What is Audius (AUDIO)? How Does AUDIO Work?

Music and Music Streaming Services have a huge growth potential in the business world. Spotify is one of the leading players in this category that allows creators to share their music with their fans. But the problem is that traditional streaming services charge a huge amount from the creators.

Moreover, they also share ownership with the creator once the music is listed on their platform. Audius is a blockchain network designed to fix this problem.

What is Audius (AUDIO)?

As the name suggests, Audius is a decentralized audio-streaming platform where creators can share and stream their music with their fans. It provides them with complete ownership of their work and enables them to earn more money for streaming their work as compared to traditional streaming platforms.

Audius uses a decentralized ecosystem to directly connect the creators with their fans. The creators can list the free and paid content separately and they have complete authority to determine the price of their exclusive content. The platform doesn’t take any portion of the transaction amount.

90% of the transaction amount is transferred to the music curator while the remaining 10% goes to stakers who help with keeping the network secure. The platform only charges nominal transaction fees for using its services.

According to a recent update, more than 100,000 artists have listed their content on the platform.

What Makes Audius Unique?

In the multi-billion dollar music industry, the music creators only receive 12% of the total revenue and the remaining amount goes to streaming services, distributors, and other participants. Even though the music industry can’t thrive without the creators, traditional service providers have been following the same practice for years.

Audius breaks this barrier by introducing a decentralized platform where music curators can receive 90% of the total revenue because they no longer have to rely on a third party. Thus, the creators can directly interact with their fans. They can use the additional money to grow their fan base through giveaways and other marketing tactics.

Audius has collaborated with video sharing app, Tiktok. It allows users to directly add music from Audius to their Tiktok videos. The platform has also collaborated with a decentralized game DeFi Land where it plays music through an FM radio tower.

Audius Brief History

Audius was introduced by Roneil Rumburg, the CEO of the company, and Forrest Browning, the CPO of the company, in 2018. Rumburg is a Stanford University graduate who started showing interest in crypto in 2013. He worked with a venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, and also introduced a blockchain protocol called Backslash.

Browning is also a Stanford University graduate who became popular when he got listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 list as a co-founder of StacksWare. Rumburg and Browning established a team of engineers, blockchain experts, entrepreneurs, and audiophiles to create a decentralized music streaming platform.

Audius went live in 2019. Audius was initially built on Ethereum but the platform started experiencing scaling issues due to high demand. So, the team migrated the project to Solana in 2020. However, its native currency AUDIO is still an ERC-20 token.

The project is backed by a number of big investors like Coinbase Ventures, Binance, and Pantera Capital. Similarly, some popular names like Bing Gordan (Co-founder of EA Games), Justin Kan (Co-founder of Twitch), and electronic music producers like deadmau5 are on the advisory panel of the platform.

Some high-profile names like Jason Derulo, Steve Aoki, Katy Perry, Pusha T, and Nas have also invested in this project. The Audius team has raised around $15 million through several rounds.

Important Aspects of Audius (AUDIO)

• Exclusive Content Facility

The artists can mark particular pieces of content like unreleased tracks as exclusive. So, the fans will need AUDIO tokens to access that particular content. The artist can distribute artist tokens among the fans with the help of distribution tools offered by the platform. 

• VIP Tiers

The platform has designed several tiers to facilitate the users who hold more AUDIO tokens. There are 4 VIP tiers that the users can unlock based on their current holding. The users can access new features before they’re made public. The community members decide the requirements for users to upgrade to the next tier.

• Security

Audius is secured by a set of nodes that are operated by AUDIO token holders. The token holders need to stake their tokens within the platform to provide access to the fans who want to discover music. The platform has two different kinds of nodes.

Content Nodes – These nodes are responsible for hosting, securing, and managing the content produced by artists. The artists can either join an existing node operator or they can run a node themselves.

Discovery Nodes – These nodes keep a record of data uploaded on the platform. These nodes maintain an index that fans can use to search for artists and music.

• Governance

The AUDIO token holders can also vote on proposals presented for the future growth of the platform. The token holders can participate in the voting process even if they aren’t running a node. The proposals are usually about royalty structures, new feature integration, and reward allocations.

How Does Audius Work?

Audius offers a user-friendly desktop and mobile application where users can listen to their favorite music. The users can explore trending songs, browse genres, and create several playlists for their favorite songs. Audius uses a global network of content nodes for hosting music streams.

The platform uses a decentralized file system, AudSP, for music indexing. Audius automatically chooses a set of nodes for artists when they upload the content. However, the artists can choose to run their own nodes if they want more control over their work. The platform also encourages artists through its rewarding process.

The platform offers AUDIO tokens as a reward if the artist’s track appears on top of the trending list.

Audius Tokenomics

As it’s mentioned above, AUDIO is the native token of Audius that is used to stream music. The token holders can also stake AUDIO tokens to earn rewards. Similarly, they can vote on several proposals for the network. With a circulating supply of 997 million tokens, AUDIO has a market cap of $282 million. It ranks among the 200 best cryptocurrencies in terms of market cap.

Conclusion

Audius is one of the leading blockchain networks that is targeting a billion-dollar industry. It has huge growth potential as it provides better earning opportunities for music curators while providing them with complete control of their content. The platform is backed by some popular celebrities and big venture capital firms.

If you need more information about how Audius works, feel free to get in touch with us. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter if you need regular Bitcoin Weekly Updates.