Music streaming surged during the pandemic and is not showing signs of slowing down. However, the current product suite based on a Web 2 standard does not offer the best approach for either creators or consumers. Audius is one of the leading Web 3 infrastructure providers, shifting the economics of the music streaming business to benefit people. Discover more about this ecosystem of decentralized audio and how you can have a better experience with it.

The state of the music streaming industry

The long-standing lockdowns during Covid led people to consume more online entertainment. Music streaming, alongside video consumption, skyrocketed, and the trend is not diminishing.

In that period, global music subscribers surged by over 25% to over 500 million people. Online music streaming is even more dominant today, representing around 85% of the total music industry revenues.

How does that translate into music consumption?

Americans consume over 70 minutes daily from music streaming providers, with Spotify taking first place with 180 million subscribers.

The rise of high-quality music video streams took the allure from illegal online alternatives for consumers. However, as always with Web 2 providers, those services brought paid services to avoid ads, high centralization (for creators and consumers), and a lack of wider benefits for all parties involved.

Audius: A Web 3 approach to music streaming

Audius is a Web 3 protocol, bringing decentralization, ownership, and opportunities to creators and music fans. With Audius, creators can upload their music, get discovered, and earn most of the rewards from their talent.

For artists, the value proposition is clear. Get more benefits and rewards from your talent, control your career, and not fall under the centralization of music monopolies or agents.

For fans, you can finally use a service that provides high-quality streaming while enabling you to discover more artists on a global level while also becoming a part-owner of the protocol.

Beyond discovering previously hidden talent from the large music labels, fans can also enjoy the art of popular musicians like Katy Perry, NAS, The Chainsmokers, Jason Derulo, and Steve Aoki.

How to be a key participant in the Audius ecosystem?

As an artist, you can get discovered on Audius by publishing high-quality streaming music (320 kbps), the highest of any providers, for free and with unlimited power while earning AUDIO tokens.

The AUDIO token is at the center of the ecosystem for fans and artists. With Audius, fans can unlock exclusive content and special perks, while holding AUDIO can offer governance power over the entire project.

A global network guaranteeing the Audius secret sauce

Beyond fans and artists, Audius’s decentralized protocol relies upon service providers who guarantee content streaming on the platform, its traffic, security, and more.

Service providers can work on content publishing or in the discovery of such content. To do this, people need the technical expertise, hardware, and time to run nodes and effectively perform the service. In return, they’ll earn AUDIO tokens.

In short, content nodes ensure that the upload and identification of the content happen in the platform (on-chain transaction), while discovery nodes make that content available for everyone.

This process ensures that Audius is not the content’s owner, guaranteeing the decentralization of the protocol through a third-party node network and fulfilling its unique advantage over centralized music services.

Web 3 infrastructure providers like Audius introduced tokenomics as a way to have an interlinked community with the platform itself and become user-owned protocols. By increasing people’s participation, Audius also expands its reach while designing a better experience for everyone.

Earning AUDIO while enjoying capital diversification and efficiency

More people can earn rewards in the Audius ecosystem beyond node operators. What options do you have if you’re an AUDIO holder and want to diversify your capital?

You can delegate your AUDIO (a minimum of 100 tokens) to nodes in the network and earn a portion of their rewards, while node operators need to stake a minimum of 200,000 tokens to operate.

The process of choosing a node is harder than it seems. You need to search for all the options, evaluate according to an investment returns criteria, allocate the tokens, manage your allocation, continue to search for other options, etc.

Currently, AUDIO holders can stake their tokens in our liquid staking protocol, offering total flexibility as your tokens are not locked. Meanwhile, you’re still earning automatically compounded rewards in the form of TenderTokens, a crypto derivative based on the tokens you initially staked (on a 1:1 basis).

This is only the first step into the Tenderize cascade of potential returns. You can further diversify by providing liquidity to pools or farming. Tenderize is at the start of its journey to unlock the potential of staked assets, with more news coming soon.

Learn more about other ecosystems that Tenderize is supporting.