Music streaming is big business. However, most of the time creators don’t get much out of it. Because there’s not much revenue that streaming services share with you. Unless you’re a well-known artist. Audius is a decentralized music streaming platform. It’s for both fans and creators.
So, let’s have a closer look at what Audius is all about. Can it give Spotify a run for its money? You can check on Binance.US what the current price of the AUDIO token is.
NFT Gating is Here 🔓
Now you can make exclusive content accessible only to your NFT holders!
It’s easier than ever to thank your loyal community for supporting your projects. pic.twitter.com/JA4oBUalgv
— Audius 🎧 (@AudiusProject) March 9, 2023
What is Audius?
Audius is a decentralized music streaming platform. Unlike the centralized Spotify platform, Audius favors the creators. They offer much more freedom and options to creators. For example, how they can monetize their work. Creators, developers, and even users have much more say on this platform.
This contrasts with Spotify. This platform favors the users. On the other hand, artists receive a low revenue share. Per stream, Spotify pays between $0.0034 to $0.0054 to artists. However, artists also get paid based on their market share. In other words, smaller artists have a clear disadvantage.
So, here we are with Audius, which is community owned and artist controlled. That’s a big difference. Artists can make up to 90% of their sales revenue. But it’s not only the artists who receive rewards. Also, the users or listeners and the node operators share revenue.
Audius is still not the driving music streaming force, though. It has a limited catalog compared to Spotify. Its brand recognition is also still a work in progress. Audio tries hard to onboard industry leaders. Because there is no centralized authority, there’s currently also no support for copyright.
On the upside, it has some interesting artists already on its roster. For example, Nas, Katy Perry, deadmau5, Skrillex, 3LAU, and Steve Aoki. The picture below shows some artists who chose to be on Audius.
Source: Audius website
How does Audius Work?
One of the most important factors in how Audius works is that it is a free service. Furthermore, you don’t need any crypto knowledge to take part in or enjoy the platform. It’s available as a desktop version or as a mobile app. You can make your own lists and see what’s trending. That’s not much different from other streaming platforms.
However, there is a big difference. That’s the decentralized part of the platform. Audius uses a worldwide network of computers. These are the content nodes. The computers store all the music files with blockchain technology. For this, it uses AudSP. This is a decentralized P2P (peer to peer) filing system.
Running your own content node as an artist gives you advantages. You have more control over your music. As a result, it also allows you to deliver your music to your fans in the way you deem best. For instance, you can unlock certain tracks for a select group of fans. The nodes are also useful for the users. They make it easy to find music or tracks.
As a node operator, you earn AUDIO as a reward. That’s the same as users do for listening to tracks. The creators also get rewarded in AUDIO. Furthermore, all three have a say in the platform’s governance.
In the meantime, the artists have full control of how they set up their home pages. For example, with,
- Tracks
- Albums
- Playlists
- Or even with NFTs
$AUDIO Rewards are here! 🌟
Starting today, users can earn $AUDIO for the following achievements:
– Top 5 Weekly Trending Track
– Top 5 Weekly Trending Playlist
– Top 10 Monthly API App
– First Verified Account Upload pic.twitter.com/N41XD5NezN— Audius 🎧 (@AudiusProject) March 30, 2021
Who Is On the Audius Team?
The co-founders of Audius are Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning. Their website lists another 31 persons. Their job descriptions range from engineer to artist relations, or Head of Operations.
Rumburg studied computer science at Stanford University. He has a BS in this field. Since 2014, he has been involved in crypto. That’s when he co-founded Backslash. This was a Bitcoin P2P payment company.
Browning also has a BS in computer science from Stanford. He is a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient.
The company also has an interesting list of advisors. Among others,
- deadmau5, 3LAU, both electronic music producers.
- Bing Gordon, co-founder of EA games.
- Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch.
- Jesse Grushack, Senior Strategy & Product at ConsenSys.
As investors, we see, for example, Pantera, Binance, and Kleiner Perkins. The picture below shows part of the platform team.
Source: Audius website
What Is the AUDIO Token?
The AUDIO token is part of the Ethereum ecosystem. In other words, it’s an ERC20 token. It has three main functions, as follows,
- Security – You can stake AUDIO and secure the network.
- Feature access – Use AUDIO to unlock more creator tools.
- Governance – Staking AUDIO allows you to take part in voting on proposals.
At the token launch, 41% went to the team. Another 36% went to investors, like Binance Labs. These are high numbers. That’s a lot more than an average crypto project team would get. The remaining 23% went to airdrops and pre-mined rewards. Each month, the project releases new tokens, until July 2026. See the picture below.
Source: Audius website
Conclusion
We looked at the Audius project and its AUDIO token. It tries to accommodate creators and artists more. They receive a bigger say in how they can monetize their music. The project is still in its early stages. Nonetheless, it already managed to have some well-known artists on its roster.
AUDIO is available on a few exchanges. That’s including Binance.US for our American readers. Also, did you know that on Binance US you can get whitelisted for the Cristiano Ronaldo first official NFT collection?
⬆️ You can receive his free souvenir NFT and earn $500. Just click this link and type ALTCOINBUZZ as promo code.
