ASTANA – What if a song, a game, a digital creator or a piece of intellectual property could be treated not only as a cultural product, but as an investable asset? For Kazakhstan’s emerging creative economy, that shift in thinking could be as important as the creative output itself.
(From L to R) David Tuganov, president of the Creative Industries Alliance of Qazaqstan (CIAQ), the panel brought together Aizatulla Hussein, founder of Õzen; Olzhas Akparov, CBDO of Cyber Temple; Julia Kushnir, head of business development for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at TikTok; and Askar Bilisbekov, CEO of Alem Capital Management Limited.
Photo credit: AFD 2026 The question was at the center of discussions on the second day of Astana Finance Days (AFD) 2026, held on Sept. 10 and dedicated to creative industries as an asset class, moderated by David Tuganov, president of the Creative Industries Alliance of Qazaqstan (CIAQ), the panel brought together Aizatulla Hussein, founder of Õzen; Olzhas Akparov, CBDO of Cyber Temple; Julia Kushnir, head of business development for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at TikTok; and Askar Bilisbekov, CEO of Alem Capital Management Limited.
One of the clearest examples of that shift came from the music industry, where Õzen is working on what Hussein described as a new way to turn music intellectual property into a financial asset through blockchain-based tokenization. Hussein described a new way to turn music intellectual property into a financial asset through blockchain-based tokenization.
Photo credit: AFD 2026 “For the last seven years that we have been working in the music industry, our core business has been the distribution of music content in the digital space. But music is not simply entertainment. It is a full-fledged financial asset that can generate income over many years, and that income continues to grow,” Hussein said.
The concept is to tokenize music rights through smart contracts and allow investors to acquire a fractional economic interest in a song, with returns linked to the income generated by the underlying music. “What we are doing now is tokenizing the music asset, the music intellectual property, through smart contracts.
Now we give anyone the opportunity to come and buy a piece of this song, and when the income comes to the artist, proportionally to how many tokens they have acquired, they will receive those payments,” Hussein said. The model, he said, could effectively create an internal marketplace for music, where investors can assess the performance and potential of individual compositions using data generated across digital platforms.
Õzen’s model is still building the necessary legal and regulatory framework, with Hussein identifying jurisdiction as the key challenge rather than the technology itself. “In principle, the technology is not a problem at all. These technologies have already been developed.
The only serious thing that we need to implement correctly is the jurisdiction, how we can turn a contract into tokens,” he said, noting that the company hopes to launch pilot projects by the end of the year. The move is significant because it changes the conversation around creative industries from one centered primarily on grants, promotion and audience growth to one centered on ownership, cash flows and investment returns.
Bilisbekov also emphasized this shift in investor thinking, noting that the main obstacle facing creative entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan is often not a lack of talent, but an insufficient understanding of how to present that talent as a business proposition.