As an up-and-coming musician, it's easy to feel like the man is holding you down. Labels wanna take a cut of your profits and claim ownership over your creations. All you really want is to be the master of destiny and connect with true fans. It's a bummer, because labels offer a necessary thriving ecosystem in which to get your music recorded, distributed and heard -- until now. Blockchain technology has revolutionized the monetary exchange system by utilizing peer-to-peer IP communication to ensure your sensitive information and personal data remains uncompromised while offering direct access to others on the chain. Cryptocurrencies are digital funds designed to be traded and exchanged for goods, and because cryptocurrencies use blockchain as a platform, their use is easily verifiable. This peer-to-peer system keeps a cyber-paper trail of all transactions, though it's decentralized nature means no oversight, so you can buy and trade for whatever you want. Cryptocurrencies remove banking middle men from the transaction process, so, if you buy an artist's music with cryptocurrency, you're making a deal with the artist directly. It's a powerful tool for a musician, and genre-bending Slovenian electro producer Gramatik just became the first musical artist to ever create his own cryptocurrency when he launched GRMTK during a celebratory performance in the world's financial capital of Zurich, Switzerland, on Friday Nov. 9.

READ MORE Gramatik Talks Own Cryptocurrency, Drops Tech-Themed 'Re:Coil Part 1' EP: Listen “GRMTK isn’t just a cryptocurrency, it’s much more than that," Gramatik is quoted as saying in a press release. "Now, my audience can share in my inspiration and success by also owning the rights and royalties of my music, and anything I create and distribute on my upcoming channel. If you hold 100 GRMTK tokens, then you own 100 tokens worth of the rights and royalties of the music and projects I create.” As Gramatik's music sales and royalty profits increase, so too does the value of your GRMTK "tokens." As more fans sign up to invest in GRMTK currency, profit shares level out in equal percentage values. It connects this community of like-minded individuals into a living ecosystem that benefits from Gramatik's commercial success. It's already proven to work quite well. Fans bought into the GRMTK system for a total value of $2.48 million (or 7,500 Ethereum, the digital base of GRMTK's token system). Gramatik sold a quarter of his GRMTK tokens to fans in the first 24 hours, and today, the total value of the GRMTK ecosystem is a whopping $9 million. Still, Gramatik says this isn't about the money.