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To take away:
The music industry has disorders that the right blockchain application can solve, opening the door to adopting customer cryptography, at least that’s the dream.
Audius is an Ethereum-compatible music distribution service that serves well-known start-ups such as SoundCloud and Spotify. Its creators expect Audius to provide more exciting support for musicians to build a group of musicians so strong that users arrive en masse.
According to the Audius block explorer, the network has noticed between 30,000 and 50,000 users consistently since the end of October, a significant sum in the emerging world of Web 3. 0. (For the context, according to its third quarter earnings report, Spotify has 144 million paid users).
“It’s a bit genuine and exciting to see that answer,” Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO of Audius, said in an interview. “Especially in COVID-19, these [musicians] suffer. You can’t do a tour. Most of the resources”. of the source of income have been exhausted. “
Read more: Audius brings together EDM and crypto-VC artists to be made for music bills on Ethereum
Audius generated great interest at the end of October by pronouncing the distribution of the network’s AUDIO token, marking the end of its beta phase of the network. He gave 50 million AUDIO tokens to 10,000 superusers, basically artists using Audius, but also to some listeners. who play a lot of songs and offer a lot of commentary.
“The most exciting thing about Audius to me is that it doesn’t seek to create a new ecosystem with the same players (i. e. DeFi or NFT),” He told CoinDesk at Signal Jesse Grushack, a ConsenSys alumni and pioneer in the blockchain music space. , referring to decentralized finances and non-fun tokens. ‘This brings a completely’ virgin ‘cryptographic network that, until the release of $$ AUDIO, probably didn’t know it was cryptography’.
Like many of the creations of this industry, there are two things: the company and the network. The corporation raised the budget of venture capital companies in two separate rounds, first with General Catalyst and Lightspeed Capital and then with Multicoin Capital and Blockchange.
Read more: Blockchain for music startups raises $5. 5 million in new funds
The network is a series of two types of nodes, one that hosts the content and the other that indexes it, in addition to this network there are applications that allow users to access the content.
The main app is the company’s Audius and Web mobile apps; there are already a few more. Anyone can create an interface that interacts with Audius content.
Artists and enthusiasts use other apps to publish and broadcast content. To a small extent, users contribute to the ease of use of the network. When active online, the network can direct other users to copies of content that users have temporarily stored for other users who need the same record (just as BitTorrent has for years).
Audius is governed by the world’s largest blockchain, Ethereum. It uses an ERC-20 token, AUDIO, for governance and as a security mechanism. Node operators and artists will have to bet AUDIO tokens to unlock other types of features and earn opportunities.
In beta, Audius used the POA network, an Ethereum side chain, to run its content management. In late October, he announced a partial transfer to Solana’s blockchain, which is presented as incredibly fast and economical.
This is the newest of the thesis “one network, several chains” articulated through the crypto evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos.
Read more: “A Network, Channels”: Arguments for Blockchain Interoperability
In addition, banknotes are controlled over the net as a basket of solid coins. Or, it might be better to say that they will be. Monetization is not a major component of the audius use case here in the early days, but the capacity is there. when the weather is right.
Once upon a time Audius had a two-chip model, but that’s because when the team started presenting its vision, there was only one stable currency, tether (USDT).
Audius invented this perception of solidcoin only for its platform called LOUD, however, at the time the company implemented the beta network, there was a pletlet of solid parts, a trend that has only continued.
Audius now uses the AUDIO token for governance, security, and unlocking functions.
Like many networks, node operators will need to publish AUDIO tokens to obtain long-term token issues in their inflationary formula (and as opposed to poor or malicious functionality in the formula). According to an article by Medium, Audius created 1 billion AUDIO tokens the genesis, of which 41% were for founders and the transfer and 36% for investors.
Read more: This a16z Alum launches a venture capital fund on platforms you can ‘own’
The Open Audio Foundation controls another 178 million tokens for network growth, with only immediate access to 65 million AUDIO. Most of everyone’s genesis tokens are subject to some kind of acquisition program.
At the time of writing, the money is just over 65. 6 million AUDIO, according to CoinGecko.
Lately there is a 7% factor of new chips, all of which are being passed on to node operators right now, Rumburg told CoinDesk that the Audius team expects the network to vote to broadcast those systems to various stakeholders (and obviously , based on the numbers) above, the team and investors have a massive voting weight).
Camoufly is an electronic artist who has had many songs on Audius since October 2019.
“I saw something wonderful about them with the release of $AUDIO,” Camoufly told CoinDesk, “so all the music and paintings I put on the platform definitely paid off!”
Today, Audius is primarily a way for new artists to build an audience. It is governed by EDM artists, with hip-hop as the genre of the moment (and virtually no act of other categories, to date). It’s also incredibly underground, yet it has some acts with strong followers, like Skrillex.
“Those two teams were very impatient, excited about adopting new platforms because they had difficulty integrating to some extent,” Rumburg said.
Read more: Audius, the ‘decentralized Spotify’, transfers its service to the Solana blockchain
The task described itself as picking up where SoundCloud left off, as a way for music addicts to revel in unfamiliar acts and get the thrill of experiencing new acts first.
“Since I’m an independent singer-songwriter, which isn’t the kind of typical music you’ll find there right now, it’s imaginable at all times that other people are watching you,” Noir Yon, a Berlin-based artist. said via email. ” I hope that it will grow and that more and more musicians from other genres will consider downloading their music in addition to other platforms. “
Obviously, the network doesn’t become sustainable until other people spend money on it one way or another, however Rumburg points out that Audius first wants many more tracks and artists. When this happens, the team can start implementing other monetization approaches to see which jobs.
On this front, Audius opens a pletlet of methods for artists. They can create exciting new tactics to recruit enthusiasts to help them expand their brands. For example, they can “block” tracks, allowing only users who, for example, have shared one of their other songs or own one of their non-public listings.
Read more: Man who has tokenized force to his possessors during his life
Personal tokens were a big topic in 2020 and Rumburg said that at this time Audius functions as a Type of Swiss for those tokens: it is open to allowing one of the non-public token networks to run on Audius.
It is theoretically imaginable to create any kind of rule to unlock the music. If more powerful consumers are physically created to access the Audius network (imagine video games that use background music or live stations that upload it to their programs), other categories of regulations and incentives that artists can offer open up.
One of the main goals is to make Audius a place for artists to broadcast music and get the highest percentage of the profits generated through their music. However, few of its artists have yet opted for monetization.
Storage nodes must have at least two terabytes of garage and a fast Internet connection. Discovery node operators must be able to purchase an IPFS-based content directory. Together, they will help users locate the content of their selection as temporarily as possible. .
For now, all new token issues pass to the operators of those nodes.
In October 2019, The Verge detailed the history of disputes over intellectual assets in music and how Audius fits into this persistent story.
This has been the case since the early days of the Web: there is a category of users who are satisfied with the percentage content to which they are not entitled.
Rumburg told CoinDesk that Audius already had a tool for rights holders to use and authorizes programs to the node hosting the disputed content.
“In the future, we anticipate that there will be an arbitration formula that will allow the network to resolve such disputes in a brazen and transparent manner, along with things like earning profit shares and assignments of the right type in the event of a dispute between the main owners,” he added. Rumburg wrote in an email.
Read more: Musicians to get lost in the wonderful technology
Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora can be smart to make sure that the right people are paid and that things never run, however, it’s also valuable to point out that existing infrastructure has other tactics for transferring rights to the Creator.
Since switching to streaming, the ability to read audio metadata for end users has become quite mediocre, depriving behind-the-scenes artists of credits and enthusiasts of the ability to be obsessed with the best details.
And other moderate people agree that there is something with reimbursement in the music industry.
“When only 12% of the profits from recorded music go to the other people guilty,” Grushack, former ConsenSys, wrote. “We can’t just go back and pretend the industry is doing a wonderful job. “
The challenge for all programs like this is that they want many users to get network effects. Audius just wants more people. This will attract more artists who, in turn, will attract more users. It’s the hardest part.
Spotify took a long time to achieve profitability and has been fragile. Apple Music has a variety of unfair advantages.
Music has been a complicated technological field, but the Internet continues to try.
So soon, the fact that Audius uses cryptography probably won’t make it attractive, however, its openness can help if it can generate enthusiasm. He makes a speech similar to other blockchain-based music projects before him: the music industry is unfair to artists and this can be.
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