Artist Corporation (A-Corp)
An Artist Corporation is a Colorado LLC that must stay at least 51% artist-owned and declare an artistic mission, and in return lets outside investors hold economic rights without any control over the work.
Colorado Artist Company Act — C.R.S. § 7-80-1201 et seq. (SB 26-133, signed 2 June 2026, effective 12 August 2026)
CONTROL — § 7-80-1203 (1) An artist company is an LLC owned by artists holding not less than fifty-one percent of all voting securities, and artists must maintain that percentage at all times.
MISSION — § 7-80-1203 (1)(b), (3)(a) It must state an artistic mission in its articles, and may specify that the artistic mission has primacy over financial objectives.
CONTRIBUTION — § 7-80-1212 (1) A member may assign or exclusively license artistic work to the company as an in-kind capital contribution — creative work counted as capital, not sweat equity.
INVESTMENT — § 7-80-1214 (2) Nonartist investors may hold economic rights — distributions, royalties, revenue participation — without corresponding governance or control rights.
REVERSION — § 7-80-1212 (4) Work assigned to the company carries reversionary rights constituting a retained interest that does not transfer to the company and is not available to creditors.
What it provides
A way to raise money without handing over the work. Investors take the economics; artists keep every vote.
What it protects
The catalogue. Even assigned to the company, work stays a retained interest — so if the company fails, creditors cannot carve it up.
Why it is new
An ordinary LLC bundles money and control together. That bundle is how creative authority usually leaves the room: quietly, attached to a cheque.
But read the filing
Only the 51% and the governance rule cannot be written out of an operating agreement. The reversion opens with 'unless otherwise specified' — so it depends on the paperwork a given company filed.
Source · Colorado General Assembly — Signed Act ↗
Former CEO of Kickstarter who built the Artist Corporation (A-Corp) model — separating the IP-holding entity from the operating entity so artists own their creative assets cleanly regardless of what happens to the business.
Watch this explained at
Artist Corporation (A-Corp)
What It Is
An Artist Corporation is a real legal entity, not a way of organising your affairs. Colorado created it in the Colorado Artist Company Act, signed 2 June 2026 and effective 12 August 2026, which adds Part 12 to article 80 of title 7 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. The statute calls it an artist company; A-Corp is the name everyone actually uses.
It is a limited liability company with two conditions attached. It must state an artistic mission in its articles of organization, and artists must hold at least fifty-one percent of the voting securities — not at formation, at all times. Fall below that and it stops qualifying.
Everything else the Act does follows from separating two things an ordinary LLC keeps bundled: the money and the votes.
What It Provides
Capital without control. Nonartist investors can hold economic rights — distributions, royalties, revenue participation — with no corresponding governance rights. In a standard LLC those travel together, which is the usual mechanism by which creative authority leaves the room.
Creative work as capital. A member can assign or exclusively license artistic work to the company as an in-kind capital contribution, valued by agreement or, failing that, by an independent valuator. The work counts as contributed capital rather than sweat equity.
Mission with legal weight. The articles may specify that the artistic mission has primacy over financial objectives — an express election, not an assumption.
What It Protects
Artistic work assigned to the company carries a reversionary right that is a retained interest: it never fully transfers, and it is not available to the company's creditors. If the company fails, the catalogue is not an asset to be carved up.
What To Check
The Act is mostly defaults. Only two of its requirements cannot be altered in an operating agreement — the fifty-one percent and the rule that governance stays with artist-members. The reversion, the most-quoted protection, opens with unless otherwise specified in the articles of organization.
So whether a given artist company actually carries these protections is a question about the paperwork that company filed, not about the Act. Read the articles.
When You Can Actually Use It
The Act took effect 12 August 2026, but nobody can form an artist company yet. The Secretary of State has to build the filing system first — the fiscal note puts that at $468,000 of software development — and must publish the long-form articles of organization on or before 1 July 2027. The Artist Corporations Foundation expects the first filings in early 2027.
The law is real and in force. The counter is not open.
CO SB133: Colorado Artist Companies
What this means
Signed into Law · Governor Signed · A-Corp framework becoming state law
Sponsors — bipartisan (42)
Jeff Bridges, Marc Catlin, Matthew Martinez, Rick Taggart, Judith Amabile, Adrienne Benavidez, Scott Bright, James Coleman, Lisa Cutter, Jessie Danielson, Lisa Frizell, Julie Gonzales, Cathy Kipp, Barbara Kirkmeyer, William Lindstedt, Janice Marchman, Cleave Simpson, Marc Snyder, Katie Wallace, Jennifer Bacon, Andrew Boesenecker, Kyle Brown, Monica Duran, Meg Froelich, Ryan Gonzalez, Eliza Hamrick, Jamie Jackson, Junie Joseph, Mandy Lindsay, Tisha Mauro, Julie McCluskie, Karen McCormick, Kenny Nguyen, Amy Paschal, Manny Rutinel, Gretchen Rydin, Emily Sirota, Lesley Smith, Matt Soper, Katie Stewart, Brianna Titone, Steven Woodrow