SONGS is all in solution layer for music royalties distribution that manages and automates metadata, capital and legal matters.

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For a way more interesting music market

Introduction

The global music industry generates billions in revenue every year, yet most of the value created by artists, collaborators, and fans is captured by a small group of centralized intermediaries. Record labels, distributors, and opaque platforms act as gatekeepers, deciding who gets access, who gets paid, and how much.

Artists are forced to sign away ownership in exchange for advances that turn into long-term debt. Collaborators such as producers and engineers are locked into flat fees, excluded from future royalties. Fans, who ultimately determine success through their engagement, remain shut out from the economic upside.

At the same time, music distributors capture a meaningful share of digital revenue and power despite a largely technical role, and their private deals with DSPs make economics hard to compare across providers.

The music industry has always treated new technologies with suspicion. From the first mechanical reproductions to digital downloads and streaming, every advance was met with resistance, only to later become the very foundation for growth. These cycles reveal a pattern: innovation rarely originates from the center of power, but from the edges, from the artists and audiences themselves. SONGS stands in this lineage of change. It is not a threat to music, but the natural next step an open, programmable protocol that expands participation, increases transparency, and aligns incentives so that music’s value flows to those who actually create and nurture it.

SONGS was created to challenge this outdated model. We believe in a music economy that is transparent, equitable, and participatory an ecosystem where artists retain sovereignty over their work, collaborators are rewarded fairly, and fans become active stakeholders in the success of the music they love.

Tokenizing the Music Market to Empower Artists, Fans & Creators while deeply improving efficiency, transparency, traceability and liquidity for all stakeholders.

SONGS transforms the music industry by turning every song into an asset with ownership structures that represent the legal needs on the actual word and the future world. Artists create, own & earn transparently. Fans fund and participate of the music itself. Curators value, support, take a stake on their values. Entities support and earn their share transparently and fair based on the value they provide.

Sovereign music over neutral rails for all, Create and Own, Distribute and Earn on the same rails, running transparently and efficient.

1. The Problem

Beyond these visible inefficiencies, the very contracts at the heart of the industry are incomplete. When formats change vinyl to CDs, downloads to streaming labels capture more value while artists remain bound to outdated terms. Practices like “breakage” (undisclosed revenues from DSP advances kept by labels) further erode artist trust. These systemic flaws reveal an industry optimized for intermediaries, not creators.

The music industry remains a closed, opaque system where:

• Labels act like VCs, recouping advances and keeping high margins. Much music never passes through label filters.
• Distributors, as backend facilitators, hold disproportionate power, profits, and misaligned incentives.
• Auxiliary creators (producers, engineers) receive one-time fees with no share in a song’s ongoing success.
• Fans, who ultimately determine what succeeds, have no financial stake in the process.
• Streaming platforms are becoming commoditized, so the average earning per stream trends toward zero.

Music needs openness, fairness, and transparency rooted in fans, not middlemen. Streaming and mass content delivery platforms, which treat all music and all consumption as the same, should be seen as attention aggregators, not as the primary means for earning.

2. Our Solution

At the heart of SONGS lies a simple question: who truly accrues the value of music today? We believe good music deserves to be heard by as many people as possible. Yet, much great music never reaches listeners because it lacks the means to be funded, even though there are people willing to support it. Ownership, therefore, should not be about exclusivity, but about aligning incentives among those who create, support, finance, and amplify music. The SONGS Protocol encodes this alignment into its infrastructure.

At the same time, AI will enable anyone to become a musician, but not necessarily a good one. A transparent, efficient, and automated system for onboarding, curating, and organizing music openly and freely is needed.

SONGS Protocol

The SONGS Protocol is the layer of truth for music: a decentralized layer infrastructure where ownership, rights, metadata, and capital flows are managed transparently and automatically. Creating incentives for all stakeholders in the music value chain. Artists, Managers & Curators, Distributors, Streaming platforms and Fans.

Core Capabilities

Sovereign Media Publication

• Permits artist sovereign media creation. The first media from artists independently or their labels is on directly on the protocol sovereignly. Track true ownership publicly
  • Recording Token = songshares
  • Composition Token = (coming soon)

Licensing over the protocol

• Permits the creation of temporal or lifetime licenses on top of ownership tokens. These licenses could live as on-chain escrows or off-chain legal contracts. Up the context of the contract to be decided.
  • Sync licenses → limited time licenses over composition and recording fees.
  • Mechanical license → Streaming payouts managed by
  • Performance → PROs sending money to accounts based on composition tokens
• Official identifiers (e.g., ISRC, ISWC, ISCC) are recorded or linked as they are issued; when pending, the protocol stores provisional metadata and content hashes.
• Distribution monetization agreements can be offered on top of the media song asset.

Creative New Revenue and ownership models

• Permits new creative models to exist on top of assets
  • HQ access token → Access to HQ file download
  • Selective & Premium Fan groups
  • …
• Permits different ownership schemas to be built on top each asset.
  • Permits to issue tokens that represent the different type of royalties

Effective metadata, storage and availability layer

• All songs metadata is public since the moment of publishing.
• Record or link official identifiers (e.g., ISRC, ISWC, ISCC) as they are issued by the relevant agencies/publishers; where not yet issued, the protocol stores provisional metadata and content hashes.
• When licensing occurs, it happens transparently and is settled over a song. So no metadata can be changed by the licensed asset.
  • Master assets are content-addressed and access-controlled
  • Master assets are stored permanently, ensuring availability without the need for duplication. Content addressing guarantees provenance, while the protocol manages access controls for authorized use.
  • Every actor that is allowed to use the asset is being permitted granularly to use them.
• Permits distribution platforms to take responsibility of media assets and their ownership schemas published on the protocol to monetize them on streaming platforms

Efficient and automated payment gateway

• Automatic earnings splits on top of media assets by the licensed distributor to all the ownership structure over the asset. Automatically, no legal complications, no barriers.

Legal layer

• Permits Arbitration and disputability over media assets monetization and their licenses, so that a protocol allowed entity should allow to halt or redirect monetizations.
• Enables dispute workflows (e.g., temporary holds, re-routing of pending payouts) triggered by authorized parties under defined rules.

In time, each song or catalog can evolve into its own ownership structure, with contributors, fans, and curators governing licensing, usage, and monetization collectively. This ensures that every stakeholder is rewarded proportionally to their role in serving the song. A song is more a company than just a song, but the means to handle such an amount of “companies” has been restricted to a few players, that now can change.

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3. Product Flow

1. Upload & Own
   1. A song is first published on-chain, creating a permanent authorship record.
   2. Metadata and ownership assets are minted instantly.
   3. Tracks are open to be magnetized.
      1. Eligible for monetization once ownership, splits, and required licenses are verified and a participating distributor accepts the asset
2. Distribute
   1. Vetted distributors operating on the protocol can request and execute licenses with transparent terms.
   2. Legal Licenses changes happens with easy and simplicity.
   3. Authenticity is validated, and distributors take responsibility for collection.
   4. Royalties from DSPs are deposited directly into the protocol.
3. Royalties
   1. Earnings are automatically routed to stakeholders.
   2. Licensing agreements and splits are enforced seamlessly.
   3. Collaborators and fans receive payments without intermediaries.
4. Finance
   1. Artists unlock funding by new liquidity paths.
   2. Collaborators are rewarded in shares, not one-off fees.
   3. Fans become stakeholders, transforming their natural role as the primary promoters of music into a recognized, rewarded part of the value chain. Word of mouth, social sharing, and cultural evangelism ( today uncompensated ) now have measurable upside.

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4. Token Model & Utility

Tokens are not just financial instruments, they are cultural markers. They allow us to measure and reward the real-world effect a song has on people. By tying ownership to contribution, SONGS transforms music from a commodity into an ecosystem where meaning and value reinforce each other.

The SONGS Protocol introduces a dual-token model that reflects the two fundamental layers of music ownership: recording rights and composition rights. Both are represented as on-chain tokens that enforce ownership, revenue distribution, and licensing.

1. SongShares (Recording Token)

Every recorded song is automatically divided into 10,000 SongShares, each representing 0.01% of the recording’s royalty revenue.

Use Cases:

• Artist Funding: Sell SongShares upfront to raise production or promotion capital.
• Collaborator Compensation: Pay producers, mixers, engineers, or videographers in SongShares.
• Fan Engagement: Reward superfans with shares, aligning their incentives with the artist’s growth.
• Flexible Rights: SongShares can be loaned, resold, or bundled into creative financing structures.

Benefits:

• Artists retain sovereignty and liquidity.
• Collaborators gain long-term upside, not just one-time fees.
• Fans own a piece of the music, not just streams.
• Protocol sustainability through transaction and marketplace fees.

2. Composition Token (Publishing Token) coming soon

Publishing tokens ensure that lyricists and composers, often overlooked in the streaming era, gain liquidity and transparency equal to performers. This completes the ownership picture.

Utility of Composition Tokens:

• Licensing Layer:
  • Sync licenses (film, TV, games, ads).
  • Mechanical licenses (cover versions, reproductions).
  • Performance royalties (through PRO integrations).
• Creative Models:
  • Allow composers and lyricists to tokenize their share of publishing.
  • Enable publishers or co-writers to hold and trade stakes transparently.
• Legal Alignment:
  • These tokens are designed to map to real-world publishing rights and contracts.
  • Can live as on-chain escrows or be tied to off-chain legal agreements.

Benefits:

• Completes the ownership picture: recording and publishing on one protocol.
• Writers and composers gain transparent payouts and liquidity options.
• Aligns publishers, artists, and collaborators on neutral, programmable rails.

3. $SONGS

The $SONGS token functions as the connective tissue of the protocol, ensuring governance remains in the hands of those who contribute value. Whether validator, curator, creator, or fan, each actor has a transparent, measurable role in sustaining the ecosystem.

• Earned via creation, collaboration, and verifiable engagement; used for governance participation, access to premium features, tipping, and staking for curation/priority.
• Actors: validators (distributors/PROs), curators (labels/managers), creators, fans.
• Allocation: Community reserve (e.g., 30%) for long-term contributors (investors, founders, team, partners, advisors), with vesting to align incentives.

SONGS exists to serve music and the means to hear it and create it.

By creating neutral, transparent rails for ownership and participation, we empower songs to reach those who will value them most and reward everyone who helps along the way. Music, finally, is owned by the people who create, support, and love it.

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