Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol on Ethereum. Audius was launched to remedy the inefficiencies of the music industry plagued by intransparent music rights ownership and intermediaries standing between artists and their audience.
Audius aims to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators through its platform powered by its native $AUDIO token. Artists can upload music, stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, that fans can listen to for free.
Audius platform tokens ($AUDIO) have three prongs of functionality within the Audius protocol ecosystem:
- Security
- Feature Access
- Governance
$AUDIO is staked as collateral for a value-added service such as operating a node or participating in governance. In exchange, stakers earn ongoing issuance, governance weight, and access to exclusive features. In the future, $AUDIO will govern a global fee pool from value transfers in the network.The Audius community looks to ensure that $AUDIO tokens are always being funneled to the most value-added actors. This is done through ongoing issuance using onchain metrics as a measurement to better route distribution to active participants, rather than simply to those staking the most $AUDIO.
Why is Audius Unique?
Artists can publish content on the Audius content ledger without any cost and music is streamed at 320kbps. Furthermore, artists can use Audius to experiment or share bonus tracks, and the platform also plans to develop artist tokens to facilitate monetization.
Fans can listen to tracks for free and stake $AUDIO tokens to participate in artists’ growth on the platform.