Everyone is talking about NFTs and also the music domain is also starting to realize the importance it could be for their industry. ROBA Music Publishing, a worldwide leading German music publisher launches in collaboration with license.rocks a Music-NFT (Non-Fungible Token).
A NFT can carry media assets that can be saved onchain (on the blockchain) or offchain (centralized storage with a hash - a fingerprint of these assets) and managed via smart contracts. These assets can then show the provenance of ownership and be traded. This enables the trading of rights and works of digital assets as art and music recordings e.g.
The music NFT set up by ROBA Music Publishing and license.rocks was fittingly created for the new song "WALLET" by a German rap star called Kay One and his collaboration with Stard Ova from the music label PMR. (Link to the song and here to their own NFT plattform)
This songs deals thematically with the topic of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin though). As we believe that NFT need to be scarce and also offerin something special to the fans we came up with the following first design. The issued NFTs were limited to 100 pieces and hold the track, an else not available instrumental version and a potential meet & greet for any of the token buyers. That meet & greet is the necessary fan component that will be selected among any token holder till the next Birthday of Ethereum (30th July 2021) by first airdropping them all another token and then using a randomly generated token ID to select the lucky winner. This is the first drop of Roba’s and license.rocks joint projects in the music industry.
Due to the expertise of ROBA Music Publishing in the field of music rights management, for the first time in a music NFT, attention is paid to the compliance of the entire rights chain and the participation of all parties involved according to the standards customary in the industry. Both the recording side and the copyright side are given equal consideration, as otherwise the rights of participants could be violated when trading an NFT.
ROBA Music Publishing and license.rocks offer this unique combination of rights management and crypto expertise to labels and artists, as well as their management, as a white label solution. A new and innovative offering that currently defines industry standards in the crypto music sector.
license.rocks was founded in 2017 with the hypothesis that decentralized technologies will change the way the world will license product and services. As their brand name states they think licensing can be positive and something people benefit from and understand.
Prof. Dr. Christian Baierle (ROBA):
"We at ROBA Music Publishing have had the topic of cryptocurrencies and NFTs on our radar for quite some time and have now found an optimal combination to move forward as one of the pioneers in this field. The response from our business partners so far has been very positive and there is a lot of enthusiasm for this topic. In the future, we will develop many new creative possibilities in this completely new business field, so that our authors can also experience the best possible support and expertise in this area. We are very much looking forward to working with license.rocks, our partners and the resulting joint projects!"
Daud Zulfacar (license.rocks):
license.rock's mission is to make licensing easier for all parties involved. We use NFTs as media carriers, to track revenue, but also to tie down licensing metrics so that users know what they are buying and understand what they can do with it. We believe that it takes in-depth industry knowledge to build a better licensing system for all parties involved, which is why we are so excited to have found our dream partner with ROBA for the vertical music. The first launch with PMR Music and such a fitting song title from Kay-One and Stard Ova via ROBA network shows the potential of this collaboration.
Peter Huber (PMR)
The management of PMR-Music GmbH has been involved with the crypto world, wallet technology and the associated blockchain philosophy for quite some time. So it is only logical for us, and after we also got the opportunity with ROBA and License Rocks to produce and market NFTs from song productions as well, to serve this market. Since the last song we produced is called "Wallet" and everything here revolves around Bitcoin, this song is unprecedentedly predestined to be the first German song to hit the market as an NTF.