Every economic era mints its own asset class. The industrial economy gave regular people stocks. The suburban century gave them real estate. The internet economy has been generating enormous value for two decades — and almost none of it has been ownable by the people who create it or the people who love it.
What is a culture asset?
A culture asset is a cash-flowing ownership stake in creative work: a song catalog earning streaming royalties, a video library earning ad revenue, a podcast back-catalog, a book's publishing rights. Not memorabilia, not NFTs, not speculation on hype — assets that pay their owners because people keep pressing play.
Institutions figured this out first. Private equity spent the last decade buying music catalogs by the billions, precisely because royalty streams behave like bonds with a fanbase. What never existed was a way for the fans — the people generating every dollar of that value — to own a piece.
Why culture assets are investable now
Three curves crossed. First, the data got clean: streaming statements, AdSense reports, and distributor dashboards turned creative income from a black box into an auditable monthly feed. Second, the rails got built: Regulation Crowdfunding and Regulation A+ created a legal path for anyone to own securities backed by real assets, proven at scale by platforms like Masterworks in fine art. Third, the demand arrived: a generation that grew up on fractional shares expects to own what it loves.
Why music goes first
Music is the culture asset with the cleanest data (standardized royalty statements), the most proven institutional market (billions in annual catalog sales), and the most passionate built-in demand — every catalog arrives with a fanbase that already streams it daily. Video, podcasts, and publishing follow the same playbook on the same rails, in order of data cleanliness.
The end state
Every asset class eventually gets an exchange — stocks got theirs in 1792 under a buttonwood tree, and event probabilities got theirs when regulated prediction markets arrived. Culture assets need one too: transparent pricing, real disclosure, regulated trading, and owners who care about the asset beyond its yield. That is what Encore Markets is building, starting with songs.
The fans already built the value. Ownership is the encore.
Want in early? Encore Markets is building a regulated market where fans own shares of the music they love. Join the waitlist — founding members get first access to offerings.
Keep reading
How Music Royalties Work in 2026 · How to Invest in Culture Assets · FAQ