With the rise of music streaming platforms, listening to music has been more accessible than ever. However, artists have always faced challenges in the traditional music industry, such as low earnings and transparency and minimal control over how to distribute or sell their content.
Audius aims to tackle these challenges by empowering music creators and helping them monetize their content via its native cryptocurrency, AUDIO. But, what is Audius crypto and how does Audius work? Let’s look into it.
What is Audius Crypto?
Audius is a fully decentralized music streaming platform that enables listeners to support artists directly via its native cryptocurrency, AUDIO. Co-founded in 2018 by Forrest Browning and Roneil Rumburg, Audius had almost 6 million monthly unique users and hosted over 100,000 artists by December 2021.
Audius revolutionalizes the traditional music industry model by removing the middlemen and record label barriers. Unlike other streaming platforms, artists' revenue is not determined by how many times a song is played. Audius gives artists exclusive ownership of their music, and they get to decide how to monetize their work. According to Audius, music curators will receive 90% of the revenue in AUDIO tokens, while the remaining 10% will go to node operators (stakers) supporting the Audius network.
Audius is a layer 2 blockchain protocol initially built on an ETHereum sidechain called the POA Network. Due to a growing demand to stream content, Audius faced scaling issues and decided to migrate its content management system to the Solana blockchain in 2020 to enhance its performance. But its native cryptocurrency, AUDIO, remains on the Ethereum blockchain. AUDIO is an ERC-20 governance token that allows stakers to vote on proposals related to network changes and upgrades. They can also unlock exclusive features by staking AUDIO coins.
How Does Audius Work?
Audius aims to solve the challenges artists face in the music industry, including music rights, royalties, and ownership, by giving everyone the freedom to distribute, monetize, and stream music. It eliminates the intermediaries between artists and their audience, allowing them to interact directly on the platform.
Unlike the traditional channels of the music industry, Audius doesn't pay artists based solely on the number of times their tracks are played. It also considers artists' activity on the platform, the way they interact with fans, and the overall engagement from users.
On Audius, artists can upload and distribute their songs by the decentralized nodes. There are several ways for artists to earn revenue from their audio content without sacrificing their ownership. They can get AUDIO by making it to the Top 5 Weekly Trending Track, Top 5 Weekly Trending Playlist, Top 10 Monthly API App, and first track upload after verifying their social media accounts.
Audius also lets artists engage with their community via artist tokens. Artist tokens give holders exclusive access to token-restricted content, such as unreleased tracks, remix competitions, etc. Occasionally, Audius plans to airdrop AUDIO tokens to artists based on their level of social engagement with fans and the number of listens.
In the future, Audius plans to add support for USDT and other stablecoins for fans to unlock paid content.
How Does Audius Differ from Other Streaming Platforms?
One of the major differences between Audius and other streaming platforms like Spotify is that it leverages blockchain technology to run in a decentralized manner. This allows artists and content creators to share their music with more control over their content.
According to the co-founders, 90% of the platform’s revenue will go to the artists directly. Compared to the general numbers in the traditional music industry, where only 12% goes to the artists, Audius allows them to earn a more reasonable pay.
Another difference is that Audius includes AUDIO token holders, be it artists or fans, in the decision-making process for the network. Holding one AUDIO token gives them one vote to participate in the governance of the protocol. They can vote for or against any proposed changes on the platform, which is not somETHing we can find on other music streaming services.
Audius also shows that it has the ability to help artists cultivate their fan base and community. It is the first music streaming platform to partner with TikTok, a video streaming social media platform. This partnership enables TikTok users to add songs on the Audius platform to their videos directly. Apart from TikTok, Audius has also integrated with blockchain game DeFi Land in the form of an FM radio tower in the game’s metaverse, which could help promote artists.
Closing Thoughts
Audius might look just like another music streaming service, but it presents new possibilities for the music industry and artists. It also demonstrates how blockchain applications can be used in many different aspects of our lives, both in real life and in the metaverse.
Now that you’ve learnt what is Audius crypto and how does Audius work, how strong of a competitor do you think Audius would be against the likes of Spotify and Apple Music? Would you be giving the songs on the platform a listen as well? Let us know!
