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Audius Combines Music and Crypto – Partners with TikTok

source-logo  blockster.com 01 October 2021 22:51, UTC

In what could be seen as a massive win for the crypto and blockchain industry, Audius, a fully decentralized music streaming service built on blockchain technology, has become the very first music streaming service to land a partnership deal with the popular social networking platform TikTok.

The partnership will see Audius become one of TikTok's first partners for its Sound Kit feature, enabling Audius' artists to seamlessly upload their music to TikTok to be used in videos by the app's users,

Ever since its debut in 2016, TikTok has garnered quite a large number of users. Its popularity is largely based on its audio system that has become a dominant way for young artists to expose their work and get a lot of streams, which can even rise on pop music charts like Billboard.

The TikTok algorithm also makes it easy for users' posts to go viral and accumulate thousands, if not millions of views, irrespective of their account followership. It is with the help of this algorithm that several artists, including Lil Nas X, became internet sensations.

However, music artists on the platform are faced with the massive challenge of exporting their music to TikTok for it to be included in a video.

The current set methods of exporting new music to the platform are complicated, time-consuming, low quality, and do not foster inclusion, as teenagers who have little to no technical knowledge can’t make use of them to expose their works.

Most unsigned artists have even resorted to re-recording their songs and adding them to the background of their videos as a way to get people to listen to them.

Additionally, most artists receive a small fraction of the income from their work, a meager 12% of the revenues.

Unlike several top music streaming platforms like Spotify, Audius is a fully decentralized service built on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains and run by a community of token holders rather than one centralized entity.

With the partnership, Audius aims at solving the problem of uploading songs to TikTok. With the first-of-its-kind feature, music artists on the platform can easily export their music directly to TikTok in one click.

Artists will also be able to link their TikTok following back into Audius, which will further increase their popularity and shoot them into the spotlight.

Additionally, Audius is exploring how to help artists get paid directly every time their music is streamed as well as enabling artists with a large following on the app to effectively monetize their work.

However, this feature is yet to be enabled as Audius is trying to set the necessary things in place.

The platform, which was founded in 2018, has witnessed a massive surge in its user base in recent months, just crossing 5 million active monthly users in August.

The Audius mainnet went live in October 2020 with a live-streamed concert featuring some top artists, including the Canadian music producer, deadmau5, and the Portland musician popularly known as RAC.

Audius' decentralized service is driven by its native token, AUDIO, an Ethereum-based token that allows users to participate in governance decisions, where users can vote on and have a measure of control over the decisions made on the platform.

The AUDIO token can also be used for staking, which unlocks several advanced features like NFT collectibles, and users can also earn rewards for securing the network.

To become a token holder, users can either buy AUDIO or earn it by being active on the platform and helping to secure the network.

Audius had shifted a part of its platform from Ethereum to the high-performance blockchain, Solana, late last year to help with scaling.

Audius currently has over 100,000 artists on its platform, with a majority of them being independent and upcoming musicians. However, there are some well-known artists among them, including Skrillex, Weezer, deadmau5, and Diplo.

This partnership deal represents not only a big win for Audius but also for the entire cryptocurrency industry as it has set the stage for mainstream adoption. Shortly after the announcement of the deal, AUDIO's price had witnessed a massive surge.

blockster.com