Audius Continues Ambitious Program to Reward Artists and Fans
Audius, the largest decentralized music community, discovery platform and marketplace for artists and their fans, is currently in its fourth week of an ambitious program to reward the artists and fans who have made the platform one of the most vibrant and exciting ways to experience music today. Over the coming months and years, Audius has planned for 30 million $AUDIO, the token that underpins the platform, to be distributed to the most engaged artists and fans in their community, at a value of $3 million in total at today’s prices.
“Audius is a music ecosystem that empowers and enfranchises its community to control its own destiny,” said Audius founder and CEO Roneil Rumburg. “Because our members all share in ownership of the platform, they also all share in the success of the platform. The response from artists and fans to these rewards has been incredible so far and we are looking forward to rolling out even more ways for them to participate financially in the Audius ecosystem.”
Cooper Turley, the founder of Coop Records, a popular destination on Audius, commented on his Twitter feed, “As someone who's been a part of the Audius community since $AUDIO launched - I'm really stoked about a more consistent way for artists (and fans) to earn tokens for putting their music onchain.”
The first airdrop, which consisted of 2 million $AUDIO directly to artists, happened last month in celebration of the platform’s crossing the 250 million total streams mark.
Thorwald van den Akker, the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of bitbird said, "Audius crossing the 250M play mark and giving back to the community is amazing. I love seeing a music platform building something directly for artists. It gives me hope that within this gatekept industry, it is possible to open doors even when you approach it from the ground up."
Josh Yamini, founder of indie label Good Society said, "Audius changed our lives and that of so many artists and collectives around us. They've helped us throw so many shows and build a platform in our earliest days. So grateful for the team behind it who cares deeply about all levels of the music industry from top to bottom. We wouldn't be who we are today without Audius."
After rewarding artists in week one, fans in week two, and both groups in week three, Audius has an entire menu of rewards planned in the coming weeks. Now, Audius increased the reward for its Weekly Trending Competition by a factor of 10x. Every Friday, the top five Trending Tracks and top five Trending Underground Tracks will earn 1,000 $AUDIO each. Details on all the rewards can be found on the Audius blog.
On Audius, artists can set their own terms and control the pricing of their music, and fans can support their favorite artists with direct payments. Music fans can seamlessly use their credit card to pay artists in USDC, which can be converted by artists and rights holders to any currency of their choice.
Many artists, independent record labels, distributors and rights holders have used Audius including Skrillex, deadmau5, Disclosure, Zedd, Dillon Francis, Diplo, DistroKid, EMPIRE, Kobalt, Nettwerk Music, Ninja Tune, Merge Records, Ampsuite, Circus Records, Anjunadeep, Anjunabeats, bitbird, Coop Records, Good Society, College Music, Headroom Records, and others. Audius has also forged pivotal deals with the world’s top performing rights organizations: ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, ICE, and GMR.
