Draft:Audius (blockchain music network)

Audius is a music marketplace protocol that connects artists directly with their fans. It fosters a blockchain-powered decentralized music community and discovery platform with social media features.

Founded in 2018 by Stanford computer scientists Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning and artist/producer/DJ Ranidu Lankage, it provides a toolchain and platform for musical artists so that artists and labels can set prices and control access to music tracks for downloads, recreation, and commercial licensing using variable and granular pricing, instead of a monthly-fee streaming model. It aims to increase income for artists through engagement with "superfans" with the idea that they will pay more for special content.

A community of users owns and runs the Audius ecosystem, which is powered by its own crypto token, AUDIO. As of May 2024 the protocol had more than 4.4 million unique monthly users.

Founding and token launch
Audius launched in mid-2018, raising $5.5 million in series A funding. Ranidu Lankage left Audius in 2019.

In May 2019 Audius launched Hedgehog, an open-source, client-side Ethereum wallet. The wallet required users only to provide a username and password to use it; using it did not require crypto knowledge. Artists including Deadmau5, Zeds Dead, Brownies & Lemonade, and Stafford Brothers participated in a private beta. In October 2019 Audius launched a public beta.

In October 2020 Audius launched its mainnet service with distribution of its AUDIO token, with a livestreamed concert with deadmau5 and RAC. A whitepaper laid out the platform's five components: an efficient token economy; decentralized storage and ledger for sharing audio and metadata; a track encryption scheme and a programmable mechanism to unlock proxy re-encryption keys; a discovery protocol for users to query metadata; and a decentralized governance protocol with participation by artists, node operators, and fans. Late in October Audius made a partial switch from the Ethereum blockchain to the Solana blockchain.

TikTok partnership, further funding
In August 2021 Audius announced a partnership allowing artists to upload songs into TikTok's Sound Kit, becoming the first streaming service to partner with TikTok. This enabled artists to upload their music to TikTok so that users of the social media platform could use it in videos. At this stage there were more than 100,000 artists on the Audius platform, and CNBC reported that the market capitalization of the AUDIO token had surpassed $1 billion.

In September 2021 the company raised an additional $5 million in funding from artists and music industry executives, increasing total funding to $15 million. The backers included Katy Perry, Nas, the Chainsmokers, Jason Derulo, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, Guy Oseary, former Sony Music Publishing head Marty Bandier, SESAC CEO John Josephson, and Three Six Zero founder Mark Gillespie. Artists including Russ, Diplo, Skrillex, MadeinTYO, Deadmau5, and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park were among those who had uploaded music to the site by that point.

Axios reported in June 2022 that the Audius ecosystem had reached 7 million users, 250,000 artists and 1 million tracks.

In February 2023 Audius added additional support for TikTok, so users could create and access an Audius account via their TikTok profile.

Governance system, music marketplace
In 2023 Audius introduced a fully integrated community governance system that gave voting rights to users who possess AUDIO tokens. The company also introduced a tipping feature; a mobile-native app; and an AI attribution feature intended to allow credit to be given to artists whose creations have inspired AI-generated music. Artists who opted in could allow AI-generated tracks trained on their music to be uploaded to the platform.

In November 2023 Audius introduced in beta a "music marketplace" feature that enabled users to pay creators directly by credit card. Fans pay per song in the USDC stablecoin to stream from the network's decentralized storage, via a credit card through Stripe or Coinbase. Artists can convert their USDC stablecoin into the fiat currency of their choice. The marketplace also gives users a 1:1 match of $AUDIO tokens for every purchase in USDC. Artists including The Glitch Mob, Matt Ox, Cheat Codes, RAC, and Daniel Allan were announced being among the first to use the music marketplace capability.

In 2023 the platform announced content partnerships with DistroKid and Beatport and with labels Nettwerk, Anjunadeep, Circus Records, and EMPIRE, and in 2024 announced a partnership with Music Reports, a rights administration platform, for rights and payments licensing to music publishers.