The Democratic Financialisaton of the Music Industries: On JKBX and the Assetization of Music Rights

Abstract This paper examines the implications of JKBX's entry in the fractional song trading market. JKBX is positioned as a platform that offers inclusive access to a facility typically limited to institutional investors in the music industries. Their messaging suggests that their services have the capacity to disrupt the socio-political foundations of the music industries through economic offerings to a large pool of music-loving investors. Yet, the purchase restrictions for the sale of royalty shares in JKBX's offering circulars outline preconditions that are discordant with claims of wide scale democratisation of access to music assets. This paper argues that the wide scale emergence of music as an asset class is a reproduction of hybridised forms of existing modes of extraction guised as democratic enterprising.