In the already crowded and hypercompetitive music streaming world, Audius may seem barely noticeable with 6 million monthly users, Audius represents less than 2% of the estimated 445 million music streaming subscribers around the world.

But Audius’ still-small size belies its growing buzz in the music world.

Rolling Stone Magazine recently hailed the three-year-old San Francisco-based company as “a Spotify rival.”

Magic Industry Heavy Hitters are also throwing their weight and money behind the blockchain upstart with a new $5 million funding round.

While Bitcoin may be referred to as the digital answer to gold, Audius seeks to be the next Spotify or SoundCloud of the blockchain sort. The crypto-powered music app aims to decentralize and democratize the music industry by giving more money and control back to artists.

Audius brands itself as a music protocol of the future — bringing artists and fans together directly while eliminating middlemen like record companies or even platforms like Apple Music that take a big cut of music sales.

Traditionally, record labels and other music industry middlemen have taken a majority cut of every song or album sale. According to some estimates, only about 12% of music industry revenues were paid to artists. Audius aims to stand apart from its competitors by directing 90% of music revenue to artists.

Audius is an artist-controlled and community-owned music streaming platform, aiming to enable any user to freely distribute, monetize and stream audio.

It was co-founded by Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning, both computer scientists with Ivy League degrees. The pair also were early Bitcoin adopters and investors in Lightning Labs.

Audius aims to shift money and power back to artists by connecting them directly to their listeners and cutting out record labels and middlemen.

Artists get a 90% portion of sales revenue, with the other 10% going to node operators that support the network. Notably, the platform does not take a cut from the revenue. Audius remains sustainable through funding rounds and incentivizes employees and early investors with the AUDIO token.

Artists on Audius choose how their content will be monetized. Options include offering content and streams for free, having a one-time payment to unlock all content, or sell their songs as NFT’s.

Audius enables musicians to maintain sole ownership of their music by generating immutable timestamps of their content, secured by a network of decentralized node operators.

On Audius, any music creator can upload and monetize content. There’s no need to be signed to a label or have a massive following to start distributing your music on your own terms. The platform also rewards artists with Audio tokens for achievements such as top five weekly trending tracks and top five trending playlists.

Audius is pioneering what it sees as the future’s music distribution system, bringing human orientation into the music streaming industry. Artists can sign up and upload for free without having to sign with the platform, while fans can also use the platform for free (for the content that artists choose to share freely).

The platform has onboarded over 100,000 artists. Audius claims to offer the highest quality sound across free music platforms, supporting streaming and downloads at 320kbps.

Audius is also the first music streaming platform to partner with TikTok, the social media platform focused on video streaming. This will enable TikTok creators to use songs from Audius directly in their videos. The fact that TikTok chose Audius over other mainstream competitors is a sign of confidence for AUDIO investors.

Blockchain is steadily finding its way into most industries, as its robust security, transparency, and cost-efficiency are becoming more understood.

Audius is transforming music streaming with characteristics such as community governance and decentralization.

As for network expansion, the recent Audius-TikTok integration is significant for the platform, and will likely attract more established artists looking to piggyback off TikTok’s global user base of 1 billion people.

Aside from music celebrities, the platform is also signing on other prominent partners. Audius recently announced the launch of its integration with the popular Solana-powered multi-chain wallet and browser extension, Phantom, which allows users to showcase Solana NFT collectibles on their profile.

As Audius gains popularity, time will tell whether its open protocol becomes a new standard for decentralized music apps and whether Audius’ API Hedgehog can encourage the development of futuristic DJ apps and Shazam-type music discovery apps.

Source:

MMA_Crypto