Audius is a decentralized music streaming protocol initially developed on the POA network, but it now operates on Solana. Audius was established to address the inefficiencies within the music industry, which are often marred by unclear music rights ownership and the presence of intermediaries between artists and their audiences. The platform seeks to align the interests of artists, fans, and node operators using its native AUDIO token. Through Audius, artists can upload their music, which is then stored and distributed by content and discovery nodes, enabling fans to listen to it for free. At present, Audius incentivizes content creators with rewards, such as featuring in the weekly trending lists. Looking ahead, Audius plans to incorporate stablecoins to allow artists to offer paid content. Additionally, it intends to introduce artist tokens to provide fans with access to exclusive content, potentially collaborating with platforms like Rally.

Audius was established in 2018 by Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning, two entrepreneurs based in California. Roneil Rumburg, an alumnus of Stanford University, co-founded Kleiner Perkins, an early-stage seed fund that invests in blockchain and AI companies. Forrest Browning, also a Stanford alumnus, is a recipient of Forbes 30 Under 30 and co-founder of StacksWare, an enterprise data center management platform. The Audius team is supported by 21 additional employees and is backed by prominent figures, including deadmau5, a well-known electronic music producer, Adam Goldberg, co-founder and Managing Director of Stanford Crypto, and Bing Gordon, co-founder of EA Games.

The Audius ecosystem comprises four primary participants: artists, fans, content nodes, and discovery nodes. Artists publish content on the Audius content ledger at no cost, with music streamed at 320kbps, comparable to the standards of Spotify and Google Play Music. Due to the decentralized nature of Audius, there is no copyright protection, although the protocol is developing an arbitration system that will be overseen by the community. Artists can utilize Audius to experiment or share bonus tracks, and the platform plans to implement artist tokens to facilitate monetization, contingent upon artists staking AUDIO. Additionally, artists can participate in reward schemes where tokens are airdropped to the most popular artists. Fans can listen to tracks for free and may in the future have the opportunity to stake AUDIO to engage in the growth of artists on the platform. They can also display their verified NFTs through the platform and earn various badges. Content nodes are responsible for maintaining the availability of content on AudSP, the platform-native extension to IPFS. An artist’s client automatically elects a set of these nodes on behalf of the artist, while fan clients retrieve the content, submit proof, and request keys to content nodes. Artists also have the option to run their own content nodes, thereby maintaining greater control over their content distribution. The content ledger holds a record and a single source of truth for all actions on the protocol. Discovery nodes index metadata that can be queried by users, enabling them to discover new content and acting as a registry on the platform.

The total supply of AUDIO is 1 billion tokens, with a current circulating supply of 411 million AUDIO. The yearly inflation rate is 7%, and 50 million AUDIO were distributed to the top 10 artists and fans, with 75% allocated to artists based on stream count. The token distribution is as follows: * 23% to premined rewards and airdrops * 36% to investors * 41% to founders and the protocol itself The token is designed for three main purposes: * Securing the network * Unlocking access to features * Acting as a governance token Tokens can be staked as collateral for value-added services. Node operators can also stake AUDIO to secure the network and run the protocol, while each token also receives governance weight and influences the protocol’s future.

Audius opted to migrate to Solana in response to increasing demand. The team highlighted several reasons for selecting Solana. Firstly, it is cost-effective, offering 1 million transactions for just $10. Additionally, it is fast, with block times of 400 milliseconds and confirmations taking less than one second. Lastly, Solana is decentralized, featuring over 200 nodes on its mainnet. While staking and governance functions remain on Ethereum, AUDIO continues to be an ERC-20 token. Solana is a layer one blockchain utilizing a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism with partial Byzantine fault tolerance. It includes 200 nodes operating globally, capable of reaching a peak processing capacity of up to 50,000 transactions per second. Solana distinguishes itself from slower blockchains by executing a series of coordinated optimizations to achieve its remarkable performance and processes transactions in a multi-threaded manner.

AUDIO is listed on Binance, Uniswap (V2), BitStamp, and Gate.io.