a16z, The Chainsmokers back 3LAU’s NFT platform Royal in $55 million Series A

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Roy­al, the start­up build­ing a mar­ket­place for dig­i­tal assets tied to music artists, has secured $55 mil­lion fund­ing through a Series A fundraise led by a16z.

Roy­al aims to pro­vide artists with a way for music artists to share own­er­ship in their music with fans by issu­ing dig­i­tal col­lectibles and non-fun­gi­ble tokens. In a sense, the fir­m’s offer­ing is illus­trat­ed in the recent drop by its found 3Lau, who released a col­lec­tion of 333 unique art pieces that also rep­re­sent 50% of own­er­ship in the stream­ing rights of his song, Worst Case. The com­pa­ny says more than 120,000 users have signed up for access to the plat­form since August.

While an artist might give up own­er­ship in a song in an NFT drop, they are also unlock­ing more val­ue from their art, accord­ing to 3Lau. 

“Music has nev­er been pur­chasable as art,” he said. “No mat­ter what per­cent­age artists offer, it unlocks val­ue. Because [fans] can say they are one of the, let’s say, 100 peo­ple who own some­thing. They’ll want to pro­mote the artists in more ways and add more val­ue to the community.”

The fund­ing round adds a num­ber of artists to the fir­m’s cap table, indi­cat­ing that there’s inter­est among the enter­tain­ment com­mu­ni­ty to fol­low 3Lau’s lead. Investors from that ver­ti­cal include The Chainsmok­ers, Nas, Log­ic & Kygo. Oth­er investors include Coin­base Ven­tures, Founders Fund, and Paradigm. 

Ulti­mate­ly, 3Lau’s goal is to cre­ate a plat­form where upstart musi­cians can boot­strap their careers, lever­ag­ing the NFTs to finance future albums. The fresh cash injec­tion will help Roy­al build out the req­ui­site engi­neer­ing and legal infra­struc­ture to sup­port such a product. 

“We’re rolling out slow­ly,” 3Lau said. “We are build­ing out our secu­ri­ty, audit­ing, and infra­struc­ture to be main­stream useable.”

Roy­al fur­ther plans to build out a native exchange where­in its users can trade artist assets with­out hav­ing to go through the process of set­ting up a wallet. 

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