Audius wants to cut the middlemen out of music streaming so artists get paid their fair share. Coming out of stealth today led by serial entrepreneur and DJ Ranidu Lankage, Audius is building a blockchain-based alternative to Spotify or SoundCloud.
Was lucky enough to interview Ranidu, Roneil, and Forrest earlier this week about their plans to decentralize the entire music industry. I was initially skeptical of any attempt to bust up the entertainment industry, but their model is well-thought out and helps every player (except the pesky middlemen).
Pumped to see their network go live and give it a shot!
Taking it back to your days building Drop and Artist Union, 3-4 years ago!
I love music and appreciate those building tools for makers and creators. As with any marketplace, the cold start challenge is always super tough. How are you onboarding artists initially, @ranidu and team?
@rrhoover The DROP!!! Thanks for all the support along my journey Ryan. On the question of how we bootstrap this, we have an awesome advisory board in the works with both music Artists and high profile industry executives. We also plan on using token incentives for artists to sign up.
Really exciting stuff! I think this really could be the first mainstream application of Blockchain technology. Excited to see a quality team on this vision too. What sort of advisors are you looping in? Do you have any actual artists that you've spoken to yet? Any news about timeline?
@jamesvista12 Thanks for the kind words, those are great questions!!
We currently have 6 great advisors publicly listed on the site, with a handful of even more high-profile music & tech advisors being announced in the coming weeks.
Product Timeline - Whitepaper will be released within a few weeks (signup for newsletter on site). Hoping to have a beta by end of year, with a full network launch next year!
Artists - We've been speaking nonstop with artists across all genres, including 3LAU who's come onboard as an outspoken advocate & advisor. Few more headliners will be announced soon, stay tuned!!
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Really excited about Audius
Pros:
Fantastic team solving some big market inefficiencies
There is considerable noise in the Blockchain space. Companies promise the world but often lack the technical chops to execute on their "grand" ideas.
Audius is the exact opposite of these types of teams.
The Audius team has considerable industry expertise, relationships, and the technical chops to pull this off in a BIG way. I'm incredibly bullish on the project, team and idea and believe that is going to transform the way the industry thinks about music.
Great project! hope people will adopt this new platform. Btw how you are storing the content? e.g using IPFS or any other decentralized storage system.
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Brilliant
Pros:Much needed in the industry. Talented team.
Cons:Not yet launched.
Audius Music for iPhone
Audius Music for iPhone
Really excited about Audius
Pros:Fantastic team solving some big market inefficiencies
Cons:N/A - hasn't launched yet
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Audius Music for iPhone
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