Royalty Rights

The music industry is a pretty complex space to navigate and the RRCC is heavily engaged with leading industry experts to help support the expansion of the ecosystem through artist royalties.

Royalties are the payments artists receive from the public performance of their music. This could be from streaming, downloads, YouTube, Spotify, sales, film and tv sync, radio plays, etc. These royalties are paid out on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to the royalty rights holders through performing rights organisations.

The RRCC will be working with Tunecore, one of the leading publishing administrators in the world, to support global distribution, radio promotion, and support for film and tv sync. Working closely with Tunecore, all RRCC artists will gain a step-up in the music world from day one of their release.

Through the support of the RRCC community and through incentivised relationships, these royalties can be shared with the community, using the funds for community rewards for NFT holders and supporters of artists. Helping to build a strong foundation for the ecosystem through strong artist and community relationships.

Publishing Royalty Acquisition

Handling in house royalties is a great reward for the community who help to push releases in public, but the RRCC is going beyond just ecosystem artists. Every revenue stream from the Rusty Robot Records branch of the RRCC, will be distributed into a number of funds, the ecosystem, community rewards, project development, and publishing fund.

The publishing fund is where it’s all at!

This fund will be used to purchase royalty rights to mainstream releases, with a percentage of the returns dedicated to community rewards. In short, we aren’t just supporting the rising talent of independent artists, but we are also investing in the lifelong careers of popular artists as well.

Whether it’s a band like Imagine Dragons, Cage the Elephant, or Slipknot, or solo artists like Beyonce, Eminem, Ariane Grande, or Jay-Z, we will be looking to build out a catalogue of royalty rights ownerships to ensure a secure real-world revenue stream that will always drive the project forward and provide value to the ecosystem.

And, again, this will incentivise the community to promote these tracks in streams, radio plays, web playlists, and more through the $RUST powered community reward system.

How do royalties work?

There are a number of areas where artists, musicians, songwriters, and publishers gain recognition for their works through royalties. Essentially a royalty is rewarded to the copyright and publishing rights owners of any work when it is used in a public fashion, and these are split into two areas of the composition and the actual sound recording.

These can also be split into a number of areas of rights dependent upon the use of the creative works:

Synchronization Rights — License for film, TV, games, etc.

Reproduction Rights — License for sale or streaming

Performance Rights — License when played in public

Mechanical Rights — When sold or streamed

There are a number of stakeholders involved in a recording or composition, not just the songwriters or band, but also labels, producers, publishers, agents, etc. Each receiving their ample share of the royalties.

Royalties are managed and collected by royalty rights agencies worldwide, some of the most famous are in the US such as BMI, ASCAP, etc. They monitor an international network of reporters to establish the royalties’ an artist has earned. These royalties are then distributed on a quarterly of bi-annual basis direct to the royalty holders of the respective sound recording and composition.

The RRCC Focus

What we are doing with Rusty Records is removing the majority of stakeholders and working directly with artists as a publishing and production company that can support them with access to community fundraising through a simple incentivised reward system. Artists determine their desired funding total and the percentage of royalties that can create rewards for the community. The community can invest if they so wish and through the incentivised reward system the community also supports the artist with promotion and marketing to gain greater royalty returns.

When it comes to already existing releases, Rusty Records will be investing in key publishing rights to compositions and recordings of already established artists and works. Investments will be focused on long-term successful compositions and geared towards lifelong ownership or 30-year terms for purchased assets, primarily Musical Compositions, over Sound Recordings, that provide Public Performance and Sync rights from Internet Streaming, Radio, TV/Film/Commercials, etc.

Rusty Radio

Much of the royalties received by artists these days are through digital streaming, which is why we will also be establishing the Rusty Radio platform in the future. This will be a curated playlist radio that can be used by anyone in their discord, or website.

The radio will offer numerous playlists that support the distribution of RRCC artists across multiple platforms for maximum exposure and streaming results, leading to more and more plays, meaning more and more royalties!

If you think that’s it…sorry to disappoint, there’s one more thing!

Much like the community being invested in the music and releases tied to Rusty Records, we will be heavily invested in the artists we work with also, wanting everyone to succeed and gain global exposure.

We will be focusing a lot of our efforts in working with global A&R and Music Marketing agencies that have worked with the likes of Flo Rida, Joss Stone, Coolio, Pitbull, Justin Timberlake, and a million more, to drive the exposure of the releases we are working on through synch promotions across film, tv, ads, etc. as well as playlist, radio, and media placements, to reach as wide an audience as possible.

Rusty Records is beyond anything that has ever existed in the NFT space for music. It is creating a first in building the foundations for community incentivised music releases that support a closer relationship between the artist and their fans. We are simplifying the entire system for artists and supporting them with the tools and legal resources they require to take back control of their rights and build an awesome community at the same time.