buzz:

• Speak to your fans off-cycle

• Surprise and delight your community

• Prolong your release cycle

• Re-engage your audience ahead of a release or tour

• Create a unique moment for a catalog anniversary

During the drop:

We strongly encourage you to use your own reach and networks to build hype around your release. This can include promoting through your own social media accounts, reaching out to your email list, and featuring information about the drop on your website. Check out these tips on how to promote your drop.

3. Reward your collector community

When people invest in your music, they can develop an emotional attachment to your songs and to you as an artist. And through Royal, you have the opportunity to re-ignite that connection again and again.

Learn who your top supporters are and establish a direct communication line with them through our platform. Here’s how.

Delivering exclusive experiences:

As you build a community of collectors around your music, you can show them your appreciation by providing unique experiences both during and after the drop. These are known as “rewards,” which are additional perks you can offer to your collectors as a thank you for their support.

Some ideas for extras include:

• Unreleased music

• Airdrops

• Virtual listening party

• Exclusive content

Posts and Discord:

You can use our platform’s post feature to send messages to your collector community at any time. This communication tool makes it easy for you to build deeper connections with your fanbase, whether you’re announcing new music, upcoming tours, or just having casual conversation.

And it’s as easy as composing a tweet!

Another effective way to connect with your collectors is through Royal’s thriving Discord community. With over 18,956 members, there are thousands of active users on the platform every day. You can leverage our general chat to spark conversation or create a private, token-gated channel to engage directly with your collectors.

4. Keep creative control and gain access to capital

When you drop music rights on Royal, you’re sharing success, not decision power. You decide what percent of streaming rights to sell to fans and keep the rest. You also maintain control over your promotions and marketing, and you decide how you want to use the money you raise to grow your brand — there are no gatekeepers here.

Build a community of supporters who are invested in your career and gain access to capital that will help you grow. By allowing your fans to be a part of your journey, you create a win-win scenario that lets them participate in your success.

Apply for a drop today and we’ll send you more information, including a quote for your music. You can also check us out on social media to learn more.