According to contract data from Etherscan, Rihanna’s hit song “Bitch Better Have My Money” has recently had a small portion of its royalties transferred to 205 people via 300 Ethereum NFTs in a collection that sold out on Thursday.
Rihanna’s 2015 track was produced by Jamil “Deputy” Pierre and Kanye West. It looks like Jamil “Deputy” Pierre used a Europe-based crypto startup called AnotherBlock to sell 0.99% of his streaming royalty rights to the song as 300 NFTs.
Each blockchain token indicates that the bearer owns more than 0.0033% of the song’s royalty rights, assures “lifetime” ownership of that portion of the copyright, and grants a set number of streaming rights from the master recording.
AnotherBlock’s Rihanna song currency sold out
AnotherBlock’s currency for the Rihanna song sold out swiftly and earned $63,000 on Thursday. The music’s streaming royalties might be valued as much as $6.36 million at a rate of $210 per 0.0033% of the song.
Since the signed NFT Ownership Agreement presented on the site does not clarify how much Deputy possesses in total, it is unclear how much of the royalties Deputy holds privately after the sale. A person familiar with royalty splits in the traditional music industry said that a producer’s overall royalty cut for a single song is typically less than five percent.
As written in the agreement, Deputy hired AnotherBlock to manage the NFT mint on his behalf. In addition to allowing NFTs to be sold, the contract stipulates that Deputy must pay NFT holders their part of streaming royalties at least twice each year.
AnotherBlock website showed that the “likely” NFT returns for the Rihanna song are approximately 6.5% each year, or approximately $13.65 per year. This means that it would take approximately 15 years for the initial purchaser to receive their money back. This indicates that Rihanna fans are more likely to view this release as a fun Web3 activity than as a serious financial investment.
However, the concept of selling a portion of music rights as NFTs is not novel. For instance, Justin “3LAU” Blau’s Web3 music platform Royal raised $16 million in 2021 and debuted its long-awaited music rights marketplace in November 2022 after securing $16 million in 2021. Since then, Royal claims to have paid over $132,000 in royalties to its NFT collectors.
Content Source: decrypt.co
