JKBX, pronounced ‘jukebox’, has this week confirmed that it will officially launch on Tuesday, September 12. The song royalties trading company looks to shake up the music industry by treating song rights as shares, to be invested in.
At launch, JKBX will enable investors to ‘reserve’ shares in royalty streams from hundreds of songs, including hits such as Bleeding Love performed by Leona Lewis, Sucker performed by the Jonas Brothers, Counting Stars performed by OneRepublic, Welcome To New York performed by Taylor Swift, Lean On performed by Major Lazer, Rumour Has It performed by Adele, and Halo performed by Beyoncé.
That’s ‘reserve’ rather than ‘buy’ because JKBX is in the process of seeking regulated approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to sell music royalty streams to investors as a ‘Regulation A offering’.
JKBX is also likely to be seeking regulatory approval for a secondary market, enabling those who’ve bought royalty streams to then trade them with fellow investors.
Why Should YOU Care?
For YOUR Label – The ease at which your label may be able to build up a catalogue of music may be changing a lot very quickly. Being able to purchase song rights, or percentages of song rights, as if they were stocks could give start up labels a huge boost in the early days of producing their own music, but one or two bad investments could also see your label run out of resources far faster than you were planning.
For YOUR Industry – The ease at which everyone will be able to purchase song rights will completely reshape what is considered as ‘song rights’ moving forward. JKBX could lead to a complete industry restructure of rights purchasing, if the site’s launch goes ahead successfully.