Sound has the following fee structure:
Minting Fees:
Collectors are charged a mint fee of 0.000777 ETH per edition purchased. When purchasing a Forever Edition, the majority of the fee goes directly to the artist (0.000555 ETH).
Artists are not responsible for minting fees.
Artist Fees:
Artists earn 100% of revenue from primary sales and 100% of royalties from secondary sales. Sound does not charge any fees to the artist.
Secondary Fees:
Artists earn 100% of the royalties generated from secondary sales on Sound Market and other marketplaces. Sound does not charge any fee on secondary transactions.
Upload Fees:
Sound does not charge artists any upload fees. Artists do not need to pay gas when they upload their song on Optimism. However, they are responsible to pay them when uploading to Ethereum Mainnet. (Gas fees are paid to miners to verify transactions and keep the network running, not to Sound. Learn more about gas.)
Frequently asked questions
When did Sound change its fee structure and why?
On July 5, 2023, Sound introduced a small collector mint fee of 0.0007 ETH per transaction and removed the 5% artist fee on primary sales.
When originally introducing our percentage-based fee, we wanted to find the right balance between creating a sustainable business model that enabled us to further develop our product and limiting the cost of using Sound for artists.
We’re building for all artists, and yet we realized that this structure created an incentive to target larger artists. We’re never changing our mission to create tools that are inclusive of everyone, from the bedroom artist starting their journey to the more established artists looking to reach their audience.
A flat mint fee makes us ambivalent to the popularity of an artist or the different experiments that they want to run on Sound. It also helps us combat the recent botting we’ve seen from free mints after we launched on Optimism.
We wanted to push this concept even further, so we opted for a per-transaction fee (instead of per edition) to encourage collecting multiple editions while not overcharging collectors who want to support their favorite artist.
This makes Sound the most artist and collector friendly platform.
With the new fee structure:
- Artists earn 100% of revenues generated from their drops.
- Collectors pay a flat fee per transaction, so collecting multiple editions is incentivized — not cost prohibitive.
- Sound no longer charges a 5% fee to artists on primary mints.
What are the fees on my songs uploaded before July 3, 2023?
All songs uploaded prior to July 3, 2023 are subject to our old fee model and cannot be upgraded to the new fee structure:
- 5% on primary mints
- 2.5% on Sound Swap mints
- 0% on secondary transactions
- No mint fee for collectors