How Music Streaming Platform Audius Pays Its Audience and Listeners

There isn't any denying that artists, musicians, performers, and all-around creatives have felt the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially pertaining to their source of income. While the global pandemic brought immense strife, it also brought forth plenty of innovation. Innovating the music scene, Audius is a music streaming platform that actually rewards both its artists and listeners—here is how.

Focusing less on serving large production studios, Audius stays true to what the music community wants since it's community-driven. The Audius platform is designed for its users to monetize and benefit because it's high-quality and free. A key factor in how users monetize using Audio is the native token, AUDIO, which unlocks more features and freedom to distribute, monetize, and utilize. Overall, it's the governance token that drives the future of Audius.

Audius is a completely decentralized music streaming protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. Its native token, AUDIO serves as an ERC-20 token. It's important to note that the AUDIO token has three pillars of functionality—security, feature access, and governance. Since the platform is community-driven, the AUDIO token is a key determinant of artists' potential pay because AUDIO is also used to access exclusive content, which gives fans the "exclusivity they deserve."

Listeners who hold AUDIO can use it to get direct access to their favorite artists. They can also stake AUDIO for ongoing issuance and weighted governance. Audius' manifesto is to align power with those who are continually the most active on the platform—a mechanism it thinks better suits the protocol's future users.

Since Audius wants to pay 90 percent of its revenue to its artists, the way artists are compensated isn't as straightforward as cutting a check. There are key factors, like social metrics, that play into how and how much an artist gets paid. Being mindful of the number of follows, likes, plays, and reposts an artist receives plays a substantial role in their compensation, but so do the metrics they receive for other compositions or collaborations with other artists.

While the frequency in which artists are paid isn't certain, there's an apparent formula Audius uses to determine the amount an artist should be paid. Rather convoluted, the formula devised takes into account the social metrics each artist has with a majority of the compensation, 75 percent, being allocated in the number of streams.

Artists are paid based on the overall engagement listeners have with their content and the exclusive content they create. They continue to get issuance of AUDIO if they choose to stake it.

Since Audius launched, it has continued to grow, develop, and even surge. Now boasting over 6 million monthly active users, the platform has announced a star-studded $5 million funding round headlined by some notable artists such as Katy Perry, Nas, Jason Derulo, crypto-enthusiast, Steve Aoki, Disclosure, Pusha-T, and The Chainsmokers.

Coming around to blockchain, most of these artists have already dipped their toes into crypto. It will be interesting to see the value each can potentially add to the emerging platform.