ben

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4 minute read

audius

Recently I asked the howmteam musicians to create profiles on Audius and upload their music.

why now?

Getting in early will have a lot of benefits. Audius won’t always be giving away money like they are now. Being discovered on a platform is easiest in the early years. Early adopters are disproportionately rewarded.

After you read further you may think, “this sounds great!” However, please expect this to take over 2-3 years to catch on. I believe in Audius’ vision, but only time will tell if this is the right bet.

In the meantime, I’ll try to explain why I believe Audius has a bright future.

my list of 10 reasons

1 decentralized

Audius, the service, will be spread all over the world on independent computers and servers. No one person or group will have complete control over the platform.

2 community governed

The people who get a voice in what happens to Audius moving forward are those that participate the most in it. They will be holding AUDIO, the cryptocurrency that runs Audius. AUDIO allows holders to vote in governance, as well as be a monetary reward for adding value to Audius.

3 open-source with infinite potential

  • Because Audius is open-source, anyone can build an app or website that improves the aesthetics of the platform.
  • Audius is kinda ugly, in my opinion, but that means absolutely nothing. Anyone, even I, could make my version of the music streaming app. In contrast, the Spotify app will only ever be as nice as the Spotify team makes it.

4 tokenomics

AUDIO has a solid structure of toke economics.

  • AUDIO will monetarily reward people who add value to Audius. It also allows them to have a say in the future of the platform.
  • It’s not a get-rich-quick currency. Unlike other crypto coins, AUDIO is on an inflation schedule that will keep its price from skyrocketing with speculation.
  • Funny, they used to not be clear about how AUDIO tokenomics worked. When I first looked into it they made me nervous, but now that they’ve laid it out explicitly I’m stoked!

5 somethings gotta break

  • The music industry is broken, everyone on the outside can see that. A change is inevitable. Crypto is going to put pressure on the industry to change. The bet here is that Spotify and Soundcloud won’t adapt fast enough to keep up with Audius as the leading crypto solution for music streaming.
  • I reveived an email from Messari, a crypto finance newsletter, about how bad the music industry is for musicians. As an outsider they can see the problems; explaining how musicians “only capture 12% of the revenue from their music.”

6 backward compatible

Audius is backward compatible with distribution platforms like CDBaby and DistroKid. Both of these platforms give you a product ID numbers called ISRC and ISWC. If you registered a song through one of these services, you can plug in your numbers when you upload a track on Audius.

This feature convinced me the most of Audius’ bright future. Instead of attempting to be a completely new thing, Audius has smartly compromised in the right way to let established musicians move everything onto the new platform with ease and legitimacy.

7 licensing made easy

Audius makes licensing stupid simple. With a few clicks in the advanced section you can tell others exactly what they can and can’t do with your music.

  • this includes remixes (yes/no)
  • or commercial uses (yes/no)

8 (green) blockchain integration

Everything that happens on Audius will be recorded on the energy-light blockchain, Solana. This means Audius will gain all the benefits of crypto, like immutability, but without the expensive energy costs of blockchains like Ethereum. This can keep your conscience clean.

9 audius before nft

  • Because Audius has chosen to be a blend of web2 and web3 the interface is very familiar. Besides the lack of polish and general slowness, the average user won’t have any trouble understanding how to use Audius to listen to music. And it will be free as well as ad-free. So it’s pretty dang attractive for a fan!
  • NFTs will be good for musicians! But it’s going to take a long time till mass adoption. Audius has a better chance of being adopted much sooner. For now, I suspect NFTs will be best used as perks to attract new patrons or a thank you for long-time patrons.

10 attractive to music big shots

  • While Audius doesn’t seem to have much to offer a super-star like Kayne. The platform has been set up in such a way that big shots in the music world can create a cryptocurrency of their own through Audius. Not sure how well this will go. But I do suspect big artists will come to Audius from a promise like, “make your own Kayne Coin and get rich!”
  • Not to mention the fact that an artist like Kanye can now sell directly to fans all over the world without any government limitation, when they use crypto. His lawyers will tell him, “crypto is a big deal for profit.” And finding a crypto music platform like Auidus will be very attractive.
  • Whether this works out well for the big artist or not, the first one to shift over to Audius will drive the masses from the $10/mo Spotify to the free (and ad-free!) Audius. Game over! Then Audius will be tested for whether they can handle the traffic after mass adoption.

We can keep talk more about this on Reddit r/howm.

resources and references

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