What is Audius?
Audius is a digital streaming platform that aims to allow a stronger connection between fans and their favorite artists or creators. Artists are able to create “immutable and timestamped records for their creative works on a decentralized network of node operators.” Governance is also an important part of the platform for both the artists and the users.
The platform itself is built to be a response to Soundcloud and promises better engagement and monetization. It offers a simple-to-use interface for listeners and the ability to play a part in the growth of the network through the AUDIO token. The token itself can be staked to earn a portion of network fees and additional features including governance abilities.
Nodes are run by operators alongside an appropriate AUDIO stake, currently 200,000 tokens minimum. Content nodes offer a way to store and relay the creative content on the network in a decentralized manner. Artists can opt to run their own content node as a means to gain more control over how their content is distributed. Alongside content nodes, discovery nodes index data such as user profiles, playlists, and followers. Node operators can choose to run either node or a combo of both.
Holders of the token can then choose to stake a minimum of 100 tokens to any of these node operators to increase their capabilities. More information on staking can be found in Audius’ primer.
Currently, Uniswap is probably the best bet for American users to get the token, while Binance seems to offer it elsewhere in the world.
The network has some pretty promising statistics available for viewing on their dashboard. As of writing this, there are about 3.9m unique users this month and a 194m active AUDIO stake on the network. Their own Audius Hedgehog is an Ethereum wallet that allows for the creation of and interaction with dApps and makes it a much more seamless process than most. Although Audius is the most used app on the platform, it does have some others that boast a decent amount of traffic based on the API data.
They’ve also recently announced NFT support and VIP tiers which users can unlock by holding minimum amounts of AUDIO. Rewards will eventually be tied to VIP tiers but have yet to be properly announced.
The platform is still in a pretty early stage and has a couple of bigger names already on board (Skrillex being the largest that I can see). The primary genre of the platform is currently electronic music, although it does have a few other options. I think it has some promise as it continues to grow and more artists adopt it and I would love to see something more decentralized in the music industry to allow artists to be paid a fair amount vs other platforms. And so far the user experience of the platform has been enjoyable for me in the last couple of weeks of using it. I think the project is worth keeping an eye on as it grows and gains more traction.
