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We've spent the last decade building the largest marketplace for music royalties. Over $200 million in completed transactions. Thousands of catalogs. A growing community of sophisticated investors who do serious analytical work on every listing they evaluate.
And for most of that decade, we've had the same problem: there's only one winner per listing. Everyone else walks away with nothing but a better understanding of what an asset is worth — knowledge they generated for the benefit of the marketplace, with zero compensation.
That changes now.
Introducing the Liquidity Pool
Starting soon, every listing on Royalty Exchange will include a liquidity pool. Here's how it works:
One percent of the final sale price goes into a pool that gets split equally among all bidders who bid within 10% of the price that kicks off the final auction in the last 30 days — including the winner. (This liquidity pool is 0.5% for Secondary Market assets.)
On a $500K sale, the liquidity pool is $5,000. If four bidders qualify, each one walks away with $1,250 — whether they won or not. On a $1M sale with three qualifiers, that's over $3,300 each.
The thinking is straightforward. Serious bidders create enormous value for our marketplace. Every competitive offer represents real work — financial modeling, revenue analysis, catalog evaluation, market research. That work improves price discovery for sellers, signals market depth that attracts more listings, and makes the entire platform more trustworthy. We think that work deserves to be compensated, win or lose.
A New Way Into the Final Auction
We're also changing how the final auction works.
Previously, final auction access was available to anyone who had placed an offer before the final auction started, plus All Access members. In practice, this meant a lot of people qualifying with low bids and waiting to get serious until the final round. That's not great for sellers and it's not great for the bidders who were competing from the start.
Going forward, only bidders within 10% of the top pre-final auction bid will qualify for the final round. No exceptions. Same threshold as the liquidity pool — one number to remember.
If nobody else is within 10% of your offer when the seller accepts, there will be no final auction – you’ll win the asset and the entire liquidity pool.
This means the people in the final auction are the people who earned their way in through competitive bidding. It means sellers get a higher price floor going into the final auction because bidders have to bid aggressively to qualify. And it means the final auction is a real competition between investors who've already demonstrated they're serious about the asset.
If you bid within 10%, you're qualified to participate in the final auction and receive a liquidity pool payment. Two benefits, one threshold.
Simplifying the Process: No More Counteroffers
While we're at it, we're eliminating counteroffers. And no more rejecting offers.
Counteroffers and rejections added complexity to a process that should be simple. They created confusion about where a listing stood, slowed down deal velocity, and introduced a negotiation dynamic that didn't serve either side particularly well. Our data tells us that the strongest outcomes — for both buyers and sellers — come from competitive, transparent auction dynamics, not back-and-forth negotiation. Sellers will still be able to update their list prices to signal their position.
With these changes, every listing follows the same clean path: bid competitively, qualify for the final auction, and the highest bid wins. No side deals, no negotiation theater. Just a straightforward marketplace where the best price wins.
What This Means for You
If you're an active bidder on Royalty Exchange, three things just got better:
Your due diligence has a return even when you don't win. The liquidity pool means that competitive losing bids generate real cash, not just experience.
The final auction means something. It's a room full of qualified, competitive bidders who've demonstrated conviction on the asset. That's a better environment for everyone.
The process is simpler. One threshold. No counteroffers or rejections.
We built Royalty Exchange because we believe music royalties are one of the most compelling alternative asset classes available to investors. The liquidity pool is the next step in building a marketplace that's worthy of the sophistication our investors bring to it.
We're rewarding the people who make this market work.
