Sound, a music NFT discovery and direct-to-community monetization platform has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by a16z crypto.
The round also saw participation from Palm Tree Crew, A Capital, Sound Ventures, Collab + Currency, Scalar Capital, Snoop Dogg, Ryan Tedder, Tay Keith amongst others.
Accordiing to Sound, its platform provides tools for artists to upload, stream, and monetize their music as NFTs “without third party infringement of any kind”.
Sound also say that it lets artists keep 95% of the proceeds from their work and 10% of every resale “without giving up any ownership of their master or publishing rights”.
Sound claims that the first wave of artists on its platform has earned over $5.5 million in the last year, which it says is the “equivalent to the revenue of 1.5 billion streams on other platforms”.
The startup cites independent rapper Reo Cragun as an example, who Sound says generated more than $300,000 from his music and built a community of “500 loyal collectors in just one year”.
In addition to the news about the Series A round,, Sound is also releasing new artist tools. Sound says that it offers artists instant payments and splits.
Sound claims further that that it has “perfected the art of putting music onchain” and that “after onboarding 500 artists one-by-one, we’ve refined the process and created a simple and intuitive way to release your first music NFT with no coding required”.
“We want to scale this model to every artist out there, big or small, and become the number one destination for music discovery on the internet. “
Sound
In a blog post announcing the funding round Sound, said: “Our mission is to create a world where artists can make a living off their music alone, regardless of who they know in the music industry.
“We embarked on this journey 18 months ago to liberate music from the one-size-fits-all business model and make Sound the ultimate hub for music discovery on the internet. So far, we have seen tremendous success.
“Our next vision is even more ambitious: we want to scale this model to every artist out there, big or small, and become the number one destination for music discovery on the internet.
“We know that disrupting the entrenched models of the music industry is a daunting challenge. The first era of Sound has proven that artists and fans are excited for something new that celebrates the power of music.”
Music Business Worldwide
