Traxion is an experimental music-streaming app designed to reward early fans for “putting on” for an artist. Users pay a very small amount of cryptocurrency each time they listen to a song. However, in exchange for each of these payments, they receive a token representing a portion of the song’s future revenue. In this way, users can construct “portfolios” of future song revenues by way of their listening history.

Through specific tuning of parameters, it’s possible to create a situation where fans who are early listeners stand to receive revenues in excess of their original payments (those revenues coming from payments by those listeners who didn’t tune in until later). Artists would have the control to specify a particular fixed percentage that they themselves would always receive as personal revenue, leaving the remaining revenue on the table to be split by song token holders.

Trading data for the tokenized “shares” of each song could serve as an interesting indication of the public sentiment about a particular song’s staying power. Presumably, except in the rare case of becoming a cultural staple, most songs tend to spike in the popularity, then slowly fade into obscurity.

Traxion won a grand prize at the 2016 Money20/20 hackathon.