A new music streaming platform comes Online – Profile

A new streaming service, Audius has launched with the hope of making up for the shortcoming of big names like SoundCloud which are not only expensive but also plagued by non-transparent Content takedowns among other things.

Audius is positioning itself as an artist-focused music streaming platform. It already looks quite interesting & promising, both in terms of technology & business model.

But what is Audius’ plan to compete in a market that seems already saturated with big names like Spotify, Apple Music & SoundCloud already claiming to have a hold on about 90% of the market share?

One difference it’s banking on is that Audius runs on blockchain. The streaming service won’t be hosting its music. Instead, the platform will use a decentralized & secure blockchain protocol to host the music across nodes. What this means is that the platform will be quite secure with the attribution metadata safe, immutable & verifiable. This, Audius hopes will protect it from lawsuits & pressure from record labels.

Audius will also be free for artists to upload their music. Users will be able to browse the libraries (which is still quite small right now), stream & get listening recommendations just like any other music streaming platform. The use of Blockchain will also work to Audius’ advantage here. Since the platform won’t be hosting music, there won’t be a need for large servers which reduced running cost drastically.

However, artists cannot start earning on their music uploaded on Audius just yet since the service is entirely free for now. However, according to founders Forrest Browning & Roneil Rumburg, the company hopes to begin running paid ads or offer subscription services by 2020. The plan is to pay artists 90% of all profits when the company starts earning. By using Blockchain, Audius will also be able to trace music & track the number of plays an artist gets for easy management of future payments.

Audius is backed by big investment names like the Stafford Brothers deadmau5, Rezz, & deadmau5, Rezz. As an incentive for artists & node operators who join the platform early, Audius is giving out its crypto tokens to them. The hope is that the tokens will increase in value as the platform grows more popular with time. Visit https://audius.co/ to learn more & start listening.

Image Credit: Audius