TLDR: Coda Digital LLC bringing Real World Value to web3.0 through the launch of the revolutionary Royalty Rights Token™ Exchange Coda on the IOTA EVM network. Bringing artists closer to fans, through fan owned music and granular distribution and ownership of music royalties.

The music industry is broken.

It's worth over $41 BILLION, yet over 70% of this value is still in the hands of record labels and publishers - not the artists and songwriters.

These outdated systems result in an unfair market that is controlled by a few, with the top 3 music companies controlling 83% of the overall market share.

This backwards system results in unfair royalty distribution and a market that is dominated by the elite. With royalty rights being managed and accessible by big business with complex legal access and a small circle of top tier businesses controlling the flow and exchange of music rights and revenues.

This is about to change...

Coda Digital are launching the Coda Exchange. A unique, open exchange for the tokenization and trading of Royalty Rights for music and other creative IP.

With Coda, artists, songwriters, creators, or anyone with ownership of rights to a creative work, can easily tokenize and monetize these rights to help fund their creative work.

The best part about it all, is anyone can also invest in royalty rights, by fractionalizing the rights to creative royalties, this area of the industry is no longer exclusive to the elites! Any fan can support an artist by owning a piece of their works.

Coda fixes this in a few simple ways:

• Fractionalized royalty rights
  Instead of the current model where royalty rights are exchanged in a single transaction, rights can now be distributed to hundreds or thousands of individuals, for a more distributed sharing of royalties.
  
• Anyone can invest
  Whilst major labels dominate the purchase and exchange of rights with millions of dollars worth of sales each year, now, fractionalized rights can be accessed with a smaller purchase value to allow a more accessible market.
  
• Any rights owner can sell
  With complex legal and contractual obligations required in current rights transactions, Coda allows royalty rights owners an accessible avenue to generate immediate revenue from their rights, without the hassle.
  
• Fair royalty distribution
  Current royalty pay-outs are periodic and if you own the rights when a payment occurs, you get all that periods payment (even if you bought it the day before the payment). With Coda, every payment is distributed equally to all holders, for however long they held the tokens for during a royalty period.
  
• Liquid exchange for live trade
  With extensive, slow processes and complex contractual transfer of rights, the current market is a nightmare to navigate exchange of rights, Coda's distributed exchange allows for instant transfer and exchange of rights.
  
• Automated royalty pay-out
  With royalty payments varying and extremely sporadic, the new Coda distribution system allows rights holders automated payments, without the need to chase up or request their royalties, one click and it's there!

Why Coda Exists

Royalties are a primary income source for musicians, songwriters, producers, and composers. They are monetary payments made to the owners of the rights to musical works, compositions, and recordings. These payments are made whenever a composition is played, performed, reproduced, or used in public. Whether it’s the manufacture of a vinyl record, streaming online, radio plays, or syncing to film, ads, or games, every time a composition is used a royalty is rewarded.

These royalty payments are handled on a registered rights owner basis, with royalty rights having to be specifically tied to an individual or company, such as a musician, songwriter, producer, or record company, and these are paid directly to rights owners by performing rights organizations, mechanical rights organizations, and collection agencies such as BMI, ASCAP, TuneCore, or SongTrust, every 3–6 months.

Royalty rights, or the ownership of the rights to a creative work, are, however, transferable rights. Much like other ownership, if you own the rights to 10% of a musical composition, you can license or sell those rights to another person through a transfer of ownership agreement, or temporary ownership license. This makes royalty rights a great investment opportunity for would-be rights owners as they fall outside the domain of financial assets.

This current system comes with some major drawbacks, though:

1. The transfer of the license must be between two signing parties. Terms must be agreed upon and outlined between the two individuals or companies prior to the transfer of rights and are only completed upon signing. Resulting in an expensive and timely process that must be repeated for any, and every, future transfer agreement.
2. The transfer is immediate and outright. Immediate transfer is not normally a bad thing, but, if the transfer occurs just one day before the issuance of a royalty payment, the new owner of the rights will receive the entire payment in full. The previous owner would receive no royalties for the previous 3–6 month royalty period that they held those rights for.
3. Royalty Rights brokers charge hefty fees on every agreement. In the event you go the broker route to save on legal headaches, this makes the transfer and exchange of royalty rights an expensive and less profitable avenue of return for the seller.

Coda Fixes a Broken Industry

Introducing Royalty Rights Tokens™

Royalty Rights Tokens™ (RRTs) are transferable tokens that can be issued in any quantity to allow the ownership of royalty rights to be split between multiple owners, allowing for the easy exchange and monitoring of ownership of music royalty rights.

RRTs allow rights owners the ability to easily sell or distribute their royalty rights to numerous parties without having to worry about the complications of extensive legal contracts and timely processes.

That alone in itself is a great leap forward, but what revolutionizes the way royalty distributions occur through RRTs, is that each Royalty Rights Token™ is tied to a decentralized Royalty Rights Smart Contract that handles a complete record of ownership and transfer of the tokens.

Having a complete record of token ownership allows for royalty payments to be day, minute, or even second specific. Creating an accurate and fair distribution of royalties each royalty distribution period, that is determined by the ownership of each individual token over any given time.

Being cryptographically secure and publicly recorded on the blockchain, RRTs allow for the immediate and simple transfer or sale of ownership of tokens (and with them royalty rights), without the need for any intermediaries or complex legal interactions.

Artists, songwriters, composers, or any other royalty rights owner can now distribute RRTs through a simple sale or airdrop of tokens to fans, band members, contributors, or investors using this easy-to-use system.

With potentially 1000s of rights owners all owning a piece of a musical work, this also brings musicians and artists closer to their fans. Whilst some individual royalty rights may cost upwards of $500k, royalty rights that are split into 10,000 tokens can now be owned by the fans who can buy up a piece of the music for just $50.

Having fans earning from the success of the music also incentivises a community of marketing and promotion. Bringing fans and artists closer, to work together as hundreds or thousands of royalty rights owners to drive the success of the music and help increase royalty returns for everyone.

How it Works

The RRT system acts as a decentralized intermediary for artists and royalty rights owners to share, distribute, license, or sell their royalty rights through Coda.

An artist simply determines the percentage of royalties they wish to distribute, the timeframe for the license or ownership transfer, whether it’s 10 years, 30 years, or the lifetime of the works, and then legally assigns these rights to the tokens.

These tokens are then issued in either an open sale, whitelist sale, or airdrop to fans and community members who now become RRT owners.

RRTs are then automatically staked in a Royalty Rights Smart Contract (with each collection, release, or individual royalty right having its own unique Smart Contract).

The Royalty Rights Smart Contract keeps an on-chain record of all owners, how many tokens they have held, and the time period they have held them for, to ensure an exact calculation for every royalty distribution.

Each royalty distribution period the royalty allocation is collected by Coda Digital and distributed automatically via the Royalty Rights Smart Contract to rights owners wallets, respective of the amount of tokens and time an owner has held their tokens in the Royalty Rights SC during that royalty period.

At any time an RRT owner may transfer or sell their tokens on the open market, without losing any royalties. RRTs can be purchased or exchanged using the Royalty Utility Support Token ($RUST), yet the previous owner will still gain any royalty share for the time they owned the RRTs during the previous royalty distribution period.

The Royalty Rights Token™ achieves the granular allocation and distribution of royalties to large communities of supporters, fans, or contributors. Offering fair distribution and ease of transfer of royalty rights ownership, helping artists get closer to fans and fans to get closer to the music they love.

Whilst there is currently still the need for an intermediary in the collection and distribution of the initial royalty allocation, we are working with industry partners and organizations to facilitate direct crypto payments by PROs, MROs, and Royalty Collection Agencies directly into Royalty Rights Smart Contracts to fully decentralize the payments process for music royalties using Royalty Rights Tokens™.

Coda Digital launches Royalty Rights Tokens™ in July 2024 starting with a community airdrop of RRTs for royalty rights to releases from the RRCC that will debut the platform and prepare the world for further drops and sales of royalty rights to works from other artists over the coming months and years.