Royalty Exchange, a marketplace where music artists can offer shares of future royalties in exchange for immediate funding from investors, has opened its business to YouTube creators.
Prankster CJ So Cool, who has 8.7 million subscribers and nets an average of around 30 million views per month, is the first YouTuber to make an offering on the platform. Via an auction forecasted to last between three and five days, he’s asking an investor to contribute a minimum of $850,000 cash to fund his video production efforts.
In return for investment, CJ So Cool will give up a 35% cut of his monthly YouTube earnings (up to a cap of $55,000) every month until his funder has been paid out $1,113,500.
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If the auction remains at $850,000, that return on investment would provide a profit of $263,500.
Royalty Exchange says that with this type of “advance-style investment”–where an investor knows exactly how much they’re putting in and the set amount they will get in return–“the only variable is the time it takes to collect that total.”
To entice the 27,000 some investors who are registered with Royalty Exchange, CJ So Cool (and presumably any other YouTube creators who use the marketplace in the future) gave a transparent look at his YouTube revenue. During the past 12 months, he earned a total of $490,126, he says.
“What I loved about Royalty Exchange is I can still collect a good piece of my monthly revenue, but they’re getting me a huge upfront investment I can use to create even bigger and better content,” CJ So Cool said in a statement. “These types of deals haven’t been available to YouTubers before.”
In his own statement, Royalty Exchange CEO Anthony Martini added, “As a former starving artist, I understand the financial challenges people in creative industries face. It’s my mission to make sure all creative ideas–whether that’s a song or a video–are seen as the valuable works that they are.”
Martini said that opening its marketplace to YouTubers “advances our mission to empower creators of all types with the ability to extract immediate value from their hard work while allowing them the flexibility they deserve.”
You can see CJ So Cool’s auction here.
