Audius is a fully decentralized music platform developing the first community-owned and artist-controlled music streaming platform.^[1] Audius aims to build a blockchain-based SoundCloud alternative. The platform is to be based upon an open protocol that will live forever and is operated by a fully decentralized community of artists, developers, and listeners collaborating to defend the world’s music.^[20]

Operating on both Ethereum and Solana blockchains, Users can produce immutable records for their work, which will be secured by a decentralized network of nodes.
Audius removes the middlemen in the traditional music industry by connecting artists directly to their fans.^[18][19]

Overview

Audius was founded in 2018 by Ranidu Lankagemusic-sharing, a Sri Lankan Hip hop artist whose songs in his native tongue of Sinhalese were the first of the language to be played on BBC and MTV.  His music would go Platinum not long after signing a deal with Sony, but the record label began their move to take control over his work which ever since has been a challenge. After going to Yale University and getting involved in several tech projects, he decided he wanted to help artist turn their art into a profession. He eventually teamed up with CTO Roneil Rumburg, an experienced engineer who built a crypto wallet called Backlash.^[21][22]

Goal

Audius wants to cut the middlemen out of music streaming so artists get paid their fair share. Using Audius, creators can generate immutable and timestamped records for their creative works and register assets to the Audius network. Because the network is decentralized and secured by blockchain technology, the metadata attribution remains safe, verifiable, and immutable.^[2]

Lankage's and Rumburg's goal is to build a blockchain streaming music service where listeners don’t have to understand blockchains. Rumburg wants to make it so that users wouldn't even know they have a wallet. The user instead will hear an ad every so often, get a subscription, or pay per stream.

Since Audius is open-sourced, developers will be able to build their listening clients on top which could specialize in the discovery of certain types of music or offer their payment schemes.

Features

Providing a transparent network in a space traditionally controlled by third parties, Audius builds a bridge between creators and consumers. Discover new content or verify authenticity, authorized through a truly transparent system of attribution.^[4]

Creators

Audio File Hosting & Streaming

Painless audio publication.^[5]

Creator Dashboard

Users can Sign into their account to view important info like listens, popular geo regions, etc.^[6]

Instant Payment

Users can get paid royalties on their content in real-time as users listen.^[7]

Attribution Friendly

The Audius community can recognize new content that samples from your uploads, and grants you a cut of those royalties too.^[8]

Listeners

Seamless

Listen immediately to popular content without needing to download additional software.^[9]

Support The Community

Feel good knowing that all proceeds are going directly to help support your favorite creators.^[10]

Exclusive Content

Audius already has many content creators who have agreed to publish their content exclusively to the Audius platform.^[11]

Funding

Audius has raised a $5.5 million Series A led by General Catalyst and Lightspeed, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Pantera Capital, 122West, and Ascolta Ventures.

According to reports, the investors are betting that Audius’ token will grow in value, making the stockpile it keeps worth a fortune. It could then sell chunks of its tokens to earn revenue instead of charging artists directly.

On October 23, it was announced that Audius raised a total of $9.8 million after Binance's VC arm raised $1.3 million. This round follows a $3.1 million round led by Multicoin Capital and Blockchain Ventures in July 2020. Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures were also a part of that.^[12] The same day, the company launched its native token $AUDIO to its mainnet.^[13]

Artists

To get artists on board, Lankage says that Audius plans to use token incentives. Those willing to jump on first before there are many listeners could get a bonus allotment of tokens that might be worth more if they help popularize the service.

Audius is hoping artists will share its links first because that’s where they’ll earn the most money.

$AUDIO

AUDIO is an ERC-20 governance token that allows speakers to vote on proposals related to network changes and upgrades. They can also unlock exclusive features by staking AUDIO coins.
On October 23, 2020, Audius' native token $AUDIO was officially launched on the main net. The 10,000 most active fans and artists received an '$AUDIOdrop' of 50 million AUDIO, which is five percent of 1B AUDIO minted at launch. 17.8% (178M AUDIO) went to the Foundation Treasury. 40.6% (406M AUDIO) went towards the Team & Advisors. 36% (360M AUDIO) was distributed to Investors. Of the 1 billion AUDIO distributed, only 120M $AUDIO is to be in circulation from launch, meaning advisors and investors have a lockup period of six months. This period ends on April 23rd.^[14] Shortly after being listed on Binance, the token pumped 1000%. It has since dropped to around 16 cents (October 27, 2020).^[15]

In addition to the official launch, Audius celebrated with a Livestream event featuring artists Deadmau5 and RAC.^[16] The following days of the event brought substantial attention to the token and the service. As of October 27, 2020, 22 million of the 50 million $AUDIO has been claimed. More artists, including Skrillex, Alina Baraz, and Russ joined the platform. Overall engagement on the platform skyrocketed, and its mobile app entered the top charts on the App Store, as fans and artists see a future in the platform, following its main net launch.^[17]

Uses Cases:

• Secure the network.
• Act as a governance token.
• Give access to exclusive features and content.^[23]

Audius Collectibles

Audius unveiled its Audius Collectibles on 4/8/2021. Audius introduced its Collectibles to bring NFT collectibles directly to its artists and fans.

Artists can now have instant access to Collectibles on their Audius profile pages. Audius Collectives brings all of their NFTs from disparate wallets and marketplaces directly to Artist's fans, allowing each Artist to personalize their profile or give their most loyal listeners exclusive drops on limited edition sales, concerts, albums, tickets, digital art, and more.

Audius fans can discover them new collectibles directly from their favorite artists’ profiles Instead of scouring these markets for the latest drops. If they find a collectible that they like, they can click directly through the artist’s or creator’s page to visit the marketplace listing.

Audius Collectible currently supports NFTs from SuperRare, Zora, Foundation, OpenSea, Rarible, and KnownOrigin.^[24][25]

Core Team

• Roneil Rumburg - Co-Founder & Chief executive officer
• Forrest Browning - Co-Founder and Chief product officer
• Sid Sethi - Senior Engineer
• Hareesh Nagaraj - Senior Engineer
• Julian Baker - Sound Designer
• Christian Rowland - Head of Operations
• Dheeraj Manjunath - Head of Engineering
• Ray Lee - Business Development
• Ray Jacobson - Tech Lead - Product Engineering
• Joey Lee - Engineer
• Alex Park - Community
• Michael Piazza - Engineer
• Clayton Blaha - Artist Relations
• Vicky Guan - Engineer^[26]
• Cooper Turley - Strategy & Cryptocurrency

Investor and Partners

• Coinbase Ventures
• BlockChange
• General Catalyst
• Kleiner Perkins
• Solana
• Standard Crypto
• Light Speed
• Multicoin Capital
• Pantera
• Standard Crypto
• Binance^[27]