Soneium and DayOneDream have joined forces to place K-pop intellectual property and its associated revenue streams on the blockchain via WAVIST's DayOneDream platform, following the completion in May of a deal to issue tokenized intellectual property bonds placed on the WAVIST platform.
According to a September 29 statement from Soneium and DayOneDream, the companies will combine WAVIST's expertise in entertainment-industry financing with Soneium's blockchain infrastructure. DayOneDream manages K-pop artists including BTOB, Lee Chae-yeon, MEMI and 2F, and is also involved in music production, live event organization and intellectual property commerce.
The proposed assets will give eligible users the opportunity to participate in the financial returns associated with entertainment intellectual property. For rights holders, the companies view tokenization as another way to raise funds and earn income from their work. According to the announcement, access to tokenization depends on regulatory compliance and meeting eligibility criteria.
The most illustrative example of the financial activity underpinning the new deal is the May issuance of tokenized WAVIST bonds to finance K-pop-related projects, after which the company carried out their final redemption and burned the tokens.
The bond issuance put them into circulation, and the redemption completed the payout process. The burn took the redeemed tokens out of circulation. The companies cited this full sequence as proof that WAVIST can manage an entertainment-industry financing product throughout its entire life cycle on the blockchain.
The announcement did not specify the bond issuer, their size, interest rate terms or the underlying catalog. Nor was the first asset for the partnership with Soneium named. The May bonds represent a completed WAVIST deal; the planned work with Soneium concerns future K-content assets and revenue streams.
DayOneDream's role goes beyond providing an artist's name or content. According to the company's description, it operates in music production and publishing, video, artist management, concert organization and intellectual property commerce. These activities give it several types of rights and revenues that need to be considered when structuring a financial product, although the partners did not specify which will be used first.
Dylan Cho, head of public relations at DayOneDream, said the partnership will allow financing to be tied more directly to revenue-generating entertainment intellectual property.
"K-pop is a market unlike any other, but the ways of raising capital for it have hardly changed," Cho said. He added: "Companies see a path to investing through the intellectual property itself".
Soneium Brings Its Entertainment Network to the Tokenization Market
Soneium is an Ethereum-based layer-two network developed by Sony Group and Startale Group. Its partnership with DayOneDream adds entertainment-industry financing capability to a network already built around content creators, digital content and applications.
Soneium has previously hosted entertainment projects involving digital collectibles and gaming-related assets. Tokenized bonds or revenue-linked products raise entirely different questions for the buyer, including who must make the payments, what revenue secures them and what rights the token confers. WAVIST describes its platform as a way to structure Korean-culture revenues into asset-backed instruments, with the issuing companies bearing responsibility for their placement.
Yuji Kumagai, head of Soneium, said the network can help creators raise funds while giving supporters a financial stake in the work they follow.
"Creators gain a new way to raise funds for their projects, and their supporters benefit from the value they create," Kumagai said.
He identified K-pop as the starting point for Soneium's work with entertainment intellectual property.
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