No.216
Audius AUDIO
artist-first music token
🎭 a streaming booth with no record label in the back room, just artists, fans, and the AUDIO token
💬 “Spin the track, skip the middleman. I send the artist's music straight to your ears, and they keep what's theirs. Want a say in how the booth runs? Hold a little of me and vote. 🎧”
- What: a music streaming app run on a blockchain, like a community-owned Spotify or SoundCloud where Audius takes no cut from artists.
- Born: founded 2018, mainnet launched October 2020 with a livestreamed deadmau5 + RAC set.
- The token: AUDIO is an ERC-20 on Ethereum used for staking, voting, and unlocking features.
- Catch: no supply cap, so new AUDIO is minted forever to pay staking rewards.
📖 The Story
2018. Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning kept hearing the same complaint from musicians: streaming services pay little and hold all the keys. So they built Audius, a streaming platform with no single company in the middle. Artists would post music straight to fans and keep ownership of it. Early backers liked the idea, and the team raised about $5 million from General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and Pantera, plus $1.25 million from Binance Labs.
October 2020. Audius went live on its mainnet and threw a party to match: a livestreamed concert with deadmau5 and RAC. The pitch was simple, an artist uploads a track and Audius takes none of the revenue. For musicians used to handing over a slice of every play, that was the hook.
2021. The crowd showed up. Users grew from roughly 2.9 million early in the year to about 5.3 million by July, and more than 100,000 artists joined, including names like Skrillex, deadmau5, and Diplo. Then in August came the moment that put Audius on the map: a TikTok partnership that wired it into TikTok's Sound Kit, so creators could pull tracks across. Around then the AUDIO token's market value peaked near $1.2 billion.
What makes Audius unusual is who owns it. It's not run by a boardroom, it's steered by the people holding AUDIO, the artists, fans, and operators who actually use it.
📊 Stats
🧩 How it works
Audius runs on two chains at once, each handling the part it's best at. The actual music, all those uploads and plays, sits on Solana, which is fast and cheap enough to handle a busy streaming app. The AUDIO token lives on Ethereum, where it leans on Ethereum's security for governance and staking. The network itself is kept running by node operators, who hold music files and help fans find tracks.
🌗 Light & Shadow
- Artists keep their revenue. Audius takes no cut, which is a sharp contrast to the slices traditional streaming services keep
- Real names showed up. Skrillex, deadmau5, and Diplo are among 100,000+ artists, and the 2021 TikTok tie-in gave it genuine reach
- The platform is steered by its users through token voting, not by one company's boardroom
- No supply cap. New AUDIO is minted endlessly (reported around 7% a year) to pay staking rewards, so the supply grows over time and can dilute value
- It competes with Spotify, Apple Music, and SoundCloud, giants with huge libraries and budgets. Winning over everyday listeners is hard
- Its 2021 peak has not come back. The token's price runs on crypto's wider mood as much as on how the app is doing
🧬 Evolution lineage
Audius isn't a fork or a founder's spin-off of another famous chain. It's an ERC-20 utility and governance token in the Ethereum ecosystem, with its music layer built on Solana. No hard-fork heritage, just an app that borrows from two chains.
🧭 Meet other friends
❓ FAQ
- What is Audius?
- A music streaming app, a bit like Spotify or SoundCloud, but run on a blockchain instead of one company. Artists upload tracks straight to fans, and Audius takes no cut of their earnings. Launched in October 2020.
- What does the AUDIO token do?
- Three jobs. Node operators stake it to help run the network and earn rewards, holders use it to vote on changes to the platform, and it unlocks some artist and platform features. It is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum.
- Why does Audius use both Ethereum and Solana?
- It splits the work. The music itself runs on Solana, which is fast and cheap to handle lots of plays. The AUDIO token lives on Ethereum, which it leans on for governance and security. One platform, two chains doing what each is good at.
- Is the supply of AUDIO capped?
- No. AUDIO has no maximum supply, so new tokens keep being minted (reported at about 7% a year) to pay staking rewards. That funds the network, but it also means the supply grows over time, which can dilute value.
⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only