Dune is an app that lets fans buy and trade shares in their favourite artists

From traditional shares to the digital cryptocurrency landscape, stocks come in many shapes and forms. But what if you could invest in an artist? Well, Dune is an app which allows fans to do just that.

Conjured up by music entrepreneurs Paul Bowe and Paul Knowles, has essentially set up an artistic stock market. The app transforms fans into “stakeholders”, allowing them to browse through artist metrics, buy “stakes” and trade them with other fans.

Through these stakes and shares, Dune allows artists to earn more from their streaming figures. While streaming platforms like Spotify have been criticised for its low per-stream payouts and changes to its royalty model, the app allows artists to earn extra royalties from the stakes fans buy and trade.

In terms of the stake prices, Dune’s marketplace stocks fluctuate in value depending on a musician’s streaming metrics. This means that fans have to keep an eagle eye on whether they should trade during an artist’s low listening period, or to cash in when they’ve had a particularly impressive chart-topper.

The system is also apparently AI-proof, so you won’t be able to rely on a bot to keep your stocks in check.

While the system will help put some extra pennies in artists’ pockets, Dune is mutually beneficial for both the artist and the fan. It allows its ‘stakeholders’ access to multiple benefits, such as exclusive events, discounted ticket sales, backstage passes and merch giveaways.

“Dune acknowledges the fact that income from streaming simply isn’t enough to sustain most artists and that 99.9% of them face a funding gap,” Knowles explains in a statement. “Data shows that only 0.1% of artists generate enough revenue from streaming to cover modest monthly outgoings.”

The pair of entrepreneurs have also sat down with journalist and Membranes frontman John Robb to add more insight, with Robb branding Dune as “rock and roll stocks and shares”.

“Essentially, Dune is a way of monetising the streaming data effectively for artists and fans,” Knowles says in the interview. “It’s something that’s never been attempted before. We’re not trying to take money from the streaming – we’re literally monetising it in a new way.”

“What we’ve tried to do with Dune is to remove the legwork from the artist,” he later adds. “An artist has got four or five profiles they have to maintain… it’s great for the fan, but it’s a lot of work the artist has to do. Our ethos is how can we make it easier for the artist? And the software that we’ve designed in the back end, is that user-friendly that you can do everything with the touch of a button.”

“Rather than commodifying the music, we’re commodifying the artists,” Bowe adds.

To find out more, head to Dune.