What Is Audius (AUDIO)?

Audius (AUDIO) is a decentralized music-sharing platform owned by the community and controlled by the artists. The project aims to allow anybody to freely share, listen to, and monetize any audio. Audius plans to offer a blockchain-based substitute to the existing streaming platforms that permits artists to publish, market, and distribute their work directly to fans. The platform is supported by the content creators, content consumers, and service providers.

According to the whitepaper, Audius believes that artists face ownership rights, publishing rights, and licensing issues that prevent their content from being accessed worldwide. Also, the layers of intermediaries involved in the process delay payment for artists. As a solution to these concerns, the project allows creators and fans to collectively manage this streaming platform without a centralized infrastructure. The platform stores and indexes all content, information, and data in a decentralized system.

The platform uses content nodes that host content and provide permission access to artists. The content ledger manages the data of content nodes within the protocol, acting as a repository. The content ledger stores all social actions that users connect with the clients, view content shared by other fans. The platform also employs the discovery nodes, a user-operated network that indexes the content and acts as a simple interface.

Among the most important components of the protocol is the platform token. AUDIO is the platform token of Audius, which aligns the incentives of various stakeholders of the protocol. The native token has three functionalities in the ecosystem: 

• The token offers security, access to features, and governance. Accordingly, the node operators secure the protocol through staking AUDIO tokens. Artists and fans are more likely to use the node with a larger stake.

• The token unlocks additional features serving as collateral for artists. 

• The token aids the governance process through a voting mechanism in the network. Governance is the primary premise underlying the network’s decentralized infrastructure that aims to allow the community to create future versions of the platform directly.

The AUDIO token supports various third-party stablecoins and artist-specific tokens to unlock additional facilities in the Audius community, enabling Audius to take a more active role in the Ethereum and DeFi ecosystems.

History of Audius (AUDIO)

Audius was cofounded by Roneil Rumburg, the CEO, and Forrest Browning, the CPO. As per the roadmap shared by the team, the project released its whitepaper in 2018. Later in October 2020, the team launched the mainnet and AUDIO token, opening the platform to users. 

How Are New AUDIO Tokens Created & Earned?

As per the whitepaper, AUDIO token holders unlock various platform functionalities through staking. To ensure content on Audius is trustworthy and maintained as a decentralized platform, node operators are required to submit collateral, or “stake,” as a commitment to serve the protocol. This AUDIO stake guarantees that node operators have tokens at risk, which can be slashed or withdrawn in case of malicious activity in the protocol.

The node operators with requisite hardware join the protocol using AUDIO tokens as collateral. As a reward for contribution, these operators receive rewards in AUDIO tokens through an on-chain issue or a new token issue. The platform whitepaper states that it features a 7% automatic annual issuance reward rate distributed weekly. Furthermore, in exchange for safeguarding the network, those that stake more AUDIO tend to receive a higher share of the issue. As a result, by staking AUDIO, network node operators contribute to the protocol’s security and efficiency.